Race, Gender and Emancipation in George Bernard Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932) and Wystan Hugh Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1942)

Abstract

This research paper studies the intersection of race and gender in George Bernard Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God (1932) and Wystan Hugh Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1942). To achieve my goal, I have relied on Chela Sandoval’s theory Methodology of the Oppressed. I have first studied the issue of race in the two authors’ texts and their emancipationist perspectives. I have exposed their advocation of the idea of the blacks’ and the colonized’s emancipation. Second, I have analyzed the issue of gender in which the two authors liberate women from patriarchy and the sexist discourse. After the provided analysis of Shaw’s and Auden’s texts in the light of Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed, I have attained a conclusion that The Black Girl and The Sea and the Mirror represent all the elements that defy oppression as they are enlightened by Sandoval. The two authors counter the obstacles that limited the black race’s and women’s rights to rehabilitate their position.