When Mama makes her first appearance in the playwright, Hansberry makes it clear that she is an elderly woman, in her sixties, full-bodied, and strong, yet graceful.
Her hair is graying and she has a soft voice. At first she is depicted as a soft spoken woman with a lot to remember, as she talks fondly about her recently deceased husband and picks up after her grandson, Travis. We also learn about the ten thousand dollar check that she is getting from her husband’s life insurance, which they are all eagerly anticipating.
Soon we see Mama’s kind of tyrannical side, as her daughter starts talking about atheistic views of the world, and completely disowns God. We find out that Mama is a very religious woman and that she will not tolerate any other views in her household, as she smacks her daughter across the face for saying such blasphemes. She also has strong view against abortion, as we find out later in the playwright when Ruth is talking about having an abortion.
Mama is a very strong and opinionated person and decides to take the life insurance check and do something with it, without informing or consenting with any of the rest of the family, apart from the small hint that she gives Ruth at the beginning of the playwright. Despite her son’s efforts to acquire the money and invest in a liquor store, she takes it and uses thirty five hundred dollars out of the ten thousand to make a down payment on a three bedroom house for all of them to move into. Here is where we find out the “much more” that she is that I was talking about earlier.
The house that she put the down payment on is in an all white neighborhood. She is obviously taking action for her family and her race in doing this. She wants a better life for her family, and she wants a change from the slums that they are used to living in. She is even willing to go against all prejudice and move them into an all white neighborhood to give them the better life that they have all been searching for.
Later Mama’s character is questioned when the makes the fatal decision to entrust her son Walter with the remaining money from the check, including the three thousand that needed to be set aside for Beneatha’s college tuition. She sees him in a slump, and he is not going to work, and he is drinking everyday, and she thinks that if she gives him the money to put in a bank under his name, and makes him the head of the household, that it will bring him out of his slump, but she is extremely mistaken.
From her homely and soft character in the beginning, to the trustworthy, strong, independent depiction in the end, we saw what it was like to be an older black woman in racist times through the eyes of mama. But being a black woman in your thirties, with a husband and a child, was a completely different story, as we learn through the eyes of Ruth Younger, wife of Walter, and mother of Travis.
Ruth is automatically depicted as a tired, overworked young woman who has been ravaged by harsh time and brought down by demeaning work on top of having to take care of family, cook, clean, and do laundry. Everyday she has to deal with her young son’s objections to her orders, and her husband’s sarcasm and complaints about the dissatisfaction of his life. Then she has to go to work and labor all day to just barely make ends meet in their small two bedroom apartment, in which her son sleeps on the sofa in the living room.
She wants a better life for her family and herself, but opposes her husband’s ideas to start his own business, because she has just accepted the fact that black people have to go through life laboring, and doesn’t believe that it will change. She is also faced with a very hard decision in the playwright when she finds out that she is pregnant again. She already hates that fact that her only son has to sleep on the couch in the living room of their apartment, and she does not want to put another child through the inconveniences and harsh times of poverty.
She is faced with the decision to have an abortion or to keep the baby, which seems impossible as there is no one to look after it while everyone is working and they can barely feed the mouths that they already have. She decides to put a down payment on an illegal abortion without consulting her husband first, or even letting anyone know that she is pregnant.
Despite the fact that she is very cold to her husband most of the time, she still stands by him through all of the hard times that they face, and she never really reprimands him for his misdeeds, apart from some glares and witty remarks. She is depicted as a family woman that will do whatever she can to make her family happy and get them through life.
The third woman depicted in the playwright is Beneatha Younger, the daughter of Lena Younger, and sister to Walter Younger. She is the strongest of the three and has the most self will of anyone else in the playwright. It is agreed that Hansberry was kind of depicting herself through Beneatha, as Beneatha is a strong-willed black woman, in her twenties, trying to make herself in a man’s world.
Despite the belief that women should have demeaning jobs and work in kitchens or be nurses, Beneatha wants more and is set out to educate herself and become a doctor. She is attending college not only to get a degree, but to pursue a dream and a career that women just don’t do. Even her brother makes remarks about her educational ideas and thinks that she should pursue a more gender-oriented career in nursing, but Beneatha is set on becoming a doctor. She also expresses herself by learning and doing things that working black women don’t do, like horseback riding, acting lessons, and guitar lessons.
She is very opinionated and outspoken, even to her mother when she talks about her disbelief in God. She dates a wealthy middle class boy named George, but refuses to do anything but go and see movies with him, despite the fact that everyone thinks she should marry him, because that is what women do. She feels that she doesn’t have to settle with a man if she doesn’t want to, and especially not for his money because she wants to establish herself.
She also has strong views and opinions of her origin. She talks to a boy named Asagai, who is from Nigeria, about his heritage and wants to learn everything she can about where her people came from and what they do. Most of the times she seem very self centered and doesn’t really think about her family that much. She doesn’t think about the fact that the money being used to pay for her extracurricular activities could be used for food and other more important things for everyone in the house.
She is very intellectual though, and highly appreciated for her inability to accept the role everyone wants her to accept, which is the role of a spineless woman, doing what her man tells her to do, taking on demeaning jobs, and bearing children, so basically, being an object.
She later shows a harshness that is understandable, yet looked on painfully as she basically massacres her brother for losing the money for her college tuition, even though he is going through a really tough spot and that is when he needs his family the most, but she later seems to somewhat forgive him, and goes on talking about her African boyfriend and how she might marry him and move to Nigeria to become an African queen.
These three women set the depiction of what it was to be a black woman trying to make it through the racism and sexism of their time, and Hansberry did an excellent job of portraying them. Looking back on it, now we can all understand what it was like and what these women had to go through living in those times.
