The novel examines female relationships, both in terms of friendship and romantic love, as well as themes of sisterhood, violence, and sexuality.

"[2] Their names are Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Lucielia "Ciel" Turner, Melanie "Kiswana" Browne, Cora Lee, Lorraine, and Theresa.

Ms. Eva, an older benevolent women, lets Mattie stay in a spare bedroom in her house rent-free.

Mattie raises her son Basil in that home, and he grows up alongside Ms. Eva's granddaughter Ciel.

Mattie realizes that she over-nurtured Basil, and he grew up unable to bear any responsibility and burden.

Etta is described as a vibrant and vivacious character who has travelled a lot and has had numerous past relationships with men.

However, at the end of the night, Etta is left disappointed and feeling betrayed when she realizes that the Reverend only wanted her for self-serving and sexual reasons.

Her original name is Melanie, but she has changed it Kiswana as an effort to identify with her African heritage.

Kiswana is initially from a middle-class family but she drops out of college and moves to Brewster Place to be closer to the real struggles of African American people.

She does not approve of Kiswana's decision to live at Brewster Place, seeing it as a step backwards for her family.

The pair argue, and her mother tells Kiswana that she was named Melanie after her grandmother, a woman that she is proud of because she worked hard to educate all her children and give them a better life.

At the end, she looks down at her mother's toes and sees that she is wearing bright red nail polish.

Frustrated that he can never get ahead, he blames Ciel for the babies and the bills and pressures her to get an abortion.

One day, Kiswana stops by the Cora Lee's place to tell her of a tenants' association she is creating.

In an effort to help, she invites Cora Lee and her children to see a Shakespeare play being showed in the park.

Ciel, who had left for California, comes back to visit Brewster Place after having a horrible dream about Lorraine.

The Women of Brewster Place engages with historical struggles faced by African Americans throughout different phases of history.

Karen Castellucci Cox, professor at City College of San Francisco, noted that each of the characters in the novel represent different eras in African American history.

In the prologue "Dawn," the female residents of Brewster place are presented as a vibrant community.

At the end of the novel, even after many of the conflicts and struggles faced by the residents, Mattie dreams of block party where all the women are united.

In the novel, Naylor uses Brewster Place as a unifying setting, the close contact it offers cultivating female friendship.

Andrews also points out that another possible explanation for the strength of sisterhood is because of the lack of love that many of the women find from men.

Throughout the novel, she explores Hughes' poem, but does so more explicitly in the last chapter when Mattie dreams of a block party.

Jill Matus, professor of English at the University of Toronto, asserts that Mattie's dream is an example of closure being deferred because the novel never illustrates the real block party.

However, Matus offers that another explanation for why Mattie dreams of Ciel could be a wish to see her heal after the pain of her daughter's death.

Everyone in the community knows that block party is an important and significant way to move past the tragedy of Lorraine and Ben.

The women begin to tear at the bricks holding up Brewster Place, believing it to still have Ben's blood on it.

As literary critic Frederic Jameson puts it, the dream at the end of the novel is a "symbolic act" that enables "real social contradictions, insurmountable in their own terms, [to] find a purely formal resolution in the aesthetic realm.

"[5] Additionally, Matus suggest that Ben's death can be interpreted as Lorraine's deferred and long-due act of self-assertion.