Alice Walker’s Womanist Love and her Critique of Oppressive
Patriarchal Religiosity in By the Light of My Father’s Smile
Agnieszka Lobodziec
Defining womanist love
In her book entitled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens Alice
Walker defines a womanist vis a vis a feminist, underlying the
unique stance black women took in response to the trifold oppression
of race, gender, and class. Loving the humanity of all people, a
womanist is concerned with ‘survival and wholeness of entire people,
male and female.’1 This commitment to the wellbeing of all people
reflects womanist global concerns, as the womanist theologian
Jacquelyn Grant states, ‘To speak of Black women’s tridimensional
reality … is not to speak of Black women exclusively, for there is an
implied universality, which connects them with others.2 Accordingly,
referencing the literary portrayals of womanist interest in the world’s
condition, Alice Walker contends,
I create characters … who are not passive but active in the
discovery of what is vital and real in this world. Characters
who explore what it would feel like not to be imprisoned by the
hatred of women, the love of violence, and the destructiveness
of greed taught to human beings as the “religion” by which
they must guide their lives.3
Concluding her definition, Walker outlines womanist love as
embracing all constituents of life because a womanist ‘Loves music.
Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food
and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself.
Regardless.’4 Above all, this broad definition of womanist love
outlines the resistance to oppressive Western patriarchal praxis.
Above all, it calls for the recognition of female beauty, enhancing
women’s self-esteem and self-love. Herself empowered, a womanist
further seeks the empowerment of others, male and female, because
she acknowledges the humanity and equality of all people in
contradistinction to prevailing patriarchal hierarchical structures that
ascribe women a subordinate status. Instead of revengeful action
against males for their historical dominion, she transcends hatred
with loving kindness and discerns the particularity of every
individual expression, appearance, and experience. It is a refusal to
categorize people according to superiors and inferiors. In this regard,
womanist love contradicts multifaceted Western patriarchal ideals
that, in terms of gender, humiliate women, and, in terms of race and
culture, demean non-Western social structures, belief systems, and
aesthetics.
Representations of oppressive patriarchal religiosity
In By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Alice Walker depicts the
oppressive patriarchal abuse of religion and biblical hermeneutics as
a force inhibiting female, and male, body and spiritual development.
Women suffer marginalization within patriarchal structures, deprived
of opportunities to express their female individuality. Men, often
unconsciously, are led to complex self-destruction as they involve
themselves, as authoritarian figures, in hypocritical and unnatural
performances. In the novel, the author references Western
Christianity as the most conspicuous expression of religious
oppressive patriarchy. At the same time, Alice Walker juxtaposes the
manifestations of religious oppressive patriarchy with female cultural
and spiritual sojourns towards womanist love.
Susanna, a black woman character, while sojourning in Greece
on a visit to her Greek husband’s family, comes to realize to her
disappointment the extremity of Western patriarchal religiosity. She
encounters Irene, a dwarf, cast out of her Christian patriarchal family
and broader community. The villagers taboo and demonize Irene,
whom they regard as deficient. What renders Irene’s marginalization
particularly intriguing is her relationship with the Christian church, a
place that should foster community and the uplift of its members. To
the contrary, Susannah encounters there an excluded woman. Irene
was born as a result of her mother’s rape. The family patriarchs
claimed that the woman’s pregnancy resulted from dissolute
behavior. In order to punish her for besoiling the family’s honor, they
2
brutally beat her. Later, after childbirth, she died. The patriarchs
regarded Irene’s dwarfism as God’s punishment for her mother’s
debauchery and gave her to the church as a servant. Susanna also
learns from Irene more about the non-relenting cruel patriarchal
manifestations in Greece. Irene states,
They used to stone women, here … not so very long ago….
That is what the men tell each other … and whisper into the
ears of foreign men, when they get the chance to talk
together…. You can be sure they stoned a great many, before
they got their vaunted ‘democracy’ in these parts. From my
window I can see one of the stoning pillars. They say that
even a hundred years ago, the base of it was still pink from
blood.5
Irene also cites racial prejudice within the church as a
rationalization of European Christian superiority. Cultural morays
divergent from Western patriarchal order and discipline were
condemned as morally depraved. Irene laments her church’s
denouncement of the joyous spontaneity and wandering of the
Gypsies (Roma) something she, to the contrary, perceived as
inviting. She discerns that the wandering lifestyle of the Roma did
not result from the preference for disorder but was the effect of
others not allowing them to establish permanent settlement. The fourhundred-year long European enslavement of the Roma and their
imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps are the evidence of
their oppression in Europe.
