The Male and Female Dynamics in Sula - Essay Example

The Male and Female Dynamics in Sula by number] The male and female dynamics inthe novel Sula, by Toni Morrison, form the basis for the plot and the maturation of the characters. The main characters are defined by their relationships or the lack thereof with members of the opposite sex. The stronger female protagonists, Eva, Hannah, and the title character Sula, all have undeveloped personal associations with men. They openly acknowledge the purpose of the male and female dynamic is for sex or other pleasurable aspects, but not as a social foundation. In the opening of the novel, the underlying male and female relationship is one of illegitimacy, and the product of that birth. Helene Sabat, taken from her prostitute mother after she was born out-of-wedlock, is reared by an overtly religious grandmother, who “counseled her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her mother’s wild blood” (Morrison, 17). When Helene is of age, she and her grandmother apply pressure to a smitten cousin that results in a marriage proposal. Helene then moves from being socially outcast to social acceptance. She moves into a quaint house with “real” lace curtains with her new husband. She joins a conservative church and produces a daughter after nine years of marriage. She is complete and happy with her life, “She loved her house and enjoyed manipulating her daughter and her husband. She would sigh just before falling asleep, thinking that she had indeed come far enough away from the Sundown House” (18). Helene and her husband Wiley are happy together in their domestic environment. The second male and female confrontation is Helene’s encounter with the white train conductor and the black soldiers and her shameful and obsequious reaction. When Helene is chastised and embarrassed for boarding in an all-white rail car, she smiles a beautiful smile (while inwardly seething) to the conductor. He slams the car door in her face, and the black soldiers in the railcar ignore her; they think her smile was foolish (22). Helene’s daughter, Nel, thinks that her mother is made of custard, the same color as her skin and vows to never let a man make her feel worthless. This idea is foreshadowing her reaction to her husband Jude’s affair with Sula later in the novel. This is the family background for Sula’s conventional alter-ego. Eva is Sula’s grandmother. Her relationship with BoyBoy (her husband) dissolved when he walked out after five years of marriage. He left Eva with three small hungry children and no visible means of support. Eva left town for an eighteen month period of time, after which she returned, with a mysterious supply of money and one leg. She built a large house, complete with adoptive children and boarders. When BoyBoy visits her after a few years away, she acts as if she was not abandoned. She really did not know what to feel about him. They politely drink lemonade, he does not ask about the children and she does not volunteer any information. When he leaves, Eva sees his girlfriend in the front yard and “It hit her like a sledge hammer, and it was then that she knew what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest” (36). She liked the idea of hating Boyboy. Not men in general, just her husband. Eva does not have a long-term relationship with any man throughout the novel. Eva sensibilities were inherited by her children. Her daughters married and produced children of their own. Eva passed on her lusty desire and approval of sex for recreation and pleasure. The Peace women loved men and the rituals that come with men (41). Eva had gentlemen callers and after Hannah was widowed, she had many lovers and “rippled with sex” (42). With her mother as an example, Sula sees that sex is an everyday event and can be embraced, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. The neighbors gossip about Hannah’s behavior, but her lovers defend her and protect her. Hannah chooses not to marry again, and Sula is brought up in a female-dominated environment. Another striking male and female relationship is between Eva and her son Plum. Eva admits that Plum is her favorite child and this may be due to his critical illness as an infant. Plum is addicted to heroin, a habit he picked up as a veteran from World War I. When Eva realizes that Plum will always be a child, and never have a wife or family of his own, she decides to end their misery. One evening after soothing him, she sets him on fire. The family does not admit that she has killed him, “Eva Looked into Hannah’s eyes. ‘Is? My Baby? Burning?’ The two women did not speak, for the eyes of each were enough for the other. Then Hannah closed hers and ran toward the voices of neighbors calling for water” (48). Sula and Nel have a relationship that transcends the ordinary female friendship. They are two halves, when put together are whole. This dynamic is sealed when Sula defends Nel against schoolyard bullies. Sula cuts the tip of her finger off as a powerful demonstration to the male bullies. They have no need for men directly, but it is that fact that eventually cleaves their relationship. The cover-up of Chicken Little’s murder and the affair with Jude, both separate the women. After the accident, Sula thinks Shadrack may have seen her and Nel, but Shadrack neither confirms nor denies it. He cannot offer comfort and the girls hide their secret. In addition, the accusations that Nel watched Chicken Little be murdered and Sula watched her mother burn to death leave penetrating scars in both women. Nel and Jude start with a normal relationship. Nel seeks the conventionality and Jude wants to feel like a man. He cannot find a job that supports his ideal of what is manly (construction), since black men are not being hired. He seeks Nel out to assuage his ego, “So it was rage, rage and a determination to take on a man’s role anyhow that made him press Nel about settling down. He needed some of his appetites filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he wanted someone to care about his hurt, to care very deeply” (82). She allows her self to be conquered and she is absorbed by her new husband. Sula leaves after Nel’s wedding and they do not meet again for ten years. Sula leaves town and gains little perspective about human relationships. She attends college and travels, but still has the same opinions about men and long-term associations. When she returns, he mother drills her about not being married, and not having children. Sula states that both Eva and Hannah lived full lives without men. They argue about the deaths of Plum and Hannah and Sula commits Eva to a nursing home. Sula renews her friendship with Nel and meets her husband Jude. Sula and Jude proceed with an affair. Nel walks in on Sula and Jude; she is justifiable devastated, “…it was Sula who had taken the life from them and Jude who smashed her heart and the both of them who left her …” (111). The affair between Sula and Jude stalls Nel’s and Sula’s relationship, but at the end of the novel we see that Nel really did not mourn the death of her marriage, but the death of her girlfriend. Nel realizes “‘All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.’ And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. ‘We was girls together,’ she cried as though explaining something. ‘O Lord, Sula,’ she cried, ‘girl, girl, girlgirlgirl’” (174). Sula continues to shock her society by having sexual relationships with married and white men. The black community thinks that sleeping with white men is disgusting and they have no sympathy for her. She ignores the conventions of her culture and does not understand why she is vilified. Furthermore, she cannot understand why Jude came between her and Nel. Being possessive of one person is beyond her understanding at this time, “She had no thought at all of causing Nel pain when she bedded down with Jude. They had always shared the affection of other people…” (119). Sula’s ideals about possession are challenged when she meets Ajax Sula’s relationship with Ajax is passionate and she falls in love with him. He probably is the only man that she has loved beyond the physical aspect. Ajax has a bad boy image, but is emotionally appealing to women. His lovers fight over him, even though he is not a man to be married. He owes his good manners to his mother, for she was a conjurer and reared him to be respectful. Sula mistakes respect for something else and she “…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” (131). When Ajax notices that Sula wants permanence, he leaves town. Sula now knows that they had a hollow, one-sided association. She even discovers that Ajax was an alias and is astounded that she could make love with a man and not even know his name. She thinks to herself that she did not hold her head stiff enough and she lost it (136). The final physical confrontation happens at Sula’s deathbed. Nel decides to call upon her, for she knows that Sula is not well. Nel summons the courage to ask Sula why? Why her husband? Sula answers that Jude filled and empty space, “Nel comes to understand her friend’s deathbed words, as Sula told Nel that the loneliness her married friend feels because of Jude’s leaving is “A secondhand lonely”, while Sula’s loneliness was of her own making and thus her dying, which she says is what every black woman is doing everyday, was analogous to the falling of a redwood instead of comparable to being cut down “like a stump”, the way that Sula views the dying of Nel and the other women they know” (Jimoh, np). Nel later mourns Sula’s death and knows that this was the pivotal relationship in her life, more powerful than with her parents, children, or husband. Works Cited Jimoh, Yesmisi A. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. "Sula." The Literary Encyclopedia. 11 Sep. 2003. The Literary Dictionary Company. 24 November 2005. Morrison, Toni. Sula. 1973. New York: Plume, 1982. Read More