Folk Women and Indirection in Morrison, Ní Dhuibhne, Hurston, and Lavin

Focusing on the lineage of pivotal African-American and Irish women writers, Fulmer argues that these authors often employ strategies of indirection, by way of expressions of folklore, when exploring unpopular topics to attract readers who would otherwise reject the subject matter.The author traces the line of descent from Mary Lavin to Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and from Zora Neale Hurston to Toni Morrison, showing how obstacles to free expression, though varying from those Lavin and Hurston faced, are still encountered by Morrison and Ní Dhuibhne.

The basis for comparing these women authors lies in the strategies of indirection they use. In both African-American and Irish communities, women have often been encouraged to suppress the inequities they experience as women in the service of the larger community's civil rights struggle. Lavin and Hurston both adopt strategies of indirection influenced by folklore, strategies still used by Ní Dhuibhne and Morrison. The folkloric characters that these four authors employ, wild denizens of the Otherworld and wise women of various traditions, help their creators insert controversy into fiction in ways that charm rather than alienate readers.

Forms of rhetorical indirection that appear in the context of folklore, such as signifying practices, masking, sly civility, and the grotesque or bizarre, come out of the mouths and actions of these writers' magical and magisterial folk women. As differences in worldviews between times and cultures affect what "can" and "cannot" be said regarding sexual expression and reproduction, the full range of folk women characters, as depicted by Hurston, Lavin, Morrison, and Ní Dhuibhne, offer new ways to address questions arising from their works.