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Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved Lindsay Green University of South Carolina Aiken, SC

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Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved Lindsay Green University of South Carolina Aiken, SC The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English Volume 3 | Issue 1 Article 5 2001 Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved Lindsay Green University of South Carolina Aiken, SC Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/tor Part of the American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Recommended Citation Green, Lindsay (2001) "Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved," The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/tor/vol3/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in The sO wald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved Keywords Woman Studies, Motherhood, Toni Morrison This article is available in The sO wald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/tor/vol3/iss1/5 Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved Lindsay Green University of South Carolina Aiken Aiken, SC n the fiction of Toni Morrison, the Mrican American woman emerges as a strong, central figure despite I circumstance. Whether she is well-loved or not, happy or not, she retains tremendous strength. The dynamics of the family, including family obligations, family heritages, brothers, sisters, mothers, and so on, take center stage in Morrison's work. Mothers are very important. It is inter­ esting, then, to note how motherhood affects or deter­ mines their behavior as women, as wives, and as social individuals. Two of Morrison's novels in particular, Song ofSolomon, set in twentieth-century Chicago, and Beloved, set in nineteenth-century Lorraine, Ohio, reveal patterns and similarities in these resonant maternal figures. Several things surface as similarities among these women. Their experience or lack ofmothering during child­ hood affects the mothers they are as adults. Their motiva­ tions as mothers are very enlightening as some seek con­ 36 trol, some seek love, some seek freedom and sisterhood, Unlike Ruth, she lost her father very early. Haunted by her and some seek redemption. In all cases, the importance of past, she attempts to find some emotional stability in the patriarchy fades into the background as everything these matriarchal household she establishes with Reba and Hagar. women do revolves somehow around their daughterhood Another woman haunted by her past is Sethe, the and its impact on their motherhood. main character in Morrison's Beloved. Sethe is different Song of Solomon, less blatantly concerned with from Ruth and Pilate because of her drastically different motherhood than is Beloved, best reveals its coherence position in history and social situation. Sethe, like Ruth when one understands the motivations ofthe mothers and and Pilate, suffered the lack ofa mother in her own child­ the way the mothers figure in the story's structure. In Song hood, having only fragmentary memories ofher "Ma'am." ofSolomon, there are two main mothers, Ruth Foster Dead As an adult, she suffers the theft ofher milk by her white and Pilate Dead. Pilate Dead also represents, by exten­ oppressors. Most famously, she is a runaway slave who sion, her daughter Reba and her granddaughter Hagar. kills her next-to-youngest child, a daughter, to protect her Ruth Foster Dead is the unloved wife ofa well-to-do land­ from slave catchers. The ghost of this child returns to be lord; before she was his wife, she was a wealthy doctor's with Sethe. daughter. Ruth never had an attachment with her mother, Song ofSolomon is a book rich with relationships, and she had devoted all of her affection, however exces­ I particularly mother-child relationships. Ruth Foster Dead ; I sive, to her father. Though she has three children, two is an important character to understand both as a child daughters and a son, understanding her relationship with herselfand as motherto the main character, Milkman. Like­ her son Milkman is the key to understanding Ruth. She wise, the three-generational family of Pilate, Reba, and uses pregnancy and motherhood as a means ofexercising Hagar must be understood in terms of its mother-child control in a world where she otherwise has none. bonds. One finds, as the text develops, that these women Pilate Dead, Ruth's sister-in-law and an extremely are not fully functional. Their families are unstable con­ unconventional woman, has borne and raised her daugh­ figurations, and these women are the sources ofthe insta­ ter without a husband. Pilate, though perhaps not the stron­ bilities. gest woman in Song ofSolomon, is certainly one of ~he Ruth Foster Dead is herself emotionally unstable. strongest women in the book. Her weaknesses become This instability may be the result ofher strong bonds with apparent only when Pilate is understood both as a mother her father rather than with her mother. According to Gary and as a child. Like Ruth, Pilate did not know her mother. 38 39 trol, some seek love, some seek freedom and sisterhood, Unlike Ruth, she lost her father very early. Haunted by her and some seek redemption. In all cases, the importance of past, she attempts to find some emotional stability in the patriarchy fades into the background as everything these matriarchal household she establishes with Reba and Hagar. women do revolves somehow around their daughterhood Another woman haunted by her past is Sethe, the and its impact on their motherhood. main character in Morrison's Beloved. Sethe is different Song of Solomon, less blatantly concerned with from Ruth and Pilate because of her drastically different motherhood than is Beloved, best reveals its coherence position in history and social situation. Sethe, like Ruth when one understands the motivations ofthe mothers and and Pilate, suffered the lack ofa mother in her own child­ the way the mothers figure in the story's structure. In Song hood, having only fragmentary memories ofher "Ma'am." ofSolomon, there are two main mothers, Ruth Foster Dead As an adult, she suffers the theft ofher milk by her white and Pilate Dead. Pilate Dead also represents, by exten­ oppressors. Most famously, she is a runaway slave who sion, her daughter Reba and her granddaughter Hagar. kills her next-to-youngest child, a daughter, to protect her Ruth Foster Dead is the unloved wife ofa well-to-do land­ from slave catchers. The ghost of this child returns to be lord; before she was his wife, she was a wealthy doctor's with Sethe. daughter. Ruth never had an attachment with her mother, Song ofSolomon is a book rich with relationships, and she had devoted all of her affection, however exces­ I particularly mother-child relationships. Ruth Foster Dead ; I sive, to her father. Though she has three children, two is an important character to understand both as a child daughters and a son, understanding her relationship with herselfand as motherto the main character, Milkman. Like­ her son Milkman is the key to understanding Ruth. She wise, the three-generational family of Pilate, Reba, and uses pregnancy and motherhood as a means ofexercising Hagar must be understood in terms of its mother-child control in a world where she otherwise has none. bonds. One finds, as the text develops, that these women Pilate Dead, Ruth's sister-in-law and an extremely are not fully functional. Their families are unstable con­ unconventional woman, has borne and raised her daugh­ figurations, and these women are the sources ofthe insta­ ter without a husband. Pilate, though perhaps not the stron­ bilities. gest woman in Song ofSolomon, is certainly one of ~he Ruth Foster Dead is herself emotionally unstable. strongest women in the book. Her weaknesses become This instability may be the result ofher strong bonds with apparent only when Pilate is understood both as a mother her father rather than with her mother. According to Gary and as a child. Like Ruth, Pilate did not know her mother. 38 39 Storhoff, Ruth obediently "conforms to the stereotypical As a husband and as a father, Macon leaves much image of a devout housewife" and describes herself as to be desired. He is presented as: "pressed small" in her marriage (8). On the surface, Ruth's solid, rumbling, likely to erupt passive behavior may seem to be nothing out ofthe ordi­ without prior notice. Macon kept nary. each member of his family awk­ When the reader understands that Ruth has a si­ ward with fear. His hatred of his multaneous desire for control and for victimization, then wife glittered and sparked in every her relationship with her father assumes paramount im­ word he spoke to her. (10) portance. Ruth says to Milkman of her relationship with Ruth is an abused wife who, in Morrison's words, "began her father: "I lived in a great big house that pressed me her days stunned into stillness by her husband's contempt into a small package... but 1 didn't think I'd ever need a and ended them animated by it" (11). As a daughter, Ruth friend because I had him" (124). Storhoff characterizes abased herself out of love for her father. As a wife, she the relationship as "a family legacy of enmeshment" (8); abases herself out of fear.
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