Masaryk University Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature

Radka Havlíková

QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN TONI MORRISON’S TAR BABY, BELOVED AND JAZZ

Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Věra Eliášová, Ph.D.

2013

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s

Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography.

I agree with storing this work in the library of the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University, and making it accessible for study purposes.

………………………. Radka Havlíková

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and respect to my supervisor Ing. Mgr. Věra Eliášová, Ph.D. for her useful guidance, patience and insightful comments through my process of writing. It is due to her continuous support and great encouragement that I have been able to complete this work.

I would also like to extend my thanks to colleagues from BUT and friends for contributing with useful and lively discussions.

Most of all, I am indebted to my boyfriend Jaroslav for his love, patience and wholehearted support during this challenging path.

Finally, I extend my gratitude to my parents for the valuable support they have given me throughout the years of my studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction...... 5 1 Short Summaries of Analyzed Books...... 8 1.1 Tar Baby (1981)...... 8 1.2 Beloved (1987)...... 9 1.3 Jazz (1992)...... 10 2. Quest for Identity in Tar Baby...... 12 2.1 Jadine Childs and Son Green...... 12 3. Quest for Identity in Beloved...... 20 3.1 Sethe and Denver‘s Quest for Identity...... 20 3.2 Paul D‘s quest for identity...... 26 4. Quest for identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Jazz...... 31 4.1 Joe Trace and Hunterʼs Hunter...... 32 4.2 Joe and Wild...... 35 4.3 Joe and Dorcas...... 38 4.4 Violet Trace...... 39 4.5 Alice Manfred...... 42 5. Conclusion...... 45 Resume...... 49 Resumé...... 49 Works Cited...... 50

Introduction The African American novelist Toni Morrison is a writer deeply concerned with such serious issues as gender, race, slavery and identity. She has often been regarded as a voice of African American culture. In her works she addresses the position of the African American person in the contemporary world. A Nobel laureate, she is one of the most prominent writers of fiction in contemporary America. Born Chloe Anthony Wolford in 1931, Morrison was the second of four children of Ramah and George Wolford. They moved north to Lorain, a small steel-mill town, to escape sharecropping and violence in the South. Growing up in the poor town during the Great Depression in the 1930s, she took jobs to relieve her familyʼs financial crisis from the age of twelve on. It is worth mentioning that from that time the family, struggling with extreme poverty, provided Morrison with her first encounters with literature. Morrison, in her several interviews, reports that one of her familyʼs evening leisure time activities was to take turns telling stories, where the children were invited to take part and contribute. Morrison loved these evenings, and since that time she has been fond of storytelling, especially ghost stories. Because of these stories, she has become ―intimate with the supernaturalˮ (Nelson 332) from her early age. Perhaps not surprisingly, Morrison believes in spirits to these days. It is no coincidence that Morrison nurtures love for storytelling in her fiction, which is reflected in her passion for employing spiritual beings as: ―a means of reviving memory, initiating dialogue among trauma-paralyzed characters, and enhancing community-building‖ (Lei 3). In Morrisonʼs fiction, in general, storytelling is intertwined with memory, present and past, and plays a crucial role in reminding people about their African American heritage, their roots. Morrisonʼs major concern in going back in history is connected to her deep interest in African American people in pre- and post-slavery era. Her famous and pioneering novels investigate people, groups as well as individuals, who are subjected to many kinds of oppression, which can be related to gender, race, freedom, white society, politics, etc. All her narratives examine the conditions of those being oppressed. Having written my Bachelorʼs Thesis on Toni Morrisonʼs debut novel The Bluest Eye, I have become acquainted with Morrisonʼs writing, and therefore, partially with African American history. Since that time I have developed a strong interest in trying to get deeper in her fiction. Additionally, Morrisonʼs genuine gift to depict

5 individuals and their life-long struggles and conflicts undoubtedly contributes to my intense passion in reading her novels. My main investigation focuses on individuals who are struggling on their journeys to find their identities. I will seek to find out whether this quest is at the end successful to a certain extent or better to say even possible. In all her works, Morrison is concerned with the position of the African American person in the contemporary world. She is especially interested in the way these individuals cope in a dominant white culture they live in. Morrison in great details explores a characterʼs quest for identity which is also my main focus when analyzing her three novels. As identity is recurring motif in her works, many different demonstrations of this theme serve as important means of characterizations, and thus help develop other closely related topics such as lost love, trauma, home, memory, past, etc. These and some other themes will also be touched upon since they are difficult to be kept apart. The above mentioned demonstrations of identity in Morrisonʼs novels may be seen as a result of the characterʼs internal and external conflicts in African American communitites. All of her novels take up the question of where a characterʼs original home is, what his/her roots are and how such an origin shapes his/her identity. My focal study of interest in Morrisonʼs work focuses primarily on three of her novels, namely Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1992). In my view, these works of fiction fully illustrate how Morrisonʼs idea of ―home‖ is crucially related to the self. I will try to demonstrate, on the main female as well as male characters from these three novels, that there is usually at least one character whose desire to go home, to come back to his/her roots, if possible, is not always possible to solve. Morrison, then, in her novels seeks an understanding of the formation of identity, its main determinants and connections. She constructs imaginary homes (e.g. Isle des Chevaliers) that are vital sites for the exploration of identity. There are a number of characters searching for their identities to be drawn from Morrisonʼs other novels, like Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula Peace in Sula (1974) or Milkman Dead in Song of Solomon (1977). Morrisonʼs remarkable novel A Mercy (2008) also deals with the quest for identity. It tells the story of an enslaved mother, like Sethe in Beloved, who, in order to save her daughter from being sexually abused by her slaveholder, gives her up to another white slave master whom she views as less likely to abuse her child.

6

As stated earlier, my main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the process of uprooting from their homes has influenced the female as well as some of the male characters in their journeys to search their identities, and whether this life-long journey can be ―successful‖ at the end. My thesis is divided into 6 chapters. It begins with an introductory chapter that provides an overview to the topic. Some important facts about Toni Morrisonʼs life are also stated. Chapter 1 is an overall summary of the books analyzed in my thesis. My analysis of Tar Baby in Chapter 2 will specifically aim at showing a difficult process in which recovery of home influences and forms the African American identity. An attempt to show the influence of mainstream culture, especially on African American women, that has been historically intolerant to African Americans will be also shown. The chapter will also discuss the notion of home and its place in the quest for identity. Chapter 3 examines how Morrison, in Beloved, her fifth novel, recovers the main female character, Sethe, from the horrific experiences from the institution of slavery. As in Tar Baby, home is described here as a resolution for quest for identity. The analysis of Jazz in Chapter 4 focuses on the charactersʼ past lives which have a major effect on their present lives. The clash of these two oposites is the main cause of their struggle to search their identity. Chapter 5 attempts to sum up my observations of the characters. I will also try to outline the differences in lives of the characters in their quests for identity. It is a further expansion of the conclusions made in the previous chapters.

7

1 Short Summaries of Analyzed Books

1.1 Tar Baby (1981)

With its publication in 1981, Morrison became the first African American woman featured on the cover of Newsweek. Some critics argue that Tar Baby is one of Morrisonʼs easier readings; and in my opinion, it is her most unusual novel due to its themes of wealth, money and high society; its settings are not usual either: jet set and luxurious places. Tar Baby is set set in the Carribean on the remote island of Isle des Chevaliers. Linden Peach claims that this story ―particularly refocuses attention on the displaced person, the migrant and the stranger, as separated from their history and identity‖ (qtd. in Lei 6). Its title is derived from an African American folk tale of Brer Rabbit in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings popularized by a white writer Joel Chandler Harris in late 19th and early 20th century. In his tale of Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, the black narrator, tells bed-time stories to a little son of his white employer. Brer Rabbit, weaker but always able to outwit the stronger animals, is an animal symbolizing, as Aretha Mmphiri states ―both subversion and revolt‖ (124). In my opinion, Brer Rabbit serves here as a trickster figure, having ability to manipulate the stronger animals. Harris‘s original version relates incidents between Brer Fox, a tormentor, and the clever Brer Rabbit. A white farmer creates a tar baby doll to catch Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit tries to speak with the tar baby made of tar, but is unsuccessfully answered by silence, therefore, he hits it and gets caught in the tar. When the farmer gets hold of him, Brer Rabbit tricks the farmer and throws him into briar patch. Linda Krumholz notes that ―in most readings of Tar Baby, Brer Rabbit is associated with black people struggling against white domination, and the tar baby is a deception created by white society that compels black people‘s complicity and entrapment‖ (274). In the tradition of African American foklore, the tale has moral. Morrison revises this folk tale as a love story between Jadine, the tar baby, an attractive African American model influenced by white culture; and Son, the rabbit trapped by the tar baby, a typical African American outlaw. The whole story circles around vastly different protagonists, Jadine and Son, dealing with their differences as two African Americans. Jadine, a beautiful fashion model, with an Art Master Degree from Sorbonne, overwhelmed by luxury is falling in

8 love with Son, a fugitive, a typical representative of Jadineʼs roots. Jadine feels attracted to Son, and they both leave the island and head to New York where they enjoy carefree time as lovers. Finally, however, their differences are unbearable and they break up. Jadine leaves to Paris and Son is led by Therese, a onetime laundresse of African American origin who worked in the Streets‘ mansion, into a mythical existence among the blind horsemen who still live on the Isle des Chevaliers. By contrasting these two characters, Son stays as close to his African American culture, but Jadine does not.

1.2 Beloved (1987)

Published in 1987, this is Toni Morrisonʼs Nobel Prize winning book. The book was also defined a masterpiece by the American press and was proclaimed winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. ―Sixty Million and more,‖ (Beloved) is the dedication at the beginning of the novel that has been devoted to the roughly sixty million people who died during the institution of slavery and also to ones who have never experienced the slave trade. Morrison dedicated this book to those who died in the slavery, however, the story serves as a recollection of the slavery itself as it existed in The United States of America. Morrison in one conversation states that ―there is a necessity for remembering the horror, but of course there‘s a necessity for remembering it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive. The act of writing the book, in a way, is a way of confronting it and making it possible to remember― (Taylor- Guthrie 248). What Morrison wants to stress here is the fact that overcoming this trauma and horrors of slavery brings about more remembering than forgetting. She wants her readers to understand African American history, as Faye Kegley in Remembering Slavery Through Toni Morrison’s Beloved expresses, ―through non- western eyes by re-telling history through the lives of former African slaves‖ (3). Morrison based her story on true events, after having read about Margaret Garner‘s story. ―I wanted to understand about that period of slavery and about women loving things that are important to them‖ (Taylor-Guthrie 4). It is set in the period after the American Civil War (1861-1865), when Margaret Garner, a runaway slave, escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky by heading to Ohio, tried to kill her child with a butcher knife rather than being recaptured again. Graham Thompson in his American Culture in the 1980s points that

9

Morrison changes the known details of Garnerʼs life in several ways but, rather than just investigating the events of Garnerʼs escape and return, projects Garnerʼs life into the future to imagine the undocumented legacy of these events and, most hauntingly, the return of the murdered child, Beloved, to Setheʼs house at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati (qtd. in Lei 8). Belovedʼs main protagonist, Sethe, with her daughter Denver, lives excluded by the community in a small house at 124 Bluestone Road, which is haunted by the ghost of Beloved. The main theme of the story is about the painful experience of slavery, especially about memories of slavery repressed by the ex-slaves. This kind of repression of the past necessarily leads to problems with negotiating individual identity. Sethe, Denver and Paul D – they all experience this kind of loss which can be only remedied by recovering the memory of their original identities.

