Although Shadrack’s character established the foundation for the discussion of the role of the individual and community throughout the novel, when Sula returned in “1939,” she undercut the Bottom’s community values, which resulted in a number of positive and negative effects. Most importantly, Sula showed that either / or logic contains limitations. In addition, Morrison required not only that the reader questioned his/her own personal morality, but also argued that societies were susceptible to logical fallacies for the purpose of self-righteousness.
As the community values encountered resistance from Sula, the proper relationship between an individual and her/his community became increasingly confused. Sula s relationship with Ajax, for example, conveyed a desire to develop a monogamous relationship. Committing to Ajax, nevertheless, did not mean that she dismissed her search for self and signify a capitulation to Medallion’s norms. Rather, she remained susceptible to her community’s standards, suggesting that one consistently struggled with his/her relationship to the community.
As Sula’s relationship with Ajax intensified, she clung to him: “Sula began to discover what possession was. Not love perhaps, but possession or at least the desire for it. She was astounded by so new and alien a feeling” (Morrison, 92). Before Ajax, Sula dismissed monogamy, and preached that it destroyed a woman’s identity. While arguing with her mother, Sula declared, “I don’t want to make somebody else, I want to make myself” (Morrison, 92). Eva’s retort, although directed toward her daughter, summarized Medallion’s value system: “Selfish. Ain’t no woman got no business floatin’ around without no man” (Morrison, 92). Eva asserted that Sula disregarded her responsibility as a woman, addressing her selfishness, and she noted that a woman couldn t live without a man. Thus, Sula’s lifestyle contradicted Eva’s affirmation directly. As she fell for Ajax, though, her mind became consumed with his presence, juxtaposing the real with the ideal. According to Sula, she hoped to elude the trappings of gender roles and patriarchal control. But, her feelings for Ajax flooded her mind, meaning that she was tempted by the commonplace, a life devoted to monogamy.
With Sula, Morrison seemed to create a character that displayed a doubtful relationship between individual desires and communal needs. Nevertheless, the community values also seemed to affect Nel’s sense of personal and social responsibility. After returning for New Orleans as a child, Nel proclaimed, “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me. Each time she said the word there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear…I want…I want to be…wonderful. Oh Jesus, make me wonderful” (Morrison 29). Yet, Morrison semantically presented Nel s proclamation as unsteady and hesitating. The patriarchal authority, as with the other characters, eventually eradicated Nel’s sense of individualism, and she finally conceded and married Jude. Nel’s reasons for marrying Jude differed from her spouse’s and evinced the continued presence of gender roles: “Except for an occasional leadership role with Sula, Nel had no aggression. Her parents had succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkly or splutter she had” (Morrison, 83). Nel couldn t act upon her desires because the community and her parents effected her personality. Additionally, Critic, Deborah McDowell contended that Morrison, in Sula, perceived that marriage, as an institution, stagnated women. (McDowell, 82) “Because Nel’s sexuality was harnessed and only enacted within the institutions that sanction sexuality for women–marriage and family–she did not own it” (Morrison, 83). According to McDowell, when Nel accepted Medallion’s morals, she relinquished her sense of self. (McDowell, 82) Morrison drew a line between Nel and the community: “Now Nel belonged to the town and all of its ways” (Morrison, 120). Instead of becoming “me,” Nel became more of “them.” Between childhood and the time that Nel married, her sense of individuality dissipated, she no longer strove to express her personal desires. As a result, she settled for the life that society and her parents claimed was appropriate for a woman.
Certainly, Nel’s and Sula’s thoughts and actions acted as an interesting juxtaposition regarding Medallion’s value system, but once Nel married, it separated herself from Sula, who alone, of all the women of the Bottom, rejected the limits, the obligations, and restrictions, of marriage and motherhood. Viewing marriage as compound of convenience and caution, Sula avoided all ties. While her repudiation of these bonds rendered her an outcast in the eyes of her community, she perceived herself as free, and therefore able, as none of the other women were, to be honest and to experience life and self fully.
