Redefining black women's identity: In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus novels, beauty and the body

This thesis examines the representation of beauty and the female body in Black women's literature through a comparative analysis of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. Drawing on womanism, intersectionality, and panopticism as its primary theoretical frameworks, the study explores how Black women's bodies are shaped, disciplined, and contested within intersecting structures of race, gender, class, colonialism, and patriarchy. The thesis argues that beauty and the body function not merely as aesthetic concerns but as central political and epistemological sites where power, identity, and resistance are negotiated. While the three novels emerge from different historical, cultural, and geographical contexts, they collectively reveal shared patterns of bodily control, surveillance, and internalized oppression, alongside distinct strategies of resistance and self-definition. Janie's gradual pursuit of autonomy, Pecola's tragic internalization of white beauty norms, and Kambili's embodied transformation under religious and patriarchal discipline illustrate how Black female subjectivity is both constrained and reconstituted through the body. By bringing these texts into dialogue, this study offers an original contribution to Black feminist literary criticism, demonstrating that Black women's bodily experiences cannot be reduced to a singular or universal narrative. Instead, the comparative approach highlights how diverse contexts generate different yet intersecting meanings of beauty, embodiment, and identity. Ultimately, the dissertation positions Black women's literature as a critical space where the body becomes a site of memory, resistance, and self-definition, challenging dominant beauty standards and expanding the scope of feminist and postcolonial literary studies. Key Words: Black Women's Literature, Black Feminism, Womanism, Intersectionality, Panopticism, Beauty, Body, Identity.