1.3 Jazz (1992)

In Morrisonʼs sixth novel, the majority of incidents take place in the years from 1873 to 1926, that is in the era of Harlem Rennaisance in New York. Some historians also refer to this period as The Jazz Age. As the title itself implies, Morrison employs typical jazz techniques typical for jazz music such as basic theme, improvisation, typical structure, etc. into her novel. Jazz is structured in a very similar way as a piece of jazz music. The whole tone of the book mirrors the title of the novel. Morrison sets up the basic theme of the whole novel, the story of Joe Trace, a married man in his fifties and Violet Trace; Joe‘s affair with his mistress Dorcas Manfred, and his murder of this young girl; and Violet‘s attack of Dorcas‘ body at her funeral. This theme serves as the basic melody of the novel with subsequent improvisations and experiments. This novel is a great example of this type of jazz narrative which explores the main characters on their healing journeys. What Morrison also seeks to highlight is the importance of jazz music for African Americans in 1920s America. Through Jazz, Morrison manages to catch not only the voice of the narrator, but the voice of a culture. Jazz is another Morrisonʼs novel which is based on a true story. Morrison once saw a picture of an eighteen-year old girl lying in a coffin, who had been to a party where she was shot by her ex-boyfriend. In Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Matter of ‘Ancient Properties’, Karin Luisa Badt reads Jazz as the author‘s explication of ―what it means to be rooted in the 10 body and in history. Here the body – in its curious manifestations as the City, jazz, and the character Dorcas – has ‗tracks‘‖ (8). However, what connects these manifestations is a memory of their past which forces the characters with their traumatic experiences to fight among themselves in order to revise their past. Jazz is a love story between three individuals – an unfaithful husband Joe, his wife Violet, and his mistress Dorcas. The whole novel centers about the lives of the main protagonists and the effects a personʼs history can have on their present lives.

11

2. Quest for Identity in Tar Baby

2.1 Jadine Childs and Son Green

Tar Baby uses an imaginary Eden-like residence on an isolated island of Isle des Chevaliers in the Carribean to illustrate a process how the recovery of home influences and forms African-American identity. Tar Baby also shows the influence of mainstream culture, especially on African-American women, that has been historically intolerant to African-American participation. Furthermore, Tar Baby is also concerned with the notion of home and its place in the quest for identity which I am going to deal with in this chapter. The main character, uprooted and orphaned, Jadine Childs, who has been educated with the financial support by Valerian Street, a wealthy white American owner of the estate, is staying on the island in between her modelling work in Paris and New York. As an orphan, Jadine had been brought up by Sydney and Ondine Childs, hard- working proud ―Philadelphian Negroes‖ (TB1164) whose jobs – butler and housekeeper are their essential responsibilities in the estate. Their niece, Jadine, the Street‘s protegee, was taken under the wing of the confectionery magnate Valerian Street, who financed her a Paris education which undoubtedly enables her to establish a successful modelling career. According to Zia Gluhbegović, Jadine is a ―yalla, a motherless and rootless mixed-blood‖ (3). An enormous influence on her development, as has been already mentioned above, is her European white education. Now a Sorbonne art history graduate, she is a successful fashion model who wants to ―be only the person inside— not American—not black—just me‖ (TB 45). This Jadine‘s desire clearly proves that she longs for discovering her authentic self. Self or ―who I am‖ is closely connected to ―where I feel at home.‖ The novel exemplifies that Jadine feels unfulfilled and her desire to fulfill herself can be explained as Evelyn Louise Audi in Exile, Home, and Identity in Toni Morrison points out ―as a desire to go home‖ (5). Jadine‘s home is not Africa, nor can it wholly be America or Europe. In this sense, we can speak about homelessness. Jadine lives somewhere in- between. Generally speaking, people feel at home in the place that they are from and where they are unified within themselves by the various aspects of their identity. Tar Baby uncovers the problems that can emerge when home is not a comfortable notion.

1 TB stands for Tar Baby 12

One always associates home with self-identity. For Jadine, Isle des Chevaliers is a place of escape, a kind of home where she comes to have a rest and decide the next steps in her career. Briefly, for none of the main characters is the island a native homeland. The only characters for whom the Carribean island is are The Street‘s staff – Gideon and Therese who are referred as ―Yardman‖ and ―Mary.‖ Son Green, is not a member of the estate but after he is discovered there, Valerian Street invites him to stay in his household. Son is an African-American stowaway who has wandered from place to place since he murdered his wife Cheyenne in their hometown of Eloe, Florida. He secretly follows Jadine from a ferry into the mansion where he hides in Margaret‘s closet. He steals food and stares at Jadine while sleeping until he is revealed by Margaret, who takes one look at his ―overpowering hair—physically overpowering, like bundles of long whips or lashes that could grab her and beat her to jelly‖ (TB 113). Margaret is immediately convinced that he is there with the main purpose of raping her. Son‘s presence in the mansion, in fact, he arrives at the very beginning of the novel, instigates identity problems for each character. Being homeless and a jobless man ―without human rites, unbaptized, uncircumcised, […] unmarried and undiscovered,‖ (TB 166) he is perceived like an insult to the race. For Jadine, he acts as ―a catalyst for an identity crisis in terms of her race and what constitues it― (Audi 9). Furthermore, Son introduces his knowledge of the past to Jadine, who has completely lost that link. When they meet, Son considers her ―white‖ despite the colour of her skin that is not white. Shao Yuh-Chuan confirms that ―Jadine thinks and conducts herself like a white, and her whiteness stands out as the legacy of white education and way of living.‖ (559) Jadine is addressed as ―white girl‖ by Son; however, I would characterize her as black girl who possesses a white self. Jadine is an example of an African American woman who does not identify herself in terms of her African American origin, or by the place she was born in, but by her exceptional beauty which has landed her a well-paid career in modelling industry. She thinks of herself as being self-confident and self-sufficient young woman until she encounters Son. His sexual attractiveness to her, and the fact that he comes from outside and away from everything Jadine identifies herself with, brings about Jadine to pose questions about her identity. Jadine abruptly finds herself haunted by ghosts of her African American identity and of her past. Jadine has been living according to her upbringing, her education and her motherlessness, but phenomenon of Son induces in her discomfort and as Audi claims ―fragmentation‖ (10). Through Jadine, it can be

13 clearly seen what happens to the identity of a person who is an orphan and who is fundamentally homeless. Instead of claiming that any human being must be unified with a country, I seek to point out the process through which a person‘s identity operates in relation to the notion of home. Tar Baby with the depiction of the relationship between Son and Jadine clearly demonstrates the problem of what happens when a person is homeless and when home to one person means repression to another, like in case of Son and Jadine. Both have faced a series of geographic migrations. They have traversed oceans and wandered continents, and their contrary impulses collide on the Isle des Chevaliers. Being alienated from her original self and betraying her roots, Jadine is ―drifting, in trouble, [with a] desire to ‗make it‘ that may be self-destructive‖ (qtd. in Kirkpatrick 33). Paradoxically, for a woman who variously calls Baltimore, Philagelphia, Paris and New York City home, ―she was more at loose ends [on the island] than anywhere‖ (Kirkpatrick 34). Jadine, essentially in conflict with herself, cannot preserve a sense of identity. Entirely removed from home and rooted identity, Jadine finds out that any true connection to home is unreachable. However, as some kind of reconciliation, Jadine is intentionally offered the mysterious encounter with ancestral swamp women, the witches and rumored lovers of the blind African horsemen. Being bemused by the surrounding, she describes the circle of trees ―like a standing rib of fork, […] an elegant comic book illustration.‖ (TB 182) Jadine, acting like a an intruder ignorant of island‘s properties, badly misjudges the stability of the mossy floor and sinks into the tar. Accustomed to modern style of fashion capitals throughout Europe and the United States, Jadine feels simply shamefully stuck there. This entrapment presents obvious contrast to her life spent on plane heading to Paris. Here, among the watchful swamp women¸ Jadine feels that ―movement was not possible‖ (TB 183). At this very moment, Morrison again emphasizes that Jadine having returned to Isle des Chevaliers as a tourist can be understood as her being an outsider. As far as Son is concerned, he is more grounded with his roots in Eloe, Florida, where he was born. Though, he also finds himself estranged on the Carribean island. As he one day opens up to Sydney, ―I feel out of place here.‖ (TB 159) This can be understood as Son not being accepted into the Valerian‘s household. Once roaming outside the mansion or hidden inside Margaret‘s closet, he always stays as an observer – never an active participant. His early encounter with Jadine, in which

14

she felt the fear again and another thing that wasn‘t fear. Something more like shame. Because he was holding my wrist so tight and pressing himself into my behind? […] He had jangled something in her that was so repulsive, so awful, and he had managed to make her feel that the thing that repelled her was not in him, but in her‖ (TB 123). This was Son‘s first visit to Jadine‘s room and also the first time they are alone together. He sees the copies of Elle magazine on her bed and realizes that Jadine is on the cover. As he stares at it, he opens the magazine and comes across many pictures of her. Son tells Jadine that he prefers to look at them than at her standing before him since these pictures are not moving. This can be perceived as Son holding Jadine firmly in his hands. He also looks around her entire room. He is alarmed by the sealskin coat laid out on Jadine‘s bed, her silk robe and gold-thread slippers. As far as the seal skin coat is concerned, she was given it as an expensive Christmas gift from her French white fiancé. The coat he sends her is made from ―the hides of ninety baby seals stitched together so nicely you could not tell what part had sheltered their cute little hearts and which had cushioned their skulls‖ (TB 86). Instead of being revolted by this product that Mary Lupton calls ―efficient commercial slaughter of innocence‖ (417), Jadine loves it: ―She lay on top of [the skins of ninety baby seals] and ran her fingers through the fur. How black. How shiny. Smooth‖ (TB 90). Sinking into its blackness, ―she lay spread-eagle on the fur, nestling herself into it. It made her tremble. She opened her lips and licked the fur. It made her tremble more‖ (TB 112). Symbolically speaking, Jadine is dazzled by this kind of dead black hide. Elizabeth House claims that Jadine demonstrates ―her lack of altruism through wearing apparel‖ (199). This coat embodies Jadine‘s own flesh. She identifies herself with this coat. It is black and it was manufactured by white Europeans. It exactly expresses Jadine‘s personality. She is black but she is manufactured and treated as white. The items mentioned above are, like Jadine, attractive for Son. He is annoyed by the scene due to the fact that he desires her sexually and she tries to resist him more crucially. Son knows that ―at any moment she might talk back or, worse, press her dreams of gold and cloisonné and honey-coloured silk into him and then who would mind the pie table in the basement of the church?‖ (TB 120) For him, Jadine‘s dreams are associations with white culture and values which give Jadine her material dreams of wealth; therefore, Son perceives her as white even though she is African American.