Sula determined that her sexual desires were not restricted by marriage or monogamy, and she concluded that sleeping with Jude represented “moral” behavior. When Nel chided Sula for betraying her trust, the narrator conveyed Sula’s rationale honestly: “They have always shared the affection of other people: compared how a boy kissed: what line he used with one and then the other. Marriage, apparently, had changed all of that” (Morrison, 119). Sula’s thoughts displayed utter disregard for marriage, but Morrison supported her contentions because “she [Sula] was ill-prepared for the possessiveness of the one person she felt the closest to” (Morrison, 119). With Sula, Morrison questioned the patriarchal controls that dictate a woman’s behavior.
Even though Sula destroyed Nel’s marriage, rendering her thighs “useless,” Sula’s affair with Jude and her justification enticed me to overlook the logic. In addition to invoking a moral enigma in the reader, Sula presented a convincing anti-marriage rhetoric for all women. McDowell writes, “Like so many women writers, Morrison equates marriage with the death of the female and the stagnation of the self” (McDowell, 83). Looking beyond the confines of marriage, Sula rejected not only Medallion’s patriarchal control system, but she also utilized her imagination to defend her actions.
Even though Sula’s affair with Jude ignited a conflagration of rumors, the community determined that she was the embodiment of evil before they consummated sexually. Consequently, they bonded to resist the social outcast: “Such evil must be avoided, they felt, and precautions most naturally must be taken to protect themselves from it” (Morrison 89). The community attempted to suppress the spread of Sula’s morality and established a unity among the people. Morrison explained, “Their convictions of Sula’s evil changed them in accountable yet mysterious ways. Once the source of their personal misfortune was identified, they had to protect and love one another” (Morrison, 117). “Once she [Sula] was identified as total evil, she became necessary to the Bottom as something like a moral standard, a limit marking off right from wrong” (McKee, 22). Although the community interpreted her actions as contemptuous to their morals, in reality, Sula ameliorated Medallion. Her transgressions enabled the community to understand the importance of solidarity.
In “1939,” after a number of allegations spread throughout Medallion, the community’s angst toward Sula came to fruition once they had discovered that she placed her mother in Sunnydale, deeming her a “roach” and a “bitch” (Morrison 112). Name calling, however, paled in comparison to the harsh rumors that they spread about her. The narrator commented, “They said that Sula slept with white men. It may not have been true, but it certainly could have been” (Morrison, 112). To condemn Sula, the community convoluted logic, concluding that Sula most likely committed the most horrific crime, sexual intercourse with a white man. Consequently, “Sula takes the place of evils that are absent from the Bottom, specifically the evils of racism practiced by white people” (Morrison 23). Morrison also recapitulated the motif of racism that she established (with Shadrack) at the beginning of the novel. Once again, people measured propriety and ethics, reacting to the impact of white racism. Because Medallion’s residents determined that the white community acted as the strongest source of opposition and that they embodied unfavorable characteristics, they claimed that Sula slept with the enemy, representing an unforgivable offense to the community’s morals.
Thus, Medallion’s residents accumulated circumstantial evidence against Sula. First, Teapot, son of an alcoholic mother Betty, came to Sula’s home asking for bottles. When the boy turned away from the door, he stumbled, and “Betty fell into a fit of concerned rage, of drunken motherhood…She told everybody that Sula pushed him” (Morrison, 114). After the incident with Sula, Betty “became the most devoted mother: clean, sober, industrious” (Morrison, 114). Sula’s mere presence lead to the alteration of Betty’s reputation. Because Betty rescued her son from Sula, the community viewed her in a completely different light; they disregard her faults, rendering her a concerned mother who respected the community’s morals. Even though Betty’s reputation improved, in reality, she remained an alcoholic. Medallion’s residents, once again, encountered the juxtaposition of image and reality, permitting the physical world to control their lives.
Throughout the novel, the patriarchal consciousness affected and influences Medallion’s moral code. In some instances, Sula overcame these boundaries. However, in other situations, the community values stagnated her ability to maintain her individuality. Without question, Sula’s repudiation of the prevailing value system insulted the residents, undercutting their notions of security and showing that questioning authority comes with repercussions. But both Sula and the community must have endured the consequences of her rebellious nature.
In “1965,” Nel returned to Medallion, discovering that “They were so different, these young people. So different from the way she remembered them” (Morrison, 163). But one aspect of community life prevailed, the emphasis on unity. The narrator noted, “White people didn’t fret about putting their old one’s away. It took a lot of black people to let them go” (164). The narrator s commentary provided one of the few instances in Sula where the tone shifted overtly in favor of black life. Because the narrator assessed the white and black community with an either / or conclusion, it appeared that Western rhetoric continued to influence the residents.
