Feminism in Toni Morrison's Love - Book Report/Review Example

If it is women who are being transacted [in kinship structures], then it is men who give and take them who are linked, the women being a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it. The relations of such a system are such that women are in no position to realize the benefits of their own circulation. Discuss this statement through a detailed reading of Toni Morrisons Love. Feminism has extensively been written about in literature. Amongst the various female writers who have taken a stand for women is Toni Morrison, whose novel Love is one of the most brilliant classics she has ever written. It is a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that extends over three generations of Black women in a fading beach town (Morrison). The novel serves to highlight the relationships that exist between men and women and the role women play in kinship structures. Beautifully executed, the novel is set in the 1900s in an East American Coast company. It relates the account of the Cosey household, settled in a town called Silk. The story revolves around the Cosey women, Heed, Christine and May, who are the wife, grand-daughter and daughter-in-law of Bill Cosey respectively. The novel highlights, and subtly comments upon, the relationships of these women with Bill Cosey and how each of them are influenced and subjugated in a patriarchal society. Bill Cosey has been portrayed as the owner and proprietor of an exclusive east coast seaside resort, Coseys Hotel and Resort. Bill Cosey is shown as a rich man whose resort was popular in the 1940s amongst affluent Black men. The novel is written in the third person, however there are certain parts in the book that are written in the first person and are narrated by L, who claims to know Bill Cosey the most. It is through L that many aspects of Toni Morrison’s writing accentuate the plethora of complexity that abounds the man-woman relationship in the book. L is painted as the figure that has knowledge about the dynamics of the connections and relationships between Bill Cosey and the women of the Cosey household. L acutely brings light to the kinship structures that tie the Cosey women to Bill Cosey and how each of their love is illustrative of the lack of dominance of women in a patriarchal setting. There are many women that are discussed in the novel, although the main story of the novel revolves around the three Cosey women. Cosey is several things to several people but to the Cosey women, he is the center of attention and the model that they look up to. For Bill’s first wife Julian, he does not serve as the epitome of ideals and honesty when she discovers how he earns his blood-soaked money. On the other hand, the working girl, Celestial, has earned his admiration and is one of the women he likes the most. Cosey’s relationship with Celestial is part of a secret force, which along with his troubled childhood, drives him to be more than the man that the women in his lives consider him to be (Books to go for book groups). In fact, Cosey is portrayed as a womanizer and is charismatic and appeals to women despite his business dealings. The women are obsessed with him and each one expresses a degree of love for him in their own respect. Vidda Gibbons, who is the receptionist at the resort, regards him as “the county role model” and considers him royalty since Cosey delivered her from work at the cannery (Moses). On the other hand, Heed, May and Christine are figures in his life whom he does not give much importance but who, in return, think of him as the sun of their lives. This represents how women in the book are shown to be nothing more than conduits in kinship structures, not being ablr to realize their benefits or take a stand for themselves. Cosey is both a void in, and the center of the stories for the Cosey women; his powerful, shadowy and monstrous personality reflecting the dominance that he has over the women and the independence that he gets to do whatever that pleases him. Cosey is 52 years of age when he marries Heed, an eleven year old girl. Cosey buys Heed from her father at the price of $200 and a pocketbook. This barter exemplifies the evils of the patriarchal society, and how rare it is to find women in power, the perceived role of the woman, and her lack of authority shows how women are subject to the whims and fancies of their male counterparts. The men portrayed in the novel are not oppressors, or shown to relinquish tyranny on the women. However one can see the underlying bias that women are subject to, with the women becoming nothing more than accessories and objects of pleasures in the lives of men. There are many scenes of violence in the novel. From the girl, Pretty Fay who was gang raped by Junior’s uncles for fun to the fire that heed starts in Christine’s bedroom, the acts of violence are pretty