15

Jadine accuses Son of hiding out on the mansion with the apparent intent of rape. When Jadine meets Son, they argue: ―Rape? Why you little white girls always think somebody‘s trying to rape you?‖ (TB 121). Jadine ―was startled out of fury. I‘m not…you know I‘m not white!‖ (TB 121) This can clearly shows Son‘s own conception of his race and his conscious attempt to embody that idealization to Jadine. He wants Jadine to have dreams like a black African American woman who ―dream[s] about yellow houses with white doors which women opened and shouted Come on in, you honey you! And the fat black ladies in white dresses minding the pie table.‖ (TB 119) Son wishes Jadine to embody what he perceives as an authentic black African American woman. On the contrary, Jadine wishes Son to get educated, get a job and share her dreams. However, she is dismayed by Son‘s complete refusal to go to school or to try to find a job. Not worth mentioning that he has no social security number. Jadine starts to be aware of the fact that his refusal is a part of the system and this begins to influence her. She pigeonholes him to the kind of wildness that is simply represented by his physical appearance. Philip Page argues, ―apart from Jazz‘s Wild, Son is the wildest of Morrison‘s wild character.‖ (qtd. in Mayberry 141) Jadine aligns him with impoliteness and rudeness that she clearly sees: ―his hair looked overpowering—physically overpowering, like bundles of long whips or lashes that could grab her and beat her to jelly, […], wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put in jali, uncivilised, reform-school hair, Mau Mau, Attica, chain-gang hair.‖ (TB 113) In this passage, one can observes that Jadine sees Son‘s uncivilised as Son is. What is highlighted here are the images of Son‘s hair which Jadine finds quite fearful. This can be also interpreted as Audi proposes ―as [Jadine‘s] own fear of racial repression‖ (17). Morrison, in her book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, explains from a historical perspective that those who immigrated to America were repressed and in their search for dreedom, they projected fear onto blackness of African American people who become the surrogate selves of previsouly repressed white people. (46-7) Jadine‘s anxiety about racial repression can be seen when she reflects her fear onto Son. Jadine‘s professional and educational background is dependent on the places she lives in. These places illustrate to which extent, unlike Son‘s, her identity is influenced by where she currently is, not where she comes from. This ambivalence is visible when Therese tells Son that Jadine has forgotten her ―ancient properties‖ (TB 305), that means she has lost her ties to African American heritage and especially to African American community. Thic can be also reflected by her being not secure about her

16 white boyfriend Ryk: ―I want to marry him, but o wonder if the person he wants to marry is me or a black girl? And if it isn‘t me he wants, but any black girl who looks like me, talks and acts like me, what will happen when he finds out that I hate ear hoops, that I don‘t have to straighten my hair, that Mingus puts me to sleep.‖ (TB 45) Jadine‘s return to Paris to be with Ryk reveals Jadine‘s strong desire for being closely connected with mainstream white culture. Jadine is not able to exist without feeling there is a possibility of ―a unified self – just me.‖ (Audi 21) What is surprising, however, her feeling that some parts of her are in conflict. Her fear of losing one part consumes her almost throughout the whole novel. She is scared in different ways. One way is the memory of her accidental encounter with a striking woman in brightly colored clothing buying food in the supermarket. She comes across a lovely, perfectly self-possessed black African woman in the dairy section who is characterized as ―mother/sister/she […] unphotographable beauty‖ (TB 43). Jadine is aware of her own photographable beauty and this woman‘s unphotographable beauty. The woman represents what Jadine desires for and at the same time fears. Jadine is also haunted by the thoughts of the striking woman in ―her long canary yellow dress‖ (TB 42). Morrison depicts this woman as somebody who resists white beauty. Jadine is also distracted by ―the skin like tar against the canary yellow dress‖ (TB 42). This emphasizes the woman‘s blackness, and therefore Jadine‘s indecision about herself. The brigthly coloured clothes remind her of the clothes worn by some black women. Importantly, this woman has no shopping basket. She solely places three eggs ―between earlobe and shoulder‖ (TB 42). This woman looks at Jadine and spits out. A moment like this intensifies Jadine‘s feelings of love and black woman as she remembers: ―When you have fallen in love, rage is superfluous, insult impossible. You mumble ‗bitch‘ but the hunger never moves, never closes. It is placed, open and always ready for another canary-yellow dress, or other tar-black fingers holding three white eggs‖ (TB 43-44). The image of the black woman as mother completely derails Jadine. Jadine‘s hunger for this woman is seen as a result for Jadine‘s desire for her mother and for love.2 This also reveals Jadine‘s identity conflict. It is essential to point out that love relationship between Jadine and Son does not work as identity ‗atonement.‘ They are depicted as geographically migratory figures

2 The idea described in this paragraph has been already discussed by Radka Havlíková in her White Beauty as an Obstacle in the Search of Love in Toni Morrison’ The Bluest Eye and Tar Baby (20), where Jadine‘s search for identity, further analyzed in this Diploma Thesis, was also touched upon. 17 with Son remaining in past, while Jadine focusing on the future as Mayberry asserts: ―One had a past, the other a future and each one bore the culture to save the race in his hands‖ (147). Therefore, it is unclear whether they will ever reunite. The impossibility of a union between them is also displayed when Jadine and Son are alone in the mansion for the first time. They have a picnic on the beach and Jadine also takes her sketch and charcoal to draw Son. In the following passage, it can be clearly seen how Jadine heads off her eyes when they pass a poor part of the island: She took her pad and a stick of charcoal and walked toward the trees, wishing once more she had had genuine talent in her fingers. She loved to paint and draw so it was unfair not to be good at it. Still she was lucky to know it, to know the difference between the fine and the mediocre, so she‘d put that instinct to work and studied art history—there she was never wrong‖ (TB 181-82). Morrison depicts here to which extent is Jadine in conflict with her own identity as an educated artist influnced by white mainstream culture and her identity as African American whose ancestral art has been destroyed by white culture. Jadine‘s attempt to draw Son, which is unsuccessful, shows that Son is unrepresentable for Jadine and this demonstrates another conflict of identity that Jadine is anxious about. One key moment comes when they leave the picnic on the beach together. Son goes to get a car while Jadine wants to walk for a while on her own when ―the pad with Son‘s face badly sketched looked up at her and the women hanging in the trees looked down at her.‖ (TB 183) As already mentioned earlier, these ―swamp women‖ represent the mythical women of the Carribean who are harmed by Jadine‘s participation in white mainstream. When these women first see Jadine, ―they were delighted, thinking a runaway child had been restored to them.‖ (TB 184) Looking closer they see her differently. Jadine is actually fighting to get away from them. Figuratively speaking, these women rape Jadine. When Son sees her, ―she was crying a little and cleaning her feet with leaves. The white skirt showed a deep dark and sticky hem and hung over the door of jeep.‖ (TB 185) This ―rape‖ also implies that Jadine has been ―raped‖ by white mainstream culture forced upon her by Valerian Street. Unfortunately, there is no solution for Jadine and Son. Their quest for identity complicates their own relationship and shows that their relationship is disrupted by various conflicts and dilemmas. The novel actually ends with two different kinds of outcomes. One kind of story when Son goes into the forest through the swamp and

18 probably becomes one of the blind horsemen signifies Son‘s way back to Isle des Chevaliers. His status in the white mainstream culture as homeless, jobless and without social security number in terms of citizenship remains unchanged. Tar Baby does not place Son as ―going home,‖ since he accepts his ―ancient properties,‖ but Jadine does not because she is en route to land in Paris to be with Ryk. Morrison does not want to state that Son is doing the right thing by coming back to the island and Jadine as doing the wrong thing by flying to Paris. Mayberry claims that ―both must sacrifice their dream of past or future safety to gain their present freedom‖ (148). Jadine will undoubtedly thrive financially in Paris with her boyfriend Ryk. Son, instead, runs toward the woods ―lickety-split, lickety-split, lickety-split‖ (TB 309). In sum, Jadine and Son are complete opposites. Their backgrounds are so different that neither of them will admit the claims of the other. Neither of them is wholly free and both are still in search of identity.

19

3. Quest for Identity in Beloved

3.1 Sethe and Denver’s Quest for Identity

Beloved, Toni Morrison‘s famous story, written in 1987, represents the rebirth of black identity among downtrodden people. In this novel, as in Tar Baby, home can be considered as a resolution for quest for identity. For Morrison, to recover from slavery means to recover the home that has been unfortunately lost. In Beloved home is to say the black female body. Due to the legacy of slavery, which is interwoven throughout the whole story, emphasis on the body reveals that the female body itself becomes the physical place. Sethe‘s body full of scars is unsuitable to live in because it is not a place where identity can be recognized in a positive way. Until Sethe can open herself to speak about her memories and recall her story, she cannot recover her identity and her body remains crippled and thus her identity remains wounded. What I try to imply here is the fact that for Sethe, telling her story full of horrific experiences enables her to reclaim her identity and recover from slavery. Taking place in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873, Sethe, the main female protagonist, after escaping from Kentucky plantation, attempts to kill her children to prevent them from being put into slavery. She succeeds in murdering only one of her four children, an 18-month-old ―the crawling-already? girl‖ (Beloved 110). This brutality takes place in the woodshed when Sethe sees Schoolteacher, a man currrently managing Sweet Home, who treats and abuses the slaves as animals, coming to take Sethe‘s children to Sweet Home. This event condemns Sethe to be rejected by the society. Sethe then finds a place of refuge within four walls in her house at 124 Bluestone Road, where she completely separates and isolates with her daugher Denver from the community. The cruelty that led Sethe to commit this act of murder can be understood by two heart-stopping moments in Sethe‘s life. The first incident takes place early in her life when as mentioned above, Sethe is put on the animal side of the list of features according to Schoolteacher‘s education. While teaching his nephews, Sethe overhears Schoolteacher‘s lesson, when he draws a thick line between an animal and a human being. To provide his students with more obvious example, he classifies Sethe as a representative of the animal. After this humiliation, Sethe begins to trust in the words of Baby Suggs, who acts as a mother figure for Sethe: ―there is no bad luck in the world but whitewolks‖ (Beloved 92). This, however, is double-edged. Sethe‘s estimation of

20 whitefolks, in general, is not fair. They do not only do harm to her, but Sethe also receives help from them. As far as Amy is concerned, it was her, who gives birth to Denver when Sethe is escaping from the plantation. As can be seen from the example, black community, especially black women have greatly suffered from slavery. The humiliation and hardships they have faced have left them with psychic and bodily impacts. Another dehumanization takes place when much later in Sethe‘s life, she is pregnant with Denver. Sethe‘s journey of suffering seems to be never-ending. Another indication of the terrible violence practised on slaves is the moment when Schoolteacher‘s nephews beat Sethe while pregnant to the point that they injure her so badly that ―her back skin had been dead for years‖ (Beloved 18). They held her and sucked breasts. The fact that ―they took her milk‖ (Beloved 22) by force is so traumatising for Sethe as well as for husband Halle, who is a witness to what happens but is unable to do anything. Since he cannot protect her, he starts to feel emasculated, and therefore abandons her. Consequently, as indicated earlier, feeding white boys with Sethe‘s own milk over feeding her own child is so brutal for her that she is even deprived in the role of being a mother. She is humiliated to the position of a breeder because she is used like an animal for feeding a human being. Sethe feels robbed of her identity and loses fundamental essence as a mother. This, in consequence, can be a logical explanation of her capability of killing her daughter to save her from the brutality of slavery. The victim, as already mentioned, is Beloved, whose central role is substantial in the formation of the characters‘ identities. Halle‘s behaviour is then logically explained by Sethe herself who will later feel disgust for men. Therefore, her inability to form a closer relationship with Paul D, a former slave who once worked together with Sethe at Sweet Home, can be taken for granted to some extent. Paul D appears in Sethe‘s life eighteen years after the horror of killing Beloved, being ready to form a relationship with Sethe. Actually, this gathering can stand like a substitute for a traditional family, if not for Sethe and Paul D, then for Denver, at least. To Sethe‘s disappointment, Paul D is not able to reconcile with her committing so horrific act of murder when he says: ―You got two feet, Sethe, not four‖ (Beloved 194). This statement is even more humiliating for Sethe because what Paul D implies here is the fact that Sethe is a human being, not a beast. Sethe perceives Paul D‘s words as the words expressed by the white people. Paul D is simply unable to understand the complexity of Sethe‘s actions and believes that she should have found