Sula’s search for personal satisfaction and her attempts to overcome Medallion’s social norms showed instances and the repercussions of searching for truth. The more Sula opposed mainstreamed morals, the more she found herself on the outside of the community. In the process, Sula’s reputation, even though she never attained a position of high status, suffered greatly. Her sacrifice, however, proved figuratively that communities not only come together to formulate generalized morals, but also that human beings would fight steadfastly to protect their beliefs.
Toni Morrison s Tar Baby, was a novel written about contentions and conflicts based on learned biases and prejudices. Those biases existed on many different levels including a race level, gender level and a class level. The central conflict, however, was the conflict within one main character, Jadine. One critic has referred to her as a race traitor. (LaVallee) A race traitor is the conflict of a woman who has discarded her heritage and culture and adopted another trying to reconcile herself to the night women who want to bring back the prodigal daughter. (LaVallee)
The first of the contentions in the novel is that of race. Prejudice existed between the white and black people in the house; between the black people of the house; the black people and the local people. Sydney and Ondine Childs, the Cook and Butler in the house of rich, white Valerian Street, felt superior to the local black people. Sydney remarked twice on how he was “A genuine Philadelphia Negro” (Morrison, 284). Part of this feeling of superiority might have been class-related. The Childs’ were very proud of their positions in the Street house, they were industrious and hardworking. The Dominique blacks were to them “swamp women” or “horsemen, depersonalized figures. This was most apparent in their ignorance of their help’s names, they dubbed Gideon, Therese, and Alma Estee “Yardman” and “the Mary’s.” At Christmas dinner Valerian added titles calling them “Therese the Thief and Gideon the Get Away Man.” (Morrison, 201). Unrevealed to Sydney and Ondine, Gideon and Therese also nicknamed them with added titles, naming Ondine “Machete hair,” Sydney as “Bow-tie” also Therese contemptuously called Jadine “Fast ass” whereas Gideon denoted her as “the yalla.” Ondine and Sydney thought “Mary” did not listen to them out of inattentiveness, whereas in reality Therese intentionally refused to speak to them and “never even to acknowledged the presence of the white Americans” (Morrison111). A contention also existed between Ondine and the white lady of the house, Margaret, whom Ondine had dubbed “Principal Beauty of Maine.” Margaret, in return, dubbed Sydney and Ondine “Kingfish and Beulah.” Son added to the “name-game” by calling Valerian “Tarzan.” “Son,” itself, was a nickname for Willie. The white people of the house felt superior, and later threatened by, the blacks. Margaret was a prejudiced white woman, a veritable stereotype. She argued that “Ondine, if not all colored people, was just as good as they were,” but “she didn’t believe it” (Morrison, 59). When Son was discovered in her bedroom closet she went into near hysterics. Margaret felt no remorse at calling or thinking of Son as a “nigger in the woodpile”, a “gorilla”, or a “boy.” Because he was a black man in her closet she thought he intended to rape her. He had masturbated on her clothes and shoes, and gone as far as thinking, “now this nigger he let in this real live dope addict ape” (Morrison, 87). So, the character of Margaret spewed out every racist clich in the book.
It was not surprising that the white lady of the house felt prejudice toward the black man found in her closet. What was fascinating, however, was Morrison’s depiction of how Sydney and Ondine reacted to the man, revealing their own prejudices. Sydney was ready to shoot Son where he stood, suspecting him of being a thief, killer, or a “wife-raper” (Morrison, 99). Ondine, who at various times called Son “that thieving Negro” (Morrison, 89), “the jailbird” (Morrison, 190), “a swamp nigger” (Morrison, 191) and “no-count Negro” (Morrison, 193), felt that the “man upstairs wasn’t a Negro-meaning one of them. He was a stranger” (102). Thus when she called him “nigger” she did not mean the term in a familiar, inclusive way.