The characters reflect not only upon the manifestation of
oppressive Western religiosity within Europe, but also globally. As a
missionary in Mexico, Susannah’s father, Señor Robinson exercises
dominance within and outside of the family. As for his family life,
his religion-laden oppression affects most heavily Susannah’s sister,
Magdalena. He forbids her to play with Mexican boys, who have
named her Mad Dog, and disapproves of her connectedness to the
indigenous peoples. Her reads her fascination with human body as
dissolute desire for premature sexual initiation. In response to his
3
wife’s statement that the peoples of Mexico consider mad dogs wise,
which implies the respectful nature of their daughter’s nickname, he
exclaims, ‘she cannot be called Mad Dog [...] She is the daughter of a
minister!’6 Magdalena associates his tyranny with his profession,
stating, ‘I knew I had disobeyed him, but he was after all a minister,
or at least putting up a mighty show of being one.’7
Señor Robison also aspires to obtain authority beyond familial
life, by abusing his position in the church. He meets the Mundo, the
indigenous people of Mexico as a superior. His superiority is
facilitated by the scientific mindset he imbibed while researching rare
indigenous cultures. He uses religion as a medium to attain close
communication with his study objects. This posture reveals him to
the Mundo as a representative of the Western, evangelizing
colonizers, whom the Mundo have confronted for ages.
The tragedy of Señor Robinson’s circumstance arises from the
inauthentic nature of his missionary work, a condition that evokes
within him continued, conflicting emotions. Above all, as a
missionary, he must convert the heathens. For this reason, the interior
design of the church that portrays the beauty of nature with painted
watermelons, cornfields, and blue skies, instead of traditional sacred
images, startles him. Although the paintings bring back memories of
the idyllic childhood he spent on a North Carolina farm, now, as a
Christian missionary he has to struggle against ‘the blasphemous,
unbidden thought that the appreciation of corn and melon is more
universal that the appreciations of Christ.’8 Further, his daughter,
open to the mystery of the indigenous culture, reflects on her father’s
internalization of Western institutionalized religiosity, stating, ‘I
realized, he really did change himself into a priest, it was as if his
Bible reading and acting to fool the Mundo became part of what he
was.’9 One day, a Mexican man, Manuelito, reproaches him for his
arrogant bible thumping, contending,
You thought it had all the answers for our situation, when in
fact it had none that we could accept without feeling like
backward children. Did you really think we did not know we
should love one another; that the person across from us is
4
ourself? That stealing is bad; that wanting what other people
have is hurtful to us? That we are a part of the Great Spirit and
loved as such? What people does not know these things?10
Finally, Susannah and Magdalena become aware of the overall,
self-deceitful, yet opportunist, hypocrisy of the allegedly progressive
Western world, epitomized by two mutually abusive realms: science
and church. They realize that, as anthropologists outwitting the
church, their supposedly enlightened parents approach the indigenous
people as primitive objects to be studied. The church, in turn,
perceives the eloquence and intelligence of the educated black couple
and sends them to evangelize the racially mixed Mexican tribe.
Therefore, Susannah and Magdalena’s statements about the church
and the anthropological society are critiques of the assumptions of
the discriminatory, Western supremacy manifested by the
institutions’ complementary natures. This literary portrayal of the
discrepancy between an ‘enlightened’ Western world and nonChristian, therefore allegedly ‘uncivilized,’ peoples reflects the
supremacist character of European modernity. Although the
development of science during the Enlightenment initiated
detachment from the church dogma, these two supposedly opposing
praxes were combined to rationalize the inferiority and subjugation
of black people. For instance, Cornel West cites one of the most
prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment, Montesquieu, who
stated, ‘It is impossible for us to suppose that these beings should be
men […] if we supposed them to be men, one would begin to believe
we ourselves were not Christians.’11
Womanist reconciling love
Alice Walker projects the characters’ various sojourns towards
womanist reconciling love, a love that embraces people in their
immediate surroundings as well as afar. Their sojourns involve
encounters with cultures and worldviews not tainted by religious
oppression.
In projecting the fictitious Mundo indigenous culture, Alice
Walker alludes to womanist love. First, recognizing the sacredness of
5
women, the Mundo reject oppressive Western religious patriarchy.
