Rose Maxson/Rose Lee

2. Is Rose the most oppressed character in this story, or the most powerful?  (One way to decide your answer is to ask yourself if you admire her, or if you think she is a model for other women.)  Reflect on your answer.

Why are the titles of being the "most oppressed" and the "most powerful" mutually exclusive? In a literal sense, yes, Rose is oppressed--perhaps the most so, if oppression can be quantified. Because she is a black woman. She is a victim of the racism that is so deeply embedded within American society. She still feels the effects of centuries' worth of slavery. And as a wife, mother, and woman--"...that's what life offered me in the way of being a woman and I took it"(Wilson 98)--she has dedicated her life to a subservient existence. Her own identity is masked underneath the overlay of patriarchal institution.

So, yes, she is oppressed--but Rose is powerful in her own right. And her power should not be overlooked or underestimated.

Her power doesn't exist in the way one most often associates the word with. After all, she is bound by obligations and ties and social expectations. She cannot leave as freely as Troy does, and she cannot abandon her family to lead an entirely independent life. Her autonomy is incredibly limited. 

But Rose's strength is what sets her apart as the most powerful character in my eyes. Her power is conveyed through the weight of her words and through the resilience of her loyalty. This is a woman who dedicated years to someone else at the expense of her own being. She is selfless, and though she has invested much life and love in her husband Troy, she does not let him walk all over her. The moment Troy admits betrayal is the moment Rose shuts him off. After years of sacrificing selfishness and (what was assumed, on her part) mutual respect for their marital bond, Rose has to face the fact that the man she has given herself to entirely took her efforts for granted; and she is strong enough to walk away. She still performs her circa-1950's wifely duties of being a homemaker and a mother to Troy's children, but her heart has severed itself from her husband's, and her ability to do that--to emotionally distance herself from a man who has eighteen years of Rose in him--is indicative of such character strength.