Jadine’s reaction to Son was the most revealing. Her reaction gave her the title of the “racial traitor.” “Central to the race traitor idea is the disassociation from and racist perspective on the traitor’s race of ethnic group.” (LaVallee) At the sight of his “Wild, aggressive, vicious hair” (113) she immediately classified son as a criminal. In her room she assumed that Son wanted to rape her. Jadine said, “you rape me and they’ll feed you to the alligators. Count on it, nigger. You good as dead right now.” “Rape? Why you little white girls always think somebody’s trying to rape you?”"White?” She was startled out of fury. “I’m not you know I’m not white!”"No? Then why don’t you settle down and stop acting like it.” (Morrison, 121) In that scene Jadine had rejected her heritage and culture, Son obvisously saw that in her. She knew herself to be inauthentic when she saw a woman in yellow with tar colored skin, “that woman’s woman-that mother/sister/she; that unphotographable beauty” (Morrison, 46). The woman recognized Jadine’s inauthenticity and spit at her in spite. Jadine, who alternately called herself Jade, appreciated Picasso over Itumba masks, “Ave Maria” over gospel music. Critic, Karin Luisa Badt said, “Jadine had so willingly embraced white culture that she had become, literally, its cover model.” (Badt) Gideon warned son against the possibility that Jadine might be out of his reach. Unmindful of the warning and ominously in love, Son wanted to rescue Jadine from the white world and bring her back to Eloe and the history it stood for. He attempted “to breathe into her the smell of tar and its shiny consistency” (Morrison, 102). Jadine started on the path toward being “unprofaned” in her relationship with Son. Jadine, on the other hand, wanted to rescue Son from what she perceived to be his “white-folks-black-folks primitivism” (Morrison, 275). She attempted to “culture” and educate him and wanted to ask Valerian for money to pay for a store for the two of them, or for Son’s education. Son refused to be in debt to “one of the killers of the world” (Morrison, 204). A trip to Eloe where Aunt Rosa called Jadine her “daughter” and where the night-women visited her proved too much for Jadine. I think that critic, Karin Badt explained best, why the journey the Eloe proved too much for Jadine. She said that Jadine feared being cast as a representative of her race and joining its fraternity. She also said that Jadine rejected the ancient properties of the African people that Son, the African woman, and the night women who visit Jadine in a dream embodied. (Badt) During a final confrontation Jadine felt that she was fighting not Son but the night women who had seduced him. The argument was over Valerian and education. Son told Jadine that Valerian owed her the education, considering that he had “shit all over your uncle and aunt ” (Morrison, 263). Still refusing to see the truth, Jadine defended Valerian. Son finally saw Jadine for who she really was. He renounced Jadine’s actions and words as Eurocentric. Son renounced Jadine’s previous plans to marry a white man by saying: “People don’t mix races; they abandon them or pick them” (Morrison, 270). He told Jadine the truth about who put her through school, and about Ondine’s feet. He spoke of Jadine’s responsibility and how appalled he was when Jadine deserted them after the Christmas Eve fight. Son saw Jadine, her rejection of her native culture as well as of her family, and was filled by a desperate rage. He raped her while telling her the story of the Tar Baby. He was shamed afterward by Jadine who gave him “his original dime.” He left and upon his return found the apartment empty. Jadine escaped to Isle des Chevaliers where she rejected her family and culture one final time. Ondine told her that “A daughter is a woman that cares about where she come from and takes care of them that took care of her” (Morrison, 242). Jadine replied that she did not want to become like Ondine, a grave insult to the woman who gave her all to this ungrateful girl. This story was not just about preserving one’s cultural heritage, but also about maturity. In the end of the novel, As Jadine left with her black baby-seal “killer” coat, Ondine and Sydney doubted that she would even bury them. Jadine proved just how little she had learned when she called the new help “the mulatto with a leer” (Morrison, 225) and called Alma Estee “Mary.” She was truly the Race-Traitor. Therese knew that Jadine was lost, calling her a descendant of the “blind race.” She also knew how to detach Brer Rabbit (Son) from Jadine, the “Tar Baby.” She left Son on the far side of Isle des Chevaliers where he had a choice, where he could be free. “Lickety-Split” the sound both of the rabbit and of the horsemen signifies Son’s freedom in the end. Though one was lost to history, the other could carry the heritage of the black man. After extensively researching The Bluest Eye, Sula and Tar Baby, I have come to the realization that Morrison had intended to present problems of identity and community in her works instead of their answers. Her work led me to ponder about struggles that even we, in the twentieth century are still struggling to answer. Her work always included a simple story, which became increasingly complex, mythic, beyond solution, but always taught me a lesson that I needed to know.
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