Too Terrible to Relate: Dynamic Trauma in the Novels of Toni Morrison

ABSTRACT HUMANITIES STAYTON, COREY C. B.A. XAVIER UNIVERSITY, 1994 M.A. CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY, 1997 TOO TERRIBLE TO RELATE: DYNAMIC TRAUMA IN THE NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON Committee Chair: Daniel Black, Ph.D. Dissertation dated May 2017 This study examines fictional representations of trauma as reflected in Toni Morrison’s novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. By utilizing the theoretical modes of new historicism and trauma theory, the veil of double consciousness is explicated. The modes also help to expose the climate of trauma in the novels which produce various forms of dysfunction in the individual and the community. The unspoken atrocities experienced as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, and physical and sexual violence in many of Morrison’s novels suggest the common thread of trauma in the lives of the characters who experience similar events in Morrison’s stories. The particular traumas depicted in Morrison’s novels, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, damage agency, leading to detachment and paralysis in the individual. The scope of this study is limited to the novels Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved as they best illustrate trauma in Morrison’s characters and the damage that the pathology causes to agency, leading to detachment and paralysis in general. TOO TERRIBLE TO RELATE: DYNAMIC TRAUMA IN THE NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY COREY STAYTON DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES ATLANTA, GEORGIA MAY 2017 © 2017 COREY C. STAYTON All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people who have made the writing of this dissertation a reality. I would like to thank God who has given me life and made all things possible. I would like to thank my family who has given me the strength to move on through the wilderness of life, especially, my mother, Gloria E. Roberts, who has been my teacher from the beginning. Her wisdom and life experiences are my burning torches, illuminating the path to the secrets of life. I would also like to thank several scholars who have been instrumental in the production of this theory. Dr. Albert Turner instilled in me a sense of pride about my work and highlighted the ideas that became the basis of this dissertation. His guidance, insight and patience are invaluable. I would like to thank Dr. Susan Wright, a brilliant intellectual who has been a steadfast supporter of scholarship and student success. She has been the scholar that has helped me when I most needed it and guided my scholarly path in ways that were rigorous yet nurturing. I thank Dr. Daniel Black for being my inspiration and motivation through it all. He is my scholarly mentor and friend for life. I would also like to thank the Chair of the English Department, Dr. Georgene Bess. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my friends, family, fraternity brothers, and colleague Kashandros Jackson for everything. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 Historical Cultural Background ......................................................................... 14 Enslavement of Africans .................................................................................... 15 II. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ..................................................................... 22 Trauma Theory................................................................................................... 22 New Historicism ................................................................................................ 46 Summary ............................................................................................................ 49 III. SULA: TRAUMA IN THE BOTTOM ............................................................... 50 IV. SONG OF SOLOMON: THE ABSENCE OF PRESENCE IN THE DEAD FAMILY ....................................................................................... 83 V. BELOVED: TRAUMATIC BEGINNINGS .................................................... 113 VI. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................149 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 164 iii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION One of the primary aims of Toni Morrison’s novels is to reconnect African Americans to the often horrific histories of their past that have often either been co-opted by dominant white discourse or, worse yet, ignored altogether by literary and historical accounts. In The Site of Memory, Morrison makes it clear as a writer that she sees herself as one who should relate the difficult, innermost feelings of African Americans: “My job becomes how to rip that veil drawn over ‘proceedings too terrible to relate’” (70). The veil that she refers to is described in Dubois’ Souls of Black Folk where he suggests that African Americans have a double consciousness—one consciousness is how African Americans see themselves, and another consciousness is how the dominant White culture sees African Americans. This double consciousness illustrates the traumatic experience of racism: “…the Negro is sort of a seventh son, born with a veil, gifted with second- sight in the American world—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world (9). Dubois goes further to say, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity (9). The metaphoric veil of double consciousness represents the covering up of an African-American traumatic past which has yet to be unashamedly revealed. The purpose of this study is to show how “Dynamic 1 2 Trauma” is illustrated in the selected novels of Toni Morrison and how it damages agency, resulting in detachment and paralysis in the individual, as well as the inability of the individual to construct rational and balanced narratives of self. The unspoken atrocities experienced as a result of slavery, racial discrimination, physical and sexual violence are re-enacted in many of Morrison’s novels to suggest a common thread of trauma in the lives of many African Americans. The scope of this study is limited to fictional representations of trauma in Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved as these particular novels best illustrate Morrison’s exploration of the common threads of trauma and what I distinctly name in the study as “Dynamic Trauma.” Dynamic Trauma is a crippling disablement through which trauma metastasizes into areas of physiological and psychological spaces in the individual. The double consciousness of the veil that Dubois discusses is a symptom of trauma and also the acceptance and validation of what George Yancy calls in his book, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, the “white gaze.” The “white gaze” is often described as looking at the world from a eurocentric cultural perspective. This view or gaze, as it is called, regards the world from a narrowly centered cultural perspective in which non-whites are often marginalized, altogether invisible, or omitted from authorial space. It renders African Americans as objects rather than subjects. More importantly, the gaze forces African Americans to see themselves outside of themselves; it is insight into how a white hostile world sees them and uses that perspective to construct a false sense of identity for African Americans. In Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race, Yancy gives an example of the effects of the white gaze using an encounter he has on an elevator with a white woman: 3 I feel trapped. I no longer feel bodily expansive within the elevator, but corporeally constrained, limited. I now begin to calculate, paying almost neurotic attention to my body movement, making sure that this ‘Black object’ what now feels like an appendage, a weight is not too close, not too tall, not too threatening. Double layers of self-awareness must interrogate the likely meanings that will be attributed to every utterance, gesture, action one takes…My lived-body comes back to me, as does the elevator in the example above, as something to be dealt with, as a challenge. The gaze of the woman disrupts my habituated bodily comportment and I am thrown into an uncomfortable awareness of my body. (15) Yancy’s description of how the white gaze strips an individual of subjectivity and posits a view of the individual unknown to him or herself also confirms the continued use of the double consciousness motif. The white gaze splits the objective self from the subjective self in a way that makes identity construction difficult at best. Morrison makes clear in her own writings that she is attempting to construct narratological accounts of African-American lives that have been underrepresented and often untold. She places African Americans at the center of their own stories without the interruption of the white gaze. In this way, Morrison unveils the traumatic past of African Americans. She does this by depicting the interior lives of African Americans within a historical and narratological context. The fact that Morrison describes the horrors of slavery

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