They had never understood how woman could be considered
evil … since they considered her the mother of corn. When
hearing of her original sin of eating the forbidden fruit, they
scratched their chins again and said, even more gravely,
Perhaps this is the one biggest lie that has unraveled your
world.12
They regard women as carriers of life and birthing. Because of
this belief, they respect the female body and view it as a part of the
beauty of creation. The disjunction between Mundo and Western
culture regarding the feminine is symbolized by two varying
approaches to Magdalena’s femininity. While her Mondo boyfriend
sees her sensuousness as the infusion of a positive spirit, her father
sees a malevolent spirit that must be subdued by corporal
punishment. Contrary to the Western manifestation of piety that calls
for the subjugation of the sensual, the Mundo openly celebrate carnal
love as a symbol of beauty and pleasure in creation. More strikingly,
Manuelito makes clear to the minster the hypocrisy of the West and
the widespread pornography existing within it, which he regards as a
negative depiction of human sexuality. On one hand, the West abhors
the tribal tribute to the human body in Mexico, while in America
‘you can watch men and women sucking each other all day long on
television.’13 The Mundo, on the contrary, view sexuality, both male
and female, as an expression of mutual love and spiritual
empowerment. This conception correlates with womanists, who love
men and women ‘sexually and/or non-sexually.’14It reflects an
envisioning of the erotic as
an assertion of the life-force of women; of that creative energy
empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now
reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our
loving, our work, our lives.15
It is a view in opposition to the ‘the confused, the trivial, the
6
psychotic, the plasticized sensation,’ pornographic perception of the
erotic.16
Manuelito’s concern with the wellbeing of all people is another
point of correspondence with womanism. Not only does he lament
the oppressions inflicted upon his own community but also grieves
for victimized people worldwide. For example, Manuelito cannot
countenance certain practices found within African patriarchal tribes.
One practice is circumcision, the removal of a part of the female
genital organ accompanied by a curse. Also visualizing the women
wearing nearly ten-pond-heavy iron collars around their necks
disturbs him. Above all, he is shocked upon finding out that the
western priests and missionaries in Africa for the most part keep
silent about these practices, and sometimes even support them as
expressions of cultural uniqueness. Therefore, he observes that
Western patriarchy, although expressed differently, collaborates with
other oppressive patriarchies worldwide.
Together with womanists, Manuelito also holds to the
uniqueness and particularity of different cultural expressions and
prioritizes love in practice. He seeks intercultural and interfaith
communication even with the agents of Western oppression. After
being presented with the Old Testament view of an authoritative God
who sides with the Western world evangelization, he feels affinity
with the gospel of Jesus Christ, who
stayed only long enough to sort things out. To tell his people
not to worry; to absolve them from blame. We were glad to
hear he had returned from the dead; this made perfect sense to
us. And also we liked him. He resembled a Mundo!17
The Mundo vision of Christ corresponds with Alice Walker’s
perception of Jesus Christ. She states,
Jesus Christ was not a Christian, but a Christ, an enlightened
being. The challenge for me is not to be a follower of
Something but to embody it; I am willing to try for that.18
7
Again the Mundo male discerns correspondence between the value
system of his people and the biblical message of love.
Ultimate reconciliation
In the novel, using her artistic imagination, Walker
incorporates death as a literary trope suggesting ultimate
reconciliation. Death offers space where the characters, representing
antagonist attitudes in their lifetime, undergo transformation, through
enlightening and constructive dialogue with their former enemies
who seek to compensate for their victims’ suffering. While the
memory of earthly experience is replete with images of inflicted pain,
the afterlife opens the possibility of transcendental love. Therefore,
death is liberation from hatreds that engender division of earth’s
inhabitants into powerful oppressors and powerless oppressed. This
division of humanity, facilitated to a large extent by institutionalized
religiosity, results from the misconception and misapplication of
race, gender, and class. Since the distortions of human relations are
deeply-rooted in the history of earth’s populations, death may appear
as the ultimate unifier. Therefore, in their afterlife, formerly
antagonistic characters reach reconciliation by speaking out and
relating the unspeakable and incomprehensible in a world of trouble.
There, the formerly oppressive father, Señor Robinson, reconciles
with his daughter Magdalena and her lover Manuelito. In the afterlife
they attain universal transcendence, which enables the overcoming of
religiously, culturally, and politically imposed worldly borders.
