Brownfield's Rage

“It was his great ignorance that sent her into white homes as a domestic, his need to bring her down to his level! It was his rage at himself, and his life and his world that made him beat her . . . His rage and his anger and his frustration ruled. His rage could and did blame everything on her” (Walker 73). This quote can summarize the novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland because the black man’s rage at the world and his place in society is a main theme of the book. One of the main characters in the book is Grange Copeland’s son, Brownfield, who is born into a society constructed by racism. This societal construct puts Brownfield at a disadvantage and helps facilitate his rage at the world and how he exerts his rage and frustrations on

Being indebted to the white man was a major cause of his rage because the feeling of being inferior to another man causes Brownfield to feel like less of a man. “His crushed pride, his battered ego, made him drag Mem away from school teaching” (Walker 73). He forces Mem to stop teaching and start speaking broken English because her knowledge “put her closer, in power, to them, than he could ever be” (Walker 73). Brownfield wants to be seen as equal in society just like any white man, and since the white men push him down, Brownfield decides to push Mem down to create this feeling of

He would embarrass her in public to show that he was a man, while behind closed doors he beat her to take out his frustrations that his life brought him. He says the only way to treat a nigger woman is to “give this old blacksnake to her and then beat her ass” (Walker 75). Another way he tries to destroy Mem is by cheating on her with Grange’s mistress Josie. Josie is a member of Mems family, but this does nothing to dissuade Brownfield from cheating. The situation explodes when Mem finally stands up to Brownfield and gets a job and house in town to try and provide a better life for her kids. She says to him, “You hear me, I say, Boy!?” (Walker 129). She stipulates that he is going to become a model dad and he must follow some rules she has set on how their life was going to run from now on. She shows her dominance over him by becoming the head of the house while simultaneously putting him down by calling him boy. Not being seen as a man is one main reason he rages at Mem in the first place, so her calling him a boy was an ironic way to hit him where it hurt the