21 another way. Sethe, who desperately hopes for Paul D‘s support in her suffering, received it neither from the black community, nor from Paul D. Therefore, when speaking about Sethe‘s quest for identity, it should be emphasized that ―as a direct result of enslavement, every slave created his/her identity based on the definition provided by white people‖ (Piotrowska 11). The members of the black community also perceive each other according to white community‘s definition. Hence, the black community, rather than using their own opinions to the horrible act Sethe has commited, they interpreted her action through the opinions of their white masters. Sethe‘s killing of her own child can be thus analyzed in two different ways. Some critics consider the act savage, while others see it as heroic. Gurleen Grewal in her Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle: The Novels of Toni Morrison indicates Sethe‘s action as a heroic revealing the whole idea of slavery. Grewal proves it through the statement: ―If the master could subject the slave children in bondage to a slow ‗social death,‘ the mother could release them through physical death‖ (101). On the other hand, Kristina Groover openly states that Sethe‘s act is a ―desperate act of love‖ (qtd. in Piotrowska 70). As implied from the quotes above, Sethe‘s exclusion from the black community is evident. After the infanticide, the people from her community who could best understand her deed because of their common experience, reject her completely: ―Those twenty-eight happy days were followed by eighteen years of disapproval and a solitary life‖ (Beloved 204). According to the community Sethe used to be a member of, is Sethe‘s deed unforgivable, that is why she has been excluded and rejected from the society. Her isolation among the four walls of 124 Bluestone Road can be understood as a place of redemption where Sethe is able to some extent define her identity. She also limits her life to the premises of the house and at this point she is able to see a way to search for her true identity. Moreover, Piotrowska determines that ―Sethe‘s having locked herself in the house can be perceived as an attempt to revise the past on order to free herself from the burden of her murder‖ (14). Sethe‘s deep longing for explanation of the past action, and for forgiveness, wake into being the ghost of her murdered daughter Beloved. Beloved‘s identity is mysterious. From my point of view, first, Beloved can be the spirit of Sethe‘s murdered daughter or, second, Sethe‘s alter ego. As far as Beloved being a ghost is concerned, it has strong and destructive power. It has sufficiently terrorized 124 Bluestone Road to drive away Sethe‘s two sons, Howard and Burglar, and even the family dog Here Boy. One day, a real woman in

22 flesh, appears in front of the people: ―A fully dressed woman walked out of the water. She barely gained the dry bank of the stream before she sat down and leaned against a mulberry tree‖ (Beloved 60). Paul D, Sethe and Denver finds her as they return from the carnival. Sethe immediately starts to feel a strange need to involuntary urinate. This can be considered as a reminder of her water breaking before Denver‘s birth. Frequent urination is a common symptom of pregnancy due to pressure on the bladder. This clearly shows that Sethe is reminded of the birth of their babies and her sensitivity toward the issue of childbirth. Sethe‘s body recognizes her dead baby‘s revelation before her mind does. Denver and Paul D takes her inside the house, where she drinks cup after cup of water and then she sleeps without eating, as an infant child does. Water, in this case, symbolizes life and re-birth. Her name appears to be Beloved. Her skin is as smooth as a baby‘s and she has no memory of the past. She has never been given a chance to mature, thus her development was stopped at that point when she was a crawling baby. Consequently, her mental state of mind is comparable to a child. She selfishly demands everything and reveals that she comes back to claim what was taken from her. At the beginning, Beloved‘s appearance suggests to Sethe that she comes to be loved. As time runs, Sethe with her daugher Denver makes every effort to provide the new family member with all the love. Sethe even leaves her job to be constantly with Beloved. She little by little loses control over her own life, and gradually stops being in the role of a mother. Unfortunately, Sethe does not fulfill Beloved‘s high expectations. In fact, Beloved searches a compensation for being abandoned in the past. Sethe serves as Beloved‘s possession. The ghost emerges as a main threat to its mother‘s life. As for Sethe‘s alter ego, she constantly unifies her identity with that of her child. Sethe unintentionally names Beloved after herself. When the priest at her child‘s funeral addresses the living ―Dearly Beloved‖ (Beloved 217), Sethe believes that the Reverend refers to her dead daughter. Rather than engraving her child‘s name on her tombstone, Sethe lets engrave ―Beloved.‖ This refers both to Sethe and to the dead baby. This proves that Sethe conflates her identity with Beloved. Since Sethe feels devaluated and humiliated by her experience as a slave, she cannot love Beloved. She thus puts her energy into loving her children. Her own identity is clearly defined in terms of motherhood. Sethe regards her children as ―the best thing she was, was her children‖ (Beloved 296). Because Beloved refers also to Sethe, and because Sethe defines her

23 children as part of herself; Beloved therefore functions as a kind of alter ego for her. Beloved‘s complex and discontinuous monologue shows that she is Sethe‘s alter ego: I see her take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked some who eat nasty themselves I do not eat the men without skin bring us their morning water to drink we have none at night I cannot see the dead man on my face daylight comes through the cracks and I can see his locked eyes I am not big small rats do not wait for us to sleep someone is thrashing but there is no room to do it in if we had more to drink we could make tears we cannot make sweat or morning water so the men without skin bring us theirs one time they bring us sweet rocks to suck we are all trying to leave our bodies behind the man on my face has done it it is hard to make yourself die forever you sleep short and then return in the beginning we could vomit now we do not now we cannot his teeth are pretty white points someone is trembling I can feel it over here he is fighting hard to leave his body which is a small bird trembling there is no room to tremble so he is not able to die my own dead man is pulled away from my face I miss his pretty white points […] (Beloved3 248). Beloved states that she and Sethe lost and found again each other. Beloved says to Sethe that she came back in a completely different creature that she remembers. Sethe attempts to keep the past away, however, Beloved‘s comeback demonstrates the impossibility and the difficulty of suppressing her past. In other words, with Beloved‘s

3 This was carried out on purpose as in origin to preserve the fragmented monologue 24 arrival, revealing memories helps Sethe understand her and past and thus herself. Beloved can be seen as Sethe‘s personal past and at the same time as her repressed memories. Beloved acts as Sethe‘s self that Sethe desperately tries to forget and to ―throw away.‖ When Sethe finally learns to cope with her past memories, she comes to understand fully and objectively her past and herself. In general, Beloved‘s role in formulation of Sethe‘s identity is absolutely crucial in the novel. Beloved is not only the ghost of Sethe‘s killed daughter, but also a powerful symbol of the link between the present and the past. Sethe‘s identity is formulated with the connection to her past which she obtains through the ghost of Beloved. Although Beloved does not belong to the present nor the past, she happens to be a link between the present and the past. Therefore, Sethe‘s and Denver‘s lives are connected with the past that is impersonated in Beloved. With the arrival of Beloved, Sethe‘s wounds caused by slavery are open again. This shows the influence Beloved has over Sethe and Denver. In order to heal these wounds as Piotrowska confirms, ―black people have to learn to forget and leave the harmful experience behind‖ (17). Beloved is thus also understood as a symbol of pain Sethe has experienced in slavery. On the other hand, Beloved‘s negative influence upon the main characters is also quite clear. After Beloved has appeared, Denver becomes jealous on Sethe, and wants to form a relationship with her sister. This indicates Sethe‘s desire to restore the broken bond (if any) with her daughter and Denver‘s longing for a sister. Denver first recognizes the relation between Sethe and Beloved: ―Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it. But there would never be an end to that, and seeing her mother diminished shamed and infuriated her‖ (Beloved 295). After witnessing Sethe‘s breakdown, Denver decides to prevent Sethe from the devastating influence Beloved has on her mother. The very moment, when Denver begins to act like an adult, can be marked as Denver‘s quest for identity. At this particular moment, Denver shoulders the responsibility for her mother and seeks some help within the black community. When taken this act into consideration, Beloved can be regarded as having positive effect. In the novel, there are two moments where positive power is especially evident. The first moment takes place when Sethe, Denver and Beloved go skating together: Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved wore the pair; Denver wore one, step-gliding over the treacherous ice. Sethe thought her two shoes would hold and anchor her.

25

She was wrong. Two paces onto the creek, she lost her balance and landed on her behind. The girls, screaming with laughter, joined her on the ice. Sethe struggled to stand and discovered not only that she could do a split, but that it hurt. Her bones surfaced in unexpected places and so did laughter. Making a circle or a line, the three of them could not stay upright for one whole minute, but nobody saw them falling (Beloved 205). This scene has symbolic image. Beloved brings Sethe and Denver closer to each other as Katherine Payant affirms ―this moment as reunion between the mother and the sisters as the positive aspect of the ghost‘s appearance‖ (199). Beloved‘s another power is further demonstrated when Denver is forced to go out outside the four walls to ask for help. This is understood as significant progress in Denver‘s maturation. The moment she starts to be a member of the society, Denver changes herself into a woman. She also takes the whole responsibility of her family‘s future. This act can be also perceived as Denver‘s quest for identity. In other words, by escaping the walls in 124 Bluestone Road, Denver becomes aware of her place in the society. As a result of Denver‘s responsibility, Sethe starts to recover mentally. It is activated by the black community, especially by the black women who drive Beloved out of 124 Bluestone Road. Consequently, it is Beloved who provokes Sethe‘s ―inner transformation.‖ Beloved‘s disappearance signifies that Sethe is able to be freed and released to the present. One day, Sethe and Denver are taken to the carnival. During the night ―all the time the three shadows that shot out of their feet to the left held hands. Nobody noticed but Sethe and she stopped looking after she decided that it was a good sign. A life. Could be‖ (Beloved 57). Sethe is emotionally prepared to start a new life, and feels the emergency of a family. Indeed, Beloved stands here as a key element in the construction of Sethe‘s quest for identity. Beloved‘s appearance is absolutely essential for Sethe and Denver in the process of finding their identity.

3.2 Paul D’s quest for identity

Not only women, but also men carry internal scars that serve as bitter reminders of their time at Sweet Home, a farm in Kentucky where Paul D used to work with Sethe. The acts of human bondage have twisted their personalities. For men, this means different things.

26

In Paul D‘s case, slavery has stolen his manhood by forbidding him to make decisions or exist for himself. He goes through several stages in his lifetime; he was a slave, who becomes a free man and develops into a healer. Being a lonely wanderer, he is so separated from himself that at one point he even cannot tell whether the screaming he hears is his own or someone else. After the horrible attack in the Sweet Home barn, Sethe manages to escape and the rest of the Sweet Home men are killed except for Paul D. He was sold by Schoolteacher to another slaveholder, Mr. Brandywine, who Paul D tries to kill and thus he is sent to prison in Alfred, Georgia. Slaves were told they were less than human and were traded as merchandise whose worth could be expressed in dollars. Paul D is very insecure about whether or not he could possibly be a real man and he constantly wonders about his value as a person. Mr. Garner, the slaveholder, referred to his slaves as men while he was alive, therefore Paul D considered himself a man if a white man assigned him the title. On the contrary, he could not be considered a man according to Angelyn Mitchell, who claims that: ―a society ordinarily classified enslaved Black men as either animals or perpetual children‖ (qtd. in Dueker 1). Throughout the novel, Paul D speaks about what it means to be a man. This shows that Paul D is also in a search of his own identity. He is not enslaved by white men, but he is also enslaved by himself and his own ideas on masculinity. Paul D associates freedom with the opportunity to be a real man. In his mind, a man is not supposed to show emotions, a man is meant to be a protection for the woman, and man is there in a household to have a final word. Even though Paul D defines manhood according to above mentioned standards, he himself fails to live up to them. After Paul D‘s arrival to 124 Bluestone Road, Sethe hopes that she can shift some of her responsibilities on to him: ―What she knew was the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else‘s hands. […] trust things and remember things because the last of the Sweet Home was there to catch her if she sank?‖ (Beloved 21). The very moment Paul D enters the house, he is faced with ―a pool of pulsing red light‖ (Beloved 11). This red light can symbolize some kind of stop as seen in traffic lights. It can also warn Paul D that there is a ghost present in the house or it can indicate that Sethe changes from one type of slavery to another. The arrival of Paul D can signify that Sethe is now ―free,‖ and as a result, Paul D may represent freedom for her and Denver, who is threatened by Paul D‘s relationship to her mother, and also the memories they both share together, but she does not.