Their reconciliation entails search for the meaning of true love.
There is a moment when Manuelito encourages Señor Robinson to
learn the Mundo philosophy of love. By doing so, the American does
some soul searching, which leads to remorse and empathy with
others. Above all, Manuelito explains the love that blossoms from
their ‘teaching of nonpossession of others.’19 A manifestation of
possessive love is the effort to control someone or to be omnipresent
in the loved one’s life. True love, on the contrary, is fulfilled and
complete, when one does not feel the ‘need to think about the loved
one anymore’20 all the time. Since true love is to wish that no one
suffers, death is liberation, because it is the moment when people
8
cease to suffer worldly pains and hardships. Therefore, because he
truly loved his wife, Señor Robinson does not seek contact with her
after she dies, but because he inflicted pain on his daughter
Magdalena, he feels the need to communicate with her in love.
Moreover, mediations upon non-possessive, unconditional love raise
Señor Robinson’s awareness of the suffering that people, including
himself, have brought upon others on earth. Listening to the wisdom
of the indigenous people, he becomes conscious of oppressive nature
of Western patriarchal system that he once was a part of.
Conclusions
In her novel By the Light of My Father’s Smile, Alice Walker
offers womanist love as an alternative to oppressive patriarchal
religiosity. In presenting the intricacy of the differences between
these two standpoints, the author juxtaposes the fictional milieu of
the Mundo and the reality of Western world.
Walker depicts Western patriarchy as religiously based. Within
this system, a self-contained male elite establishes their authority
through biblical misinterpretation. First of all, they express
identification with the image of God as an authoritarian male figure
who grants men dominion over the world. Secondly, the dominant
males form institutional Christian church, using its doctrines and
dogmas in justification of male superiority. The system affects a
variety spheres. It distorts interpersonal, intra-familial relations, as
exemplified by the abuse at the hands of their fathers suffered the
Greek character Irene and the black American woman Magdalena. It
also considers non-Christian belief systems as inferior, savage, and
immoral. This religiously grounded conviction of superiority
facilitates Western colonialism that not only involves missionary
efforts to convert so-called heathens, but also entails usurpation and
exploitation of the foreign peoples and lands.
In opposition to oppression, womanist love calls for concern
with personal and global peace. As reflected by fictitious Mundo
community, womanism rejects the conception of a patriarchal God,
who anoints a selected group of people to exercise dominion over
others. Not only do they envision God with feminine attributes, but
9
they also see God as a Great Spirit that reveals him/herself in nature.
For this reason, the Mundo, like womanists, recognize the sacredness
and humanity of all people, regardless of gender, race, religion, or
nation. Manifesting loving kindness empowered by this Great Spirit,
they endeavor to act with good faith and goodwill toward others.
10
1
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker (SanDiego, New York, London:
Harvest/HBJ, 1983), XI.
2
Jacquelyn Grant, White Women’s Christ And Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 217.
3
Alice, Walker, Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism (New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group,
1997), 4.
4
Walker, In Search, XII.
5
Alice Walker, By the Light of My Father’s Smile (New York: Random House, 1998), 55.
6
Ibid., 19.
7
Ibid., 23.
8
Ibid., 22.
9
Ibid., 90.
10
Ibid., 148.
11
Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1982), 61.
12
Walker, By the Light, 18.
13
Ibid.
14
Walker, In Search, XI.
15
Audre Lorde, ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,’ in Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers on
Love, Men, and Sex, ed. Marita Golden, (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 51.
16
Ibid. 50.
17
Walker, By the Light, 150.
18
Walker, We Are the Ones, 94.
19
Walker, By the Light, 96.
20
Ibid., 151.
Bibliography
Grant, Jacquelyn. White Women’s Christ And Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response.
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.
Katznelson, Ira. Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States 1900- 30 and Britain 194868. New York, Oxford University Press, 1973.
Lorde, Audre. ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.’ In Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women Writers
on Love, Men, and Sex, edited by Marita Golden, 49-55. New York: Doubleday, 1993.
Walker, Alice. Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group,
1997.
---. By the Light of My Father’s Smile. New York: Random House, 1998.
---. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker. SanDiego, New York, London: Harvest/HBJ,
1983.
---. We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness.
New York: The New Press, 2006.
West, Cornel. Prophesy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1982.