Gloria Naylor's "The Women of Brewster Place": The American Dream

In "The Women of Brewster Place" Gloria Naylor portrays all men but one as individuals who have no emotional ties to the community. The custodian of Brewster Place is the only definitive male voice that the audience has a chance to experience. The voice that emerges is wholly believable and compelling, and when placed side by side with one of the women, it is strong enough to create a kind of harmony around the familiar refrains of abuse, alcoholism, and abandonment. In Ben's voice a view is provided of his past that contains an unhappy marriage and of his inability to intervene when a white man abuses his only daughter. Ben is left to battle the ghosts of what he did not do in order to accomplish his deferred dream of reconciliation and opportunity to right his previous wrongs.

In the chapter The Two the first view into a man's mind at Brewster Place is provided. Ben's past haunts him daily. His only escape is to mask what occurred in the past with the aid of alcohol. After the character Lorraine leaves his room, he is reminded of his daughter and must use alcohol to escape the torment of past inadequacies:

"He had to be drunk before the poison crept up his neck muscles, past his mouth, on the way to the brain. If he was drunk, then he could let it out - sing it out into the air before it touched his brain, caused him to remember." (Page 150)

Though the reader does not know the history of Ben at this time, one can comprehend that there is a demon haunting Ben that will never depart. Alcohol is Ben's only salvation because it has the power to numb his mind to the point of incomprehension. It also provides insight as to why Ben is seen with a bottle of alcohol throughout most of the novel. The reader learns soon enough of his dark past and his inability to prevent harm from coming to the one he loved.

As a sharecropper in the south, Ben was expected to do what was necessary to provide for a family, including using his children. The demons that torment Ben's soul permeate from his past relationship with the owner of his sharecropping property, Mr. Clyde.

Living in the south provided little choice for uneducated African-Americans looking for land ownership. The common choice was to work a land owned by wealthy white person in exchange for a small house and small fee to live on. Ben's family was poor and needed all the opportunities that Mr. Clyde offered him. Ben's daughter has been going to Mr. Clyde's house for a long time when the reader is given their first glimpse of Ben's enigmatic past. When Ben's daughter arrives home the next morning after being at Mr. Clyde's for the night, one line explains what has been happening on the evenings she is there:

"She finally turned her beaten eyes into his face, and what was left of his soul to crush was taken care of the bell-like voice that greeted them"

The scene is presented that Ben and his wife Elvira have known what occurs when she has to spend the night at Mr. Clyde's, though Ben acknowledges the situation where his wife ignores it. The view of the parents is demonstrated in a shocking passage:

' "She came to us, Elvira." There was a leaden sadness to Ben's voice. "She came to us a long time ago." The thin women spun around with her face twisted into an airless knot. "She came her with a bunch of lies 'bout Mr. Clyde cause she's too damn lazy to work. Why would a decent widow man want to mess with a little black nothin' like her?" ' (Page 152)

Feelings of sorrow and compassion for the little girl begin to seep into the reader's heart when they learn that Ben's daughter is basically being prostituted to Mr. Clyde in exchange for money. It is even more horrifying that the mother is so ignorant to the situation for the sake of her own well being. Ben's inner demons develop at this time in his life and become worse as age passes by.

Ben has utter regret for what he allows to occur with his daughter, but feels helpless to stop it. With his wife and land on the line, he can not help by keep his mouth quiet about the situation. His mind is filled with thoughts of murdering his wife for ignoring the rape and found his only solace to the situation was to become heavily intoxicated. Ben's dream of doing what is right is deferred by his obsessive alcoholism because the alcohol allows him cling tenaciously to the lie about his daughter. One day his daughter disappeared and left a letter saying

"...that she loved them very much, but she knew that she had been a burden and she understood" (Page 154).

After understanding the arrangement with Mr. Clyde, Ben's daughter leaves for Memphis in order to make more money there as a prostitute, consistently sending money home but never with a return address. Ben never has the chance to make things right and lives with the terror that he will never be able to reconcile with his daughter. Ben looses the sharecropping contract, is left by his wife, and then finally moved north to Brewster where he can silence his daughter's "crystal bells" as a custodian in an alcoholic haze.

While living at Brewster Place, Ben befriends Lorraine, a lesbian women living in the same complex, who reminds him of his daughter. Both Ben and Lorraine both take an interest in one another because they provide each other with something they have been missing; family love. Lorraine is the daughter that Ben wants to make amends with, as Ben represents the father she wanted who would provide her with pure simple love and respect. Lorraine describes the way she feels when she is with Ben as:

"When I'm with Ben, I don't feel different from anybody else in the world." (Page 165)

The two provide each other with what has been missing from their lives, and Ben finally has the opportunity to face what he has hidden from for so long. Reconciliation is beginning to shape into a possibility. And Ben is finally attempting to recognize his deferred dream as a chance for reality for the first time since his daughter began prostituting herself for his family's sake. From both characters' perspective, the two are beginning purge their souls of the ugliness that has been inside for too long.

In a tragic determent from the positive relationship between Ben and Lorraine, the ultimate tragedy happens with the two friends. Lorraine is gaining emotional independence and decides she will go out without her girlfriend, whom she has always depended on. An altercation occurs when Lorraine leaves the club and is dragged helplessly down an alley by local thugs. Lorraine is raped violently and maliciously in one of the most graphic scenes in literature. Desperate after a rape by five black men, she struggled out of the alley ready to kill the first black man she saw. Sitting on his normal can, swaying back and forth was Ben. Ben was the victim of the victim. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the wrong gender and the wrong race. All tales are not as tragic as Ben's, and yet all in Brewster Place share the same longings for something better.

Gloria Naylor's novel is rich in imagery and language that brings Brewster Place to life. The street itself is a character left to suffer one tragedy after another until its sacrificial death with Ben. The hope is that it, like Ben, will somehow be resurrected, strengthened by the individual voices. In this novel, there are issues enough to fuel countless debates or to feed many dissertations, but what is actually in focus is the human heart, vulnerable and needy. Naylor's vision, though realistically brutal, is also a benevolent, healing one. She offers hope that old cycles can be broken, and looks towards light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Works Cited

1. McCorkle, Jill. "On the Other Side of the Street"The Boston Globe Sunday, April 26, 1998.

2. Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place New York 1980: Penguin Books