Religion Theme Analysis

The Woman of Brewster Place represents religion as both a source of spiritual freedom and of social control, depending on who is practicing it and how. For example, the music at the Baptist services that Mattie Michael attends makes her feel spiritually free, and she derives strength and comfort from her religious practices. Yet, as a young woman, Mattie was chastised and severely beaten by her religious father for getting pregnant out of wedlock, showing how religion can also be an oppressive source of social control (especially since her father appeals to religion as a way of forcing his own values onto Mattie). In the same vein, nosy Brewster Place resident Sophie uses religion as an excuse to spy on, gossip about, and socially persecute her lesbian neighbors, Theresa and Lorraine—yet Mattie herself reminds Sophie that the Bible tells Christians to mind their own business, an exchange showing that religion can either encourage or discourage social persecution depending on how its precepts are interpreted. In this way, the novel’s representation of religion is fundamentally ambivalent. Religion, the novel suggests, isn’t inherently freeing, controlling, bigoted, or loving—instead, it’s a value system that can be wielded in many different ways depending on the person or institution practicing it.