27

As described earlier, Paul D is a restless wanderer, who is not capable of settling down in one place. There is no place he can call home. When he happens to unexpectedly knock on the door of 124 Bluestone Road, he tells Sethe: ―I go anywhere these days. Anywhere they let me sit down‖ (Beloved 8). This shows his uprootedness and his continuous search for identity. His identity is shaped by his early mentioned experience of being sold off, by his escape from Brandywine to whom he was sold by Schoolteacher and by ending up in a prison with forty-six prisoners. Their cells were no bigger than a box where at night they had to endure sexual abuse, and during the day they were chained together. His every attempt to flee has been unssuccesful, and gradually, Paul D‘s heart shuts down. He locates his anguish in Alfred, Georgia, by electing to beat it by way of his feet, he manages ―simply to move, go, pick up one day and be somewhere else the next. Resigned to life without aunts, cousins, children. Even a woman, until Sethe‖ (Beloved 261). His heart was not anymore willing to feel, or comprehend his pain or disain. When he comes across Sethe and her house, he feels that he finds someone with whom he can identify. Sethe is the person he can share some of his burden with. Paul D‘s body and mind are filled with experiences as a former slave. His heart is full of painful and traumatic memories that he wants to have it locked for good in his ―tobacco tin [which was] rusted shut‖ (Beloved 137), which he carries around his neck, in a place where his heart should be. This tin has represented his sad heart since Sweet Home. The tin is not just an obstacle in accepting and moving from his past, but also plays an important role in his relationship with Sethe. Paul D seems to negotiate with his past through the symbol of tobacco tin. His negotiation is performed in a way that he does not allow himself to hold on to all various pieces of his past, yet not to think about the pieces or feel any pain associated with these pieces. Through this tobacco tin, one learns that Paul D has clearly made a conscious effort to control and shape his past and his present, and wants to have every past memory that is meaningful for him repressed. To provide an example, Paul D‘s tobacco tin has been opened, and it can be seen how much the tobacco tin serves as a way of conscious control for him. In fact, nobody can repress past nor present. However, since Paul D‘s arrival, it is evident that he appears to be slowly unlocking, and his past begins to leak out of his guarded tin. It seems that whenever Paul D comes in contact with Sethe, or with a part of Sethe‘s past, a piece of his past opens, whether he intends it or not. Whether or not Paul D intentionally wants his past to be released or

28 not is something that it cannot be learnt from the novel. However, it can be observed that once Paul D arrives to visit Sethe, his past begins to leak of his tobacco tin, and his eventual opening or recognition of the pain associated with his past, brings Paul D a strong sense of failure. Another example in which Paul D‘s relationship with his past is affected by being in contact with Sethe occurs when he has a sexual intercourse with Beloved. During this scene, Paul D is forced by Beloved to have a sex. Again, after this act, Paul D‘s tin begins to open. As stated in the previous chapter, Beloved can serve as a symbol of painful past, as well as living representation of Sethe‘s past. Fundamentally, Beloved can serve as a substantial culmination of all the pain Sethe‘s past, and therefore forces him to to face the haunting memories and pain of his own past. Sexual intercourse with Beloved causes a shift in his life, and causes him to lose control of his suppression of his past. Beloved and Paul D have much in common. Being an unsettled man, he hopes to find a future and a family at 124 Bluestone Road. Beloved is also unsettled. She was a baby ghost and she reincarnates as a young woman searching for a home with her mother and sister. When Paul D and Sethe are taken into consideration, they have a past in common which makes them understand each other‘s feelings. Paul D has no knowledge of what horrible had happened to Sethe before he comes to 124 Bluestone Road. Paul D takes this news hard and convinces Sethe that what she did was wrong. In this very moment, Sethe brings all her painful memory of her past to the surface. From this time on Paul D sees Sethe in a different light and decides to leave 124. One reason he leaves is the fact that he is not able to cope with what he has just found out and also because of Beloved. Paul D is threatened by her because, as Patrick Steadman points out: ―For Sethe and Paul D, Beloved serves as a catalyst to awaken their emotions and memories, but she also arouses their fears‖ (2). Beloved also changes Paul D‘s identity as a male when she rapes him and therefore robs him of his manhood that he has worked hard to get back. After Paul D walks away, he heads to Cincinnati where he finds a church and gets to live in the church cellar, where he finds a sense of peace and reconciliation. He goes back in his memories of Sweet Home, his brothers, sisters and his mother. While living in Cincinnati, one day he encounters Denver, who works for the Bodwin family and who informs Paul D about Sethe‘s: ―I think I‘ve lost my mother, Paul D‖ (Beloved

29

314). When Paul D comes to see Sethe, he finds her in total collapse. Beloved is gone and Paul D feels in Sethe‘s presence safer that in past. He feels he has control over his own life, he feels that he is a real free man now. Since Sethe is completely broken, with his strength, Paul D knows that he is able to get her back on feet. With Paul D‘s support, Sethe begins to see a brighter future when he tells: ―Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow‖ (Beloved 322). It is crystal clear that Paul D‘s role in his life is to pass on his newly found balance. It seems that at the end they can live a life and build a future without haunting past. Paul D‘s recovery of his manhood is essential for finding his identity. His life journey has healed him. He has managed most of his healing journey on his own, but Beloved is the one who opens his tobacco tin and forces him to heal himself.

30

4. Quest for identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Jazz Toni Morrison‘s Jazz, published in 1992, is the second in a trilogy on the African American experience of men dealing with abandonment, trauma, lost love, memory and brutality of the past. As Herman Beavers in his essay, The Politics of Space: Southerness and Manhood in Fiction of Toni Morrison, argues, ―the South is a duality, oscillating between a place of origin and a curse […], but it also represents the roots of Black culture, history and ʻhome.ʼ‖ (61) Jazz predominantly depicts powerful influence and consequences that South had both on African American men and women. In her article Southern Ethos/Black Ethics in Toni Morrison’s Fiction Lucille Fultz puts forward a view that ―the South symbolizes the worst that America has offered to blacks―racism, poverty, and oppression‖ (79). In Jazz, the South is a place which constructs and recontructs the lives of the main male and female characters. For many Blacks, not even born there, ―it is a ʻhomeplaceʼ for people whose fathers and mothers left decades ago.‖ (Fultz 79) It seems that it is an African American Mecca, so to speak, where male and female characters ―can recall and where are not rendered faceless and anonymus‖ (Beavers 61). On the other hand, as Beavers emphasises, ―the South never leaves them‖ (62). John Leonard, one of Morrison critics, in his 1992 review of Jazz points out that ―we know that sooner or later theyʼre going to head South; if need be all, all the way back to antebellum, not only for the servitude, the foreclosures, the lynchings and the mutilations but for those ghostly waters and that bag of ancestral bones‖ (qtd. in Denard 4). The historical reality of the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North during the years of World War I, and the effects on the migrants were clear in the development of Violet and Joe, the main characters in Jazz. After their migration to the North, the identity crisis started to accelarate in the lives of African Americans. The concept of identity is closely related to the theme of absent mothers. Mothers, as can be examined in Jazz, are almost always absent from the lives of the main characters. These mothers either disappeared, died or abandoned their children. Shohreh Chavoshian, in her Demystifying the Myth of the White Authenticity in Contemporary Afro-American literature: The Anagnorisis of the ʻSamenessʼ of the ʻOtherʼ stresses that ―the absence of the ʻmother figuresʼ may reflect the absence of a ʻmotherlandʼ‖ (121). This could be understood as a failure to preserve black cultural heritage, in other words an identity crisis. Consequently, some mother figures will be also analyzed in my thesis.

31

Many Black Southerners who travelled to the North, were truly haunted by the South; however, their love-hate relationship with the South always was more that of love than hate. The further they were away from the South, the more often the memories became ones of love. South both corrupts and keeps creating, to some extent, the identity of their lives. As Morrison herself claims, ―South was a place not wholly terrible nor wholly pleasant‖ (qtd. in Denard 2). This powerful influence that the South had on her characters can be clearly proven by the analysis of the main male characters, Joe Trace and Hunterʼs Hunter, and some of the female characters. The whole plot itself is delivered on the first pages of the novel and involves a love triangle story between Joe, Violet, and Dorcas. Set in Harlem in New York of 1920s, in a post World War I and in the era of Harlem Rennaisance and Great Migration, this is also loosely based on a true event. Morrison herself once saw a picture that showed an eighteen-year old girl lying in a coffin, who had gone to a party and while she was dancing she was suddenly shot by her ex-lover. As she was slumping, people noticed there was blood on her. Although she was dying, she refused to name her killer. Thereby, she allowed him to escape. From this picture, it seems clear that a woman loved someone more than herself. Morrison continues by stating that ―[this woman] had placed all of the value of her life in something outside herself‖ (qtd. in Jones 42).

4.1 Joe Trace and Hunterʼs Hunter

Jazz starts in media res with a picture of a fifty-three-year old Joe Trace crying all day, having fallen for ―one of those deep-down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot [Dorcas] just to keep the feelings going‖ (JZ4 4). Joe shot Dorcas Manfred, his eighteen-year-old mistress, old enough to be his daughter, in an attempt not to lose her, but to preserve the feelings their relationship has produced. He is not put to the jail, not even accused, ―because nobody actually saw him do it‖ (JZ 5). Protibha Sahukar in his essay, ‗There she is’: Reconnoitering the Miasmatic Leanings of Joe Trace in Toni Morrison’s Jazz, highlights that ―the grief of the past treads on the heels of the present‖ (176). Killing Dorcas lets off humiliation and confined suffering which Joe experienced in his childhood. Joe is psychologically wounded since he never knew his biological parents and struggles with his inability to draw connections to the past.

4 JZ stands for Jazz 32

His vision of the past is linked to the South. This was all he knew before his northwards migration. In Andreas Wiig Løchenʼs Narrative and Identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Song of Solomon and Jazz, Beaver claims that ―the past remains embedded in Joeʼs consciousness‖ (50). This has important consequences for him because for most of the novel, he does not speak about his past to any of the characters. The exception is only Dorcas, from whom Joe needs to feel that he belongs to somebody. However, Dorcas unfortunately dies. Joe is an adopted child, raised in Vesper County in 1873. Rhoda and Frank Williams took him and brought him up with other six children of their own. Mrs. Rhoda named him Joseph after her father, but never gave him a last name. The process of naming is important here, since the last name always indicates the belonging to a family history. The lack of surname, in other words family roots, ―leaves Joe floating through life without ever establishing a sense of belonging to a specific place‖ (Lonien 113). Joeʼs uprootedness manifests also in a lack of self-identity, which he describes as ―inside nothing‖ (JZ 37). This uprootedness causes Joeʼs numerous changes. The first change is carried out when Joe wilfully creates his own identity: ―The first time was when I named my own self, since nobody did it for me, since nobody knew what it could or should have been‖ (JZ 123). When Joe asks his foster mother where his biological parents are, he is told that ―they disappear without a traceˮ (JZ 124). Joe understands her answer as follows: ―the way I heard it I understood her to mean the ʻtraceʼ they disappeared without was meˮ (JZ 124). Therefore, he gives himself the last name Trace since he cannot find a trace of his mother. This clearly proves that Joe is starting to search his own identity by naming himself. His name is far from being his own invention or creation, but it is the result of his misinterpretation of his foster motherʼs words. This example of misnaming, as an indication of some kind of illusiveness, can explain why his own interpretation of himself is illusive too. Joeʼs killing Dorcas might be explained as Joeʼs not knowing which piece of his life he is trying to keep or erase. Symbolically, Joe shoots Dorcas but he says it was not his intention to harm her, he had just meant to touch her. In this sense then, the murder is seen as an act of love, Joeʼs desperate attempt to retain the bonding he had temporarily achieved with Dorcas by suspending it through death. Joe believes that the only way to prevent this ʻmother-loveʼ bond from being broken is through death. The bond between mother and child is the most important relationship in life. All future relationships are then based upon this relationship. In fact, Joe never

