Sula

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Sula stood with a worn slip of paper in her fingers and said aloud to no one, “I didn’t even know his name. And if I didn’t know his name, then there is nothing I did know and I have known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was to know his name so how could he help but leave me since he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his name. Not until long after Sula dies does Nel realize that it is not Jude she has been mourning all those years. It was her friend Sula. Unlike Sula, Nel is an example of a woman overly dependent on others, namely, a man, for her own satisfaction. She is representative of the woman who marries early, never leaves her home town, and never truly discovers her own wants, needs, ideas, and feelings. Sula’s apparent apathy despite witnessing Hannah hurt reflects the absence of affection she had from her mother. At some point, it appears that the death of the mother compromises the individual’s sense of identity. On the contrary, the mother is an individual who recognizes the kid, not just an object that the kid can see. Therefore, it can be argued that the awareness of oneself as an individual beneath the caring watch of the mother is a vital element in the formation of the self. Sula becomes an individual with shattered subjectivity as a result of not receiving this attention as a child, and his apathetic behaviors cause greater suffering to society. Genette, Gerard. "Frontiers of Narrative." Figures of Literary Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. 127-44.

Each of the ten major chapters includes a death, sometimes metaphoric but more usually actual” (29). Full of beauty, eccentricity, bustle, laughter, sensuality, generous affection… Toni Morrison’s work is strikingly individual Time Literary Supplement Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature New York Review of Books I began to write my second book, which was called Sula, because of my preoccupation with a picture of a woman and the way in which I heard her name pronounced. Her name was Hannah, and I think she was a friend of my mother’s. I don’t remember seeing her very much, but what I do remember is the color around her—a kind of violet, a suffusion of something violet—and her eyes, which appeared to be half closed. But what I remember most is how the women said her name: how they said “Hannah Peace” and smiled to themselves, and there was some secret about her that they knew, which they didn’t talk about, at least not in my hearing, but it seemed loaded in the way in which they said her name. And I suspected that she was a little bit of an outlaw but that they approved in some way. ( The Source of Self-Regard, 241)

Adam Bede

Mrs. Reed is the woman who takes the Deweys to school and registers them all for kindergarten. She tells the teacher that they are all cousins, that they are all six years old, and that all of their names are Dewey King. Mrs. Scott’s twins In turn, after her marriage fails, Nel turns to her children for emotional fulfillment they cannot provide. Her children are eager to escape into adulthood, away from her needy over-attentiveness. Cecile Sabat is Helene’s grandmother and the woman who raises her. Cecile rescues Helene from her mother Rochelle’s brothel when Helene is a little girl. The description of the soft lights and colors in Sundown House where Rochelle lives and works compared with the restrictive religious conventions of Cecile’s house makes Helene’s rescue seem ambiguous. Baker, Houston A., Jr. “When Lindbergh Sleeps with Bessie Smith: The Writing of Place in Sula.” Gates and Appiah 236-60.

Sula is a real character, as we say. Sula is incomparable, matchless, singular. There is nobody like Sula. And yet. I’ve seen Sula in my days, in my sisters, my aunts, my friends, a stranger crossing the road. Morrison saw Sula in someone, too, before she wrote her: Morrison is just one of those authors that seems to understand certain aspects of life and human nature better than the rest of us. I can't wait to read The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. By reading iteratively, in circles through Morrison’s text, I seek to point to subtexts and intertextual inferences taking shape” (116). Nel is herself but late in the novel, she tries to distinguish herself from Sula, only to be reminded: “You. Sula. What’s the difference?” Because despite their individuality, the two girls are as deeply connected as the deweys and in a manner just as fantastical. Sula and Nel first meet one another in their dreams, each sensing that “watching the dream along with her, were some smiling sympathetic eyes.” Like Nel’s epiphany of self-regard, this “intense … sudden” friendship with Sula is both consummately specific and hauntingly familiar. A few years later, Sula is dying, and Nel briefly visits her. When Sula finally dies, she mystically remains conscious: She is outside of her body looking down at it. She realizes that death is painless, something she must tell Nel.

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Because they would realized years earlier that they were not white or male, and that all liberty and success were out of bounds for them, they would go about developing Something else to be. Their encounter was good since it allowed them to learn from one another. Daughters of distant moms and unfathomable dads… they found the companionship they sought in each other’s gaze” (Morrison, 1998, p. 52). Johnson, Barbara. “‘Aesthetic’ and ‘Rapport’ in Toni Morrison’s Sula.” Textual Practice 7 (1993): 165-72. After Nel regains her composure and resumes her daily routine, she is left with “nothing but a flake of something dry and horrible in her throat” (Morrison, 1998, p. 108). Nonetheless, she becomes aware that Something is following her everywhere she goes: “Something was just to her right, in the air, just out of sight. She could not see it, yet she was well aware of its appearance. A greyish ball hovers nearby. Simply there. To the left. Quiet, dingy, and filthy. A ball of muddy threads that is devoid of weight, fluffy yet malevolent in its malice “(Morrison, 1998, p. 109).

One day, Hannah tries to light a fire outside and her dress catches fire. Eva sees this happening from upstairs and jumps out the window in an attempt to save her daughter's life. Sula, who was sitting on the porch, simply watched her mother burn. An ambulance comes, but Hannah dies en route to the hospital, with Eva injured as well. Other residents of the Bottom believe Sula remained still because was stunned by the incident. Eva believes that Sula stood and watched out of curiosity. When Sula’s gone, everybody misses her; they miss hating her and measuring themselves against her. When Sula’s gone, everything collapses. While some critics interpret the birthmark over Sula’s eye as the biblical mark of Cain, the divergent and quotidian readings of the birthmark in the novel itself (other characters see it as a rose, a snake, ashes, a tadpole) suggest not just spiritual symbolism, but also worldly, deeply human ambiguity. Each person sees the particular evil in her that they need to. The community doesn’t cast Sula out or set out to sacrifice her; everybody knows deep down that her magnificent, maleficent presence is what unites them. Sula isn’t in fact a scapegoat but a supplement, the allegedly “unnatural” extraneous piece that turns out to be missing from the center. (Jacques Derrida writes in Speech and Phenomena: “We can speak … of a primordial ‘supplement’: their addition comes to make up for a deficiency, it comes to compensate for a primordial nonself-presence.”)

Ajax’s mother is described as a beautiful, neglectful, toothless, evil conjure woman who has seven sons that worship her and bring her the items she needs—the detritus of humanity—for her work, witchcraft. Her sons are open and respectful of women and they adore and admire her above, and perhaps to the exclusion of, all other women. Sula presents the complex sacrifices of motherhood without idealizing them. Each of the mothers in the text feels that she is doing what is necessary to provide for her child what she needs, and yet none of them succeed in passing on to their daughters what they actually need. The Impacts of Shame In completing the loop of [a] circle of sorrow, and by emphasizing the plurality of the circles of sorrow, Morrison throws into relief the fact that Sula is metanarrative, a story about stories. These include all of the stories contained within the text of Sula, and as I will argue, a set of foundational texts upon which Sula is written in a kind of postmodern palimpsest” (116). If I could guarantee that I could stay in this small white room with dirty tile and gurgling water in the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub without ever having to leave, I would be content. If I could guarantee that I would never have to get up to flush the toilet, enter the kitchen, see my children grow and die, or see my food eaten on my plate…” (Morrison, 1998, p. 108). The occurrence of three strange events defines this chapter. The first instance that Eva finds out of sync is a question of Hannah. The second peculiar occurrence is a wind storm without lightning, thunder, or rain. The third event is Hannah’s dream of a red wedding dress.