common in the book. The gang rape is another example of the helplessness women were subject to in the novel. However, the most quintessential of acts of violence was the Cosey’s marriage to Heed, which "laid the brickwork for [his] ruination" and for Heed’s as well (McDowell). The intent for such an action was Cosey’s wish to replace his son. According to Cosey, this can only be done by “an unused girl” (McDowell). This is representative of the domineering role that Cosey has and how he fancies that a young girl can replace his love for his son. In this relationship, Heed is not asked her opinion, and her father marries her off, not considering the fact that Cosey is too old for age. Cosey marries Heed to conceive a child; however she is unable to conceive one. However this makes Cosey realize that he was “the dirty one who introduced [Heed] to nasty,” to the stink of “liquor and an old mans business”. As a result, he realizes his follies and goes back to his old love, Celestial, a “sporting woman”, who he still has feelings for (McDowell). This also shows that Cosey followed whatever his heart desired. Heed was only important for him till she had the potential to conceive a child. When that possibility was negated, Heed served her purpose and he returned back to his lover. Although Cosey dies almost twenty-five years before the time the novel is set in, the women talk of Cosey as if he has passed away very recently and that his death was very fresh and unripe. His portrait, which is hanging above Heed’s bed, appears to be “painted from a snapshot” and his image is crafted by the views of the women in his life. It should be noted that Heed and Christine were intimate friends in childhood. However, the vengeance that emerged between them as they grew up is firmly rooted in their relationship with Cosey. Christine was eight months older than her Heed, and had been sent away after Cosey’s marriage with Heed, “throbbing with girl flesh made sexy” (Mcdowell). Both Heed and Christine, although old women now, are bound together by a lifetime of jealousy and pain; however, after forty years, they are still the Cosey girls, “as different as honey from soot” (Books to go for book groups). Throughout the book, they remain embroiled in a conflict about the possession of the resort and the house, and are sworn enemies. The theme central to the concept in this regard is that both of them served to be as objects of pleasure and means of satisfaction of sexual desire for Cosey and their friendship was destroyed by him. The idea that Morrison presents is that sexual relations tend to underscore the inner sugar baby of the woman, and that sex is no less than violence. In the novel, both Heed and Christine allege each other as the wronging partner in her life’s drama. They hold themselves culpable of the turbulent relationship that caused Cosey to go back to Celestial. As a result, Big Daddy Cosey, the leading character in the life drama of Christine and Heed, gets off scot-free and without any allegations of exploiting the women and being a hindrance in them realizing the benefits of their own circulation (McDowell). Towards the end of the novel, it finally dawns on Heed and Christine that they had been subject to much slavery and exploitation on the hands of Bill COsey. They come to the conclusion that Cosey was nothing more than an illusion, “everywhere and nowhere” (McDowell). They realized that the personality that they had associated with Cosey was not original and true; in fact Cosey was the product of their own perceived opinions about him. In the process of getting the most share of Cosey’s love, they overlooked the materialistic nature of his legacy. Their relationship shows how women turn into adversaries to each other and compete with each other for the same man, not realizing that the man’s ideals can be completely different and insensitive to those of the women. As Beaulieu observes, Cosey was someone who had had his share of ripped love, and the women in his life have to face the brunt of his pain, loneliness and unrestrained masculine impulse to create, control and force (583). In conclusion, Love is a book about the damaging legacy of slavery and racism, and reflects how the destructive abuses of patriarchal power can devoid women of the basic rights of equality (OHehir). Works Cited Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. Writing African American women: an encyclopedia of literature by and about women of color. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. Print. Books to go for book groups. Ayewrite.com, n.d. Web. 12 August 2010. McDowell, Deborah E. Philosophy of the heart. Wellesley, 2003. Web. 12 August 2010. Morrison, Toni. Love. Vintage, 2005. Print. Moses, Nicole. Perfect Love. January Magazine, 2004. Web. 10 August 2010. OHehir, Andrew. Review-a-Day. Powells’ Books, 2003. Web. 10 August 2010. Read More