33 experiences any kind of bond with his mother, nor does he experiences any love. He never receives any maternal love from his foster mother. From the time of being a small baby, Joe has belonged to nowhere; he has been nobody. Unlike Violet, Joeʼs mother abandoned him at birth and he never met her. Since he had no mother, Joe had to name himself. His lack of a name is symbolic of the fact that Joe really has no sense of self. Without his name and without a mother to get his name from, Joe starts out life without identity. Joe lost himself when he lost his mother. So, in reality, Joe has never known himself because he has never known his mother. This state Sahukar calls as ―nothingness‖ (176). This kind of nothingness starts to grow gradually inside him. This causes a deep psychological wound upon him. What is striking is the fact that Joe never mourns the absence of his biological father. However, this fact reemphasizes the signifance of having been selected by one, and along with Victory Williams, who ―[was] closer than many brother [Joe] has seenˮ (JZ 123), trained into manhood by the ―best men in Vesper County to go hunting with‖ (JZ 125). For rootless Joe, this was an offer of his father who actually selects him ―to teach and hunt with, talk about proud- makingˮ (JZ 125). The importance of this fact is stressed by Joeʼs mentioning three times that the hunter ʻpickedʼ him which can be clearly perceived as Joeʼs very first person who ever claims him. Mayberry asserts that ―being selected among all others by a strong, self-assured father figure can be more useful to a black son than a family name, especially when the choice is mutual‖ (199). In many Morrisonʼs novels, skills in hunting, an exclusively male occupation, which Morrison uses ―as a trope for the proces of black male identity formation,ˮ (Mayberry 198) is employed. Joe names his mentor a ―Hunterʼs Hunter,ˮ a man of several names, also referred as Henry Lestory. As far as his surname is concerned, it contains a word ʻstoryʼ which clearly reflects him. He is a former slave who provides protection and control for others. Having his cabin and piece of land gives him independence and freedom. He is largely free since he is able to provide himself with everything nature can give him. Being a master woodsman and hunter, he ―train[s] [Joe] to be a manˮ (JZ 125). The hunter is from this time on Joeʼs primary parent. Joe imitates him and adopts a hunterʼs identity. It is also the time when wild nature becomes Joeʼs home: ―it was because of him, what I learned from him, made me more comfortable in the woods than in a town‖ (JZ 125-26). Joe feels better in woods than in a city as he convincingly demonstrates by saying: ―Iʼd get nervous if a fence or a rail was anywhere around‖ (JZ 126). He feels safe in the environment of wild nature which is understood

34 as his shelter. Paradoxically speaking, Joe feels less lonelier in the woods than in the company of the people from his community: ―[…] loneliness was a thing couldnʼt get near me‖ (JZ 129). Joe states here that he feels free in his movements in the woods and is able to experience freedom which he is not in his community. His way of life resembles that of a hunter. Indeed, the woods becomes his true home where he feels comfortable and safe. As already mentioned earlier, Joe changes himself seven times in a total. The subsequent changes happen at different points in his life. Another change came when Hunterʼs Hunter conducts his training. When starting, Hunterʼs Hunter warns Joe and Victory ―never to kill the tender of anything female if they can help it‖ (JZ 175). For Hunter, hunting is not only a means of providing food, but it also equated with protecting the female. This is apparent when Hunter urges that ―[people] ainʼt prey. You got to know the difference‖ (JZ 175). In this scene Hunterʼs Hunter acts as the protector of the African American woman. His words also entails that it is the responsibility of a man to care for woman, which is in particular a case when Hunterʼs Hunter tells Joe with regards to his bilogical mother called Wild: ―You know, that woman is somebodyʼs mother and somebody ought to take care‖ (JZ 175). In my opinion, the boy hunter Joe learns at least his lesson well. Joe now also understands that ―they said that so they wouldnʼt have to say he was smart‖ (JZ 125). Despite misjudgement by whitefolks who speak about him as a ʻwitch doctor,ʼ Joe understands him as being clever. On one hand, Hunterʼs Hunter teaches Joe how to hunt, but on the other hand, he teaches him how to search for ʻtracesʼ of his prey. In other words, this is the training that Joe uses for searching Wild and later for Dorcas and finally himself.

4.2 Joe and Wild

Wild, Joeʼs biological mother, who abandoned him, was given her name by Hunterʼs Hunter because when ―tending her, that was the the word he thought of: Wild. He was sure he was tending a sweet but abused young girl at first, but when she bit him, he said, Oh, sheʼs wild‖ (JZ 166). The reasons why she abandoned Joe are left to speculations because Wild is speechless. Joe, looking back at his childhood, remembers overhearing a woman in the hotel whispering: ―I am bad for my children. I donʼt mean to be, but there is something in me that makes it so. Iʼm a good mother but they do better away from me; as long as theyʼre by my side nothing good can come to them‖ (JZ 125). This statement clearly shows how mothers, in general, are not able to see the 35 faults of the system as being responsible for their childrenʼs having a hard time and consequently blame themselves. This can be the reason of Wild. The impossibility of providing Joe with well-being might have led her to let her son with someone else. A hunterʼs task is to follow a prey and it is also true for Joe. Joeʼs quest for Wild starts on his journey through the woods. He feels the trace of his mother in the wild nature. He is obsessed by Wild being present but at the same time absent in the wild nature: ―He slipped into mud, tripped over black roots, scuffed through patches of dirt crawling with termites. He loved the woods because Hunter taught him how to. But now they were full of her, a simple-minded woman too silly to beg for a living‖ (JZ 179). In the frantic search of Wild, Joe longs for returning to his motherʼs arms, simply to his roots. Joe, who has never met her mother, hunts her and follows her. When Joe finally finds her, it is only breathing he can hear. Joe begs her: ―You donʼt have to say nothing. Let me see your hand. Just stick it out someplace and Iʼll go; I promise. A sign […] You my mother? Yes. No. Both. Either. But not this nothing‖ (JZ 178). All Joe wants to know is the identity of his mother. He does not want to talk to her or even spend time with her; he just wants to acknowledge that Wild is really his mother. The fact that Joe is an excellent hunter can be taken for granted, makes it even worse since Joe is not able to catch Wild. Joeʼs desperate attempt to define his motherʼs identity is a very significant element in his own search for identity. This also means that since he cannot catch Wild, Joe is unable to catch or find his own identity. ―All in all, he made three solitary journeys to find her. In Vienna, he had lived for first with the fear of her, then the joke of her, finally the obsession, followed by the rejection of her‖ (JZ 175). The third time Joe sets out to his journey, he finally finds Wildʼs home. The scene is powerfully described by Morrisonʼs use of symbolism. Like Setheʼs chokecherry tree in Morrisonʼs Beloved symbolizes the trauma of Setheʼs past, a tree that Joe finds while seeking for Wild reflects Wild herself. Joe describes in detail the tree he sees as ―the one whose roots grew backward as though, having gone obediently into earth and found it barren, retreating to the trunk for what was needed. Defiant and against logic its roots climbed. Toward leaves, light, wind‖ (JZ 182). This tree symbolizes ―the fates of the characters as they are wrapped up in their pasts (or roots) which makes it difficult for them to plant or stabilize themselves in their environment or to create a connection with those around them‖ (Student 55). The tree also symbolizes Wild at one point of her life. She, like any normal member of society, aspired to grow and prosper by the role given her by hard work and obedience in order

36 to achieve a certain social status. Like most African American women at that time, she had her dreams. Although her illusions were not fulfilled, she yields from the society she was a part of, and creates her own space and home in the wild nature, in light, leaves and wind. She actually found complete freedom in the total rejection of civilization. Like the tree, Joe is also attempting to search his roots, but on the contrary, as Student points out, ―the process of straightening out these roots is a dangerous one which threatens to swallow a person whole or fragment irreparably‖ (56). Essentially, they are growing backwards. Therefore, Joe must reconnect with his memories and roots in order to reclaim his true self. Looking back upon Joeʼs life after he has shot Dorcas, he claims: ―I changed once too often. Made myself new one time too many. You could say Iʼve been a new Negro all my life‖ (JZ 129). Here Joe considers himself as a self-made man. In a similar way, Joe describes the beginning of his love affair with Dorcas: ―He did not yearn or pine for the girl, rather he thought about her, and decided. Just as he had decided on his name, the walnut tree he and Victory slept in, a piece of bottomland, and when to head for the City, he decided on Dorcas‖ (JZ 29-30). In this passage Joe stresses how he chose Dorcas and how this act was his own decision. Joe pictures himself as an independent man who is able to decide without being controlled. However, throughout the novel, it becomes crystal clear that Joe is not in control of himself and not even in control of others. The changes in his personality that he understands as the decisions of his will, are imposed on him by society. For example, his leaving Vienna, when his third change occurs, is not his own decision or choice; he is simply forced to leave when ―Vienna burned to the ground. Red fire doing fast what white sheets took too long to finish: canceling every deed; vacating each and every field; emptying us out of our place so fast we went running from one part of the country to another―or nowhere‖ (JZ 126). Another change took place when Joe is almost killed by a group of white men in a revolt. He survives because ―one of those whitemen had a heart and kept the others from finishing me right then and there‖ (JZ 128). In all the examples mentioned above it is not Joe who decides to change himself, but the society around him, in these cases white men. Speaking about this distribution of roles, it is not Joe who is in the dominating position, but the white men who hold this position. Joe is more or less passive of their violent actions. He appears to be in position which is according to gender stereotypes for the female. This can reveal that Joe is still in search for his own identity.

37

4.3 Joe and Dorcas

As commented earlier, Joe goes in search of Wild in hope of being confirmed as her child. His pleas is unfortunetaly unanswered and Joe gradually tries to forget Wild but she remains ―always on his mind‖ (JZ 207). Joe finds in Dorcas the mother he never knew and longs for the love from her he never had. His obsession with Wild is transferred to an obsession with Dorcas. Joe actually never finds his mother but he does Dorcas. In this point, Dorcas and Joeʼs mother Wild can merge into one person. Dorcas symbolizes Joeʼs picture of Wild. He assumes that young Dorcas is what he has found at the end of his trial in the woods. Dorcas fills Joeʼs complete emptiness of being alone and his desire for a mother-love. Joe supposes that Dorcas is the end of his numerous changes and a new beginning of his life. Joe imagines that the lack of love he experienced during his childhood will be fulfilled, and he can finally change from a child to a man. What is quite shocking is Joeʼs various addressing Dorcas as a lover, a father and a motherless child. Nevertheless, their Joe-Dorcas relationship cannot endure. Presumably, Dorcas starts to abandon Joe, a father-figure, for a younger man, Acton. Joe, again, must face the problem of abandoning and loss. Joeʼs never-ending hunt for his mother climaxes in Dorcasʼ shooting. As Philip Weinstein comments: ―When we seek to understand why Joe killed Dorcas we find ourselves far from any interior psychoanalytic paradigm of isolated and repressed motivations, the desire, that is, to take revenge on Wild through Dorcas‖ (qtd. in Recker 128). Weinstein goes even deeper when he elaborates that ―in order to explain the murder we have to look for something more than any explanations ʻcultural and temporal:ʼ outside pressures affecting them all‖ (qtd. in Recker 129). Speaking about the murder, first, I would suggest that Joe does not kill Dorcas because she has abandoned him like Wild did, but by killing Dorcas Joe frees himself. Paradoxically, this horrendous act is Joeʼs rejection of Hunterʼs Hunter ethics of protecting the female. While he is tracking Dorcas, he remembers Hunterʼs words: ―he isnʼt thinking of of harming her, or, as Hunter had cautioned, killing something tender. She is female. And she is not prey. So he never thinks of that. He is hunting for her though […]‖ (JZ 180). Second, what seems to force Joe to shoot Dorcas is not much the abandonment, but the things she has done for Acton. Dorcas was apparently not happy with Joe because her new boyfriend is ―up and coming. Hawk-eyed, tireless and a little cruel. He has never given her a present or even thought about it. Sometimes he is where he says he will be; sometimes not‖ (JZ 188).

38

Dorcasʼ relationship with Acton is totally opposite to the one with Joe. Even though he does not give her any presents, he provides Dorcas with something she strongly desires: ―What they want and the prize it is his to give is his savvy self. What could a pair of silk stockings be compared with him‖ (JZ 188). Dorcas wants to be with him not because she loves him but because he is adored by other girls in the parties, and because she is being watched green with envy by them: ―Lots of girls here want to be doing this with him. I can see them when I open my eyes to look past his neck. I rub my thumbnail over his nape so the girls will know I know they want him‖ (JZ 191). Dorcas loves to be observed. People watching her provide her with a sense of self. This feeling is even intensified after being shot by Joe, the very first thing Dorcas notices is ―the heads turning to look where I am falling‖ (JZ 192). This provokes in Dorcas the sense of identity dependent on social environment. Frivolity of this type of identity is displayed by Actonʼs answer to Dorcasʼ death. He is more disgusted by the blood that ―has stained through his jacket to his shirt [and] he is dabbing at it with a white handkerchief‖ (JZ 192). This clearly demonstrates that Acton is much more occupied with the blood than the bleeding and dying Dorcas. The idea that Joe could have lost Dorcas is unbearable to him: ―What would she want with a rooster? Crowing on a corner, looking at the chickens to pick over them. Nothing they have I donʼt have better. […] When I find her, I know―I bet my life―she wonʼt be holed up with one of them. […] Not her, not Dorcas. Sheʼll be alone. Hardheaded. Wild, even. But alone‖ (JZ 182). Joeʼs mentioning of Wild/Dorcas clearly shows that he finds it absolutely impossible to accept that he should lose Wild/Dorcas.

4.4 Violet Trace

When speaking about Joeʼs wife Violet, a fifty-year-old unlicensed hairdresser, a reader learns that she came to New York City with Joe in 1906, leaving behind traumas of her childhood. Like Joe, Violet is also an abandoned child raised by her grandmother True Belle. They met and later married, as Joe realizes later, in an attempt to fill his huge hole in himself, left there by his motherʼs rejection. Violetʼs life in Harlem is characterised, as Angelyn Mitchell in ʻSth, I Know that Womanʼ: History, Gender, and the South in Toni Morrisonʼs Jazz points out: ―by the alienation, isolation and fragmentation she feels in what should have been the promised land‖ (57). Violet very meaningfully reveals: ―Before I came North I made sense and so did the world‖ (JZ 207). This shows that Violet considers the South a place where she had her own 39 identity. According to Violet, as indicated above, the North is a place full of alienation and isolation. Again, this can also prove that like Joe, Violet struggles with her past too. This couple consists of two lonely people whose love cannot be fulfilled because of disappointment and pain they both have experienced. Eventually, it is her obsession with herself that forces Joe to commit infidelity and then murder. In fact, it is Violetʼs silence that causes Joe to behave crazy and encourages him to pursue a younger mistress. When Joe cannot find any intimacy and friendship with his wife, he looks for someone else. Joe needs love and comprehension. He discovers it in the arms of Dorcas, a girl with ―sugar-flawned skin, […], her bitten nails, the heart-breaking way she stood, toes pointed in‖ (JZ 28). At the time Joe meets Dorcas, Violet ―is sleeping with a baby doll‖ that can be perceived, as Rubenstein stresses, ―mother-hunger‖ (gtd. in Speller 40), and talks to her parrot that chirps ―I love you‖ (JZ 1). Before the terrible monstrosity of cutting the face of a dead girl at her funeral, Violet splits herself into two different characters. From this time on, there are in fact two Violets. In this moment I think of DuBoisʼs theory of double-consciousness: ―this sense of always looking at oneʼs self through the eyes of others, of measuring oneʼs soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity‖ (qtd. in Mitchell 57). Morrison reveals Violetʼs split―her double-consciousness―by describing her in terms of ―that other Violet. Whenever she thought about that Violet, and what that Violet saw through her own eyes, there was no shame, no disgust. That was hers alone […]‖ (JZ 94). After meeting and marrying Joe, Violet was strong and assertive. Violet was brought up convinced that she does not want any child, but after some miscarriages, Violet starts to be haunted by her childish decisions: ―Violet was drowning in it, deep-dreaming. Just when her breasts were finally flat enough not to need the binders the young women wore to sport the chest of a soft boy, just when her nipples had lost their point, mother-hunger had hit like a hammer‖ (JZ 108). Violet searches to fill up the space in her self. Violetʼs total rejection of being a mother is also closely tied to her motherʼs death. ―The important thing, the biggest thing Violet got out of that was to never never have children. Whatever happened, no small dark foot would rest on another while a hungry mouth said, Mamma‖ (JZ 102). Many miscarriages Violet had suffered were ―more inconvenience than loss‖ (JZ 107). Later Violet imagines Dorcas as one of her own daughters. When Violet speaks about the loss of this daughter, she describes it as an abortion: ―Was she the woman who took the man, or the daughter who fled her womb? Washed away on a tide of soap, salt and castrol oil. Terrified, perhaps, of so violent a

40 home. Unaware, that, had it failed, had she braved mammymade poisons and mammyʼs urgent fists, she could have had the best-dressed hair in the City‖ (JZ 109). It seems that these miscarriages were self-induced, in fact. They signify Violetʼs rejection of motherhood – or in other words her refusal to become her mother. Violetʼs ʻher motherʼ indicates that she does not want to be like that. Andrea OʼReilly in her In Search of My Motherʼs Garden, I Found my Own: Mother-Love, Healing, and Identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Jazz terms this as ―matrophobia: the fear not of oneʼs mother or of motherhood but of becoming oneʼs mother‖ (370). Violet says: ―Her mother. She didnʼt want to be like that. Oh never like that‖ (JZ 97). As indicated earlier, Violet simply refuses to become like her mother and realizes that she is not psychologically prepared for being a mother. Since she has not been mothered herself, she is not able to fulfill the role of a daughter. Only daughters who have received maternal love are capable of giving maternal love when they become mothers. Not having been a daughter, Violet is not able to become a mother. However, while Violet strongly refuses to become like her mother, she continually gives herself to a position of a mother. Throughout the story, we are told how Violet ―stares at infants and hesitates in front of toys displayed at Christmas‖ (JZ 107). As mentioned earlier, Violet surrounds herself with a doll that she has in bed. Another proof which can be considered as Violetʼs longing for being a mother is her job, a hairdresser, which represents a mothering activity for Violet. Her customers are her children, the daughters she never had. Thus, Violet finds her lost self through mothering. With Dorcas, her hairdressing customers, the doll, the parrot, Violet desires to become the mother she lost. As a crucial point here, OʼReilly highlights the fact that ―[Violet] projects herself onto the person or animal that is being cared for‖ (370). Simply, Violet plays a mother herself. Violet can be both the mother she lost and the daughter she was. The very first glimpse of Violet is her trying to cut the face of Dorcas, her husbandʼs lover. Barbara Lewis views Violetʼs attempt at cutting Dorcasʼ face as a way of ―strip[ing] her ties with Joe, ʻde-fac[ing]ʼ her‖ (qtd. in Speller 40). However shocking Violetʼs reaction is, it can be explained as anger and responding to her husbandʼs adultery. Violet begins to be obsessed with the idea to win Joe back and takes up learning all she can about Dorcas in order to become her. Thus, she voluntarily undergoes another change. She is curious to discover the reasons for Joeʼs attraction to Dorcas and she therefore starts to follow Dorcasʼ teachers, classmates, friends, and even visits Alice, Dorcasʼ aunt. She learns Dorcasʼ favourite dance steps and ―did the dance

41 steps the dead girl used to do‖ (JZ 5). It culminates when she brings home a picture of the dead girl, observes it and finds out the contrast in their ages and in their complexions, since Dorcasʼ is ―cream-at-the-top-of-the-milkpail‖ (JZ 12) and ―sugar- flawned‖ (JZ 28), whilst Violetʼs is ―very very dark, bootblack‖ (JZ 206). Moreover, Violet sees Dorcas as the child she never had. The various colours of their skins demonstrate Violetʼs crooked view of herself. She sees herself as two different persons, the first as a failure because of her unsuccessful attempts of having a child and the second she feels abandoned again by Joe, whom she loves.

4.5 Alice Manfred

Another female character, which should not be omitted, is Alice Manfred, Dorcasʼ aunt who raises Dorcas after Dorcasʼ parents are killed in the race riots. She later on plays an important role in Violetʼs life. Alice was left by her husband and has not been able to recover from his abandonment. Alice fervently believes that in order to survive one must ―crawl along the walls of building, disappear into doorways, cut across corners in choked traffic […], move anywhere to avoid a whiteboy over the age of eleven‖ (JZ 55). She tries to make herself invisible and this invisibility helps her survive. While taking care of Dorcas, she teaches it to Dorcas. Suprisingly, after Dorcasʼ death, Violet establishes a mother-like relationship with Alice. This type of bond is evident in many Morrisonʼs novels. Mothers are not always biological mothers, it is usually somebody older who takes care. Alice and dead Dorcas are the crucial characters in Violetʼs quest for identity. They provide her with what she misses in the North – especially family and community. Dorcas becomes the daughter Violet never had and Alice becomes Violetʼs mother, Rose Dear, whose family suffered in slavery. She had five children and was abandoned by her husband, who ―had been mixed in and up with the Readjuster Party, and when a verbal urging from landowners had not worked, a physical one did the trick and he was persuaded to transfer hisself someplace, anyplace, else‖ (JZ 99-100). Rose was not able to provide economically her family. One day their belongings were robbed from the house and Rose stopped speaking because of what had happened. She was not able to withstand this and as a way out form this situation she commited suicide by throwing herself into a well. Carole Davies confirms that ―at certain junctures in [womenʼs] lives, they require healing and renewal and that Black women themselves have to become the healers/mothers for each other when there is such need‖ (qtd. in OʼReilly 372). 42

According to Davies then, we may see that Violet is ʻdaughterʼ to Alice, who takes her on a journey to find her original self. Aliceʼs occupation is a dressmaker. When she mends Violetʼs coat, two types of mending occur. First, there is the real mending of her coatʼs lining. Alice cannot stand ―the thread running loose from her sleeve, as well as the coat lining ripped in at least three places she could see‖ (JZ 82). Second, there is a symbolic, psychological mending that takes place. Figuratively, the stitches Alice sews are the stitches which should heal Violetʼs wounds. For the first time, Violet can feel that somebody cares of her, because ―the children of suicides are hard to please and quick to believe no one loves them because they are not really here‖ (JZ 4). Violet wishes to be cared as a mother does a child, and this real mending assures her that someone really cares for her, paradoxically, even it is the aunt of her husbandʼs lover. Violet does not hide her emotions anymore and is even able to admit she has commited the horrible action on Dorcasʼ funeral. In this case, Violet does not repress the past, she explores her memories and even tries to hold them. She actually brings a picture of Dorcas to the apartement, which means she is willing to accept the past and invite the past into her home. In the same way, Joe also does not want to repress the horrific action he caused: ―he minds her death, is so sorry about it, but minded more the possibility of his memory failing to conjure up the dearness […] he is trying to sear her into his mind, brand her there againts future wear‖ (JZ 28). Obviously, Joe longs for keeping Dorcas in his memory. Through this connection with Dorcas, Joe is able to fill the lack of connection he has with past. Student declares: ―This allows Joe and Violet to understand their feelings concerning Dorcasʼ death. The agency of the characters also allows them to begin to heal‖ (59). As stated earlier, this healing is carried out when Alice takes Violet into home. Student carries on with stating that ―Joe and Violet have become agents in their own lives rather than passive characters to be manipulated and moved‖ (52). However, the South which stands here for past never leaves them; in sum – the past is always part of the present. These characters, especially Joe and Violet, clearly show that their past lives have a major effect on their present lives and the clash of these two opposites is the main cause of their struggle to search their identity. Looking closer at these characters, it becomes apparent that even with their transition from the North to the South, past is still creating them. The relationship between the North and the South is established early on in Jazz when Joe and Violet migrated from Virginia to New York. With the massive migration of African Americans from the Southern to the Northern United

43

States, it is no wonder that the difference between the North and the South carries great signification. It closely corresponds to the relationship between the present and the past. The North is a place where they are now, while the South is the place of their origin, ―their rootedness and the perdurability of the African American spirit‖ (Fultz 79). These characters have access to the South only through memory. Furthermore, it is substantial that the past in Jazz comes across very differently. First, all the characters never actually go South. Actually, all of the actions are held in Harlem, and their past is recollected by the characters. Joe and Violet use their traumatic pasts to describe the present. Ivonne Atkinson and Philip Page in their ʻI Been Worried Sick about You Too, Maconʼ: Toni Morrison, the South, and the Oral Tradition claim: As characters in the North struggle to create healthy identities, they must come to terms with their own or their ancestorsʼ Southern parts by somehow fusing past and present. The characters must also come to terms with abandoning the trappings of their past. In the North, despite their efforts to discard their slave past, traces―names, language, rituals, and traditions―remain (96). De facto, Joe, an abandoned child, with no much past has to create the past himself and thus is able to more freely create it. Violet, an orphan, has to grow up without her mother, too. Unlike Joe, Violet remembers her mother but suffers from trauma which she experienced after her mother threw herself into the well. Dorcas also lost her mother in fire. The absence of mothers is characteristic for every character in the novel. Every protagonist has to face with the difficulties of being an orphan. When Joe is taken into consideration, we see his desperate search for his mother Wild. He does not want to live with her, the only thing he wishes for is just a sign. A sign of her existence would be enough for him. Mothers, in general, are considered as a symbol for life, for home and for identity. Our parents form our part of identity, without parents we feel displaced. The absence of the main protagonistsʼ mothers can be seen as the absense of their roots, and their desperate search for their mothers can be understood as their search for identity.

44

5. Conclusion Toni Morrison in her novels provides a very detailed description of the different experiences of the African Americans who have been in search for their identity. She deals with multiple oppression that contributes to the identity formation of the African Americans, in general. She explores African American identity by a process of going deeper into the main characters‘ past. While comparing her three novels, dealing with them in chronological order – namely Tar Baby, Beloved and Jazz, the main purpose of my diploma thesis is to demonstrate on the main female as well as male protagonists, how the process of uprooting from their homes has influenced the main characters in their long journeys while searching their identities. Besides this, these journeys whether successful or not, are also described in details. Since the topics such as lost love, trauma, home, memory, past, etc. are recurring in her works, they are touched upon, too. To start with uprooted and orphaned Jadine Childs in Tar Baby, she is a typical example of African American woman, who does not identify herself in terms of her African American origin, but by her beauty which opens the door for her successful career in modelling industry. She has totally succumbed the white culture, which has undoubtedly an enormous influence on her development. Having graduated from Sorbonne, she has an art history degree. This self-confident, self-sufficient and successful young woman meets Son, a typical representative of African American culture, who brings her about to pose questions about her African American identity. At the beginning, Jadine is haunted by her past. She has been living according to the white standards and now she is exposed to Son, who introduces his knowledge of the past to Jadine, who has completely lost this link. What is essential here in Jadine‘s conflict with herself when she cannot preserve a sense of her identity. Being completely removed from home, her roots, she in not capable of finding her true connections to home, to her past. Thanks to the character of Son Green, an African American stowaway, who secretly follows Jadine and hides in the mansion where she stays, it is transparent that Jadine‘s life is going to be dramatically changed. Son was born in Eloe, Florida, which can be perceived as Son being more grounded than Jadine, who is to a certain extent homeless. Isle des Chevaliers, a place of escape for Jadine, where she stays in between

45 her modelling career, is a kind of home, where she comes to have a rest. As evident, for both of them the island is not a native homeland. Juxtaposing Jadine and Son, their quest for identity complicates their own relationship. Their journey in search for identity is not possible to solve. Jadine and Son are complete opposites which can prove that their backgrounds are so different that neither of them will admit the claims of the other. Nevertheless, they will not be wholly free and still will be in search of identity. As far as Sethe, a former slave woman, in Beloved is concerned, she is an example of a rebellious mother, who murders one of her four children to avoid physical, emotional and opressive horrors of a life spent is enslavement. She manages to kill one daughter, who comes back as a ghost that now haunts the house, where Sethe stays with Denver, the only daughter who survives. Sethe‘s body full of scars and wounds from the past, both physical and psychic, is not a suitable place, where identity can be recognized in a positive way. Sethe‘s past full of cruelty shapes her life to the extent she is not able to recover her identity and thus it remains wounded. Whether Sethe has the moral right to carry on the infanticide is the central question of the novel. However, Sethe declares ―if I hadn‘t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear happen to her‖ (Beloved 236). This act of killing can be understood as Sethe‘s salvation from the institution of slavery and Sethe‘s love for her children. Sethe goes on when stating that ―to kill my children is preferable to having them die‖ (Beloved 243). This proves that Sethe‘s love for her children is much stronger than killing them. Sethe‘s deep love for her children can be explained by the fact she is an unloved woman. Sethe never experiences her mother‘s love, a relationship with her husband Halle is strong, but his psychological absence is evident. Sethe‘s two sons vanish because they are scared of Sethe would try to kill them again. Denver is frightened that Sethe may kill her, too. Throughout the novel it is obvious that Sethe does not know how to love herself. Her identity is lost in all the pain she experienced in the past. The only place, where she is able to some extent define her identity, is the refuge among the four walls of 124 Bluestone Road. Figuratively speaking, the premises of the house lock her and this can be perceived as an attempt to revise the past and free her from the heavy burden of the murder she has commited. This Sethe‘s feeling wakes into being the ghost of Beloved. Thanks to the character of Beloved, a powerful symbol of the link between the present and the past, Sethe‘s wounds caused by slavery are open again and the slow process of constructing her

46 identity begins. Beloved‘s appearance and presence plays a crucial role in formulation Sethe‘s identity. As for Paul D, a former slave and a wanderer, he is not sure what it means to be a man, thus he is also in a search for his own identity. He locks his past and his memories from the past into a tobacco tin, which he carries all the time around his neck. Considering this tin, it symbolizes his repressed experiences and his past. With his arrival to 124 Bluestone Road, and whenever he comes in contact with Sethe, a piece of his past opens. As stated earlier, with coming across Beloved, he first tries to exorcise her and afterwards is unable to resist intimacy with her, they have a sexual intercourse. Paul D shifts in his life and loses control of his past. In fact, Beloved and Paul D have much in common. Being both unsettled, they hope to find a home and a family. As for Paul D and Sethe, their past makes them understand easier each other‘s feelings. After Sethe‘s memories of killing her daughter are brought to the surface, Paul D is threatened and walks away. He starts his healing journey by going back in his memories of Sweet Home, and gradually recovers his manhood that is essential for finding his identity. As far as Joe and Violet Trace from Jazz are taken into consideration, their past lives have a major effect on their present lives and clash of these two opposites is the principal cause of their struggle while searching their identity. With their transition from the South to the North, past is still creating them. However, they have access to the South only through memory. Joe, an adopted child, never having a last name, family roots, is a typical example of a man having no sense of self, in other words lacking self-identity. This lack causes Joe‘s seven changes in his life. With respect to Wild, Joe‘s biological mother, who abandons him, she yields from the society and she creates her own space of home in the wild nature. Joe‘s desperate attempt to find her and define his mother‘s identity is a very significant element in his own search for identity. Another crucial character who is searching for her identity is Violet, Joe‘s wife, who is also an abandoned child. She comes to New York City with Joe, leaving behind her memories and traumas of her childhood. Despite Violet‘s struggle with her past and with pain she experienced, she considers the South as a place, where she had her own identity. Being lonely, silent and obsessed only with herself, Joe discovers love and comprehension he needs in the arms of Dorcas, his young mistress. Joe finds in Dorcas the mother he never knew and longs for the love from her. His obsession with Wild is

47 transferred to Dorcas, who unfortunately later rejects him for a younger man. Joe‘s never-ending hunt, abandonment and loss which he has suffered climaxes in Dorcas‘ killing, which can be perceived as Joe‘s freeing himself. Metaphorically, Sethe‘s act of killing can be understood with the same intention of freeing herself, but in her case from slavery. Violet‘s terrible monstrosity of assaulting the Dorcas‘ corpse at the funeral splits her into two different characters. However shocking Violet‘s reaction is, it can be explained as anger to Joe‘s adultery. As evident from her actions, she goes completely mad. She somehow begins to realize the difference between who she is and who she was before moving to the North. She even does not hide her feelings anymore, therefore, she does not repress the past. These characters use their traumatic pasts to describe the present. In short, Joe with no much past, has to create the past himself and thus is able to more freely create it. The absence of the mothers is also considered as the determinant while searching the characters‘ identity. In sum, Son, Sethe, Paul D, Joe, Violet and Dorcas, they all have to face with the difficulties of being the orphaned or abandoned children. Almost every character is in a desperate search for his/her mother. Parents, in general, form the part of identity. The absence of the mothers can be seen as the absence of their roots. Finally, this work brings an evidence that the quest for one‘s identity, which is a long-run process, is the central theme in the analyzed novels. Examining the central characters in details ‒ African American men and women, it is apparent that their traumatic past lives, uprootedness and their repressed memories influence their search for identity. Jadine Childs and Son Green‘s quest for identity is probably not successful at the end. Jadine being completely removed from her roots is not able to find her true connections to her past. Son, being a total opposite, is at the end diverted to the wild side of the Isle des Chevaliers, probably still searching his identity. Sethe, Denver and Paul D‘s quest for identity, fully influenced by their past full of cruelty in slavery, is at the end to a certain extent successful by Beloved‘s appearance. Joe and Violet are the characters, whose quest for identity is also influenced by their past. If their search for identity is at the end of the novel sucessful, is not mentioned. To bring the conclusion to an end, this diploma thesis, focusing on the in-depth analyses of the characters and examination of their past, reveals that in most cases the quest for identity is not always a successful process.

48

Resume This diploma thesis focuses primarily on three of Toni Morrison‘s novels, dealing with them in chronological order – namely Tar Baby, Beloved and Jazz. In my view, these works of fiction fully illustrate how Morrisonʼs idea of ―home‖ is crucially related to the self. I will try to demonstrate, on the main female as well as male characters from these three novels, that there is usually at least one character whose desire to go home, to come back to his/her roots, if possible, is not always possible to solve. While comparing her three novels, the main purpose of my diploma thesis is to demonstrate on the main female as well as male protagonists, how the process of uprooting from their homes has influenced the main characters in their long journeys while searching their identities. Besides this, these journeys whether successful or not, are also described in details. Since the topics such as lost love, trauma, home, memory, past, etc. are recurring in her works, they are touched upon, too.

Resumé Tato diplomová práce je věnována srovnáním tří příběhů a jejich hlavních hrdinů slavné afroamerické spisovatelky Toni Morrisonové, nositelky Nobelovy ceny za literaturu. Důkladně analyzovanými knihami jsou Léčka, Milovaná a Jazz. Diplomová práce zkoumá minulost plnou traumat – jak žen tak i mužů, na jejich dlouhé cestě při hledání jejich identity. Je zde také popsáno, zda jsou tyto cesty na konci úspěšné či nikoliv. Hlavní tvrzení se opírá o předpoklad, že se v těchto příbězích najde jedinec, jehož cesta k jeho vlastním kořenům, není vždy úspěšná. Hlavní část diplomové práce je rozdělena do čtyř kapