Agree to Disagree: Perception of Beauty in Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha

Abstract

Maud Martha, a 1953 novel written by the award-winning, African American, female poet Gwendolyn Brooks, is a richly told exploration of beauty, people’s perceptions of it, and its consequences. Brooks explores the connection between being ordinary and being beautiful, and how such descriptions can affect each other. Maud Martha, the novel’s titular character, spends her formative years in 1940s urban and mostly black Chicago, thinking about the beautiful things around her and far away from her. Through her story and growth as a person, Brooks asks us to question our own perceptions of beauty, as well as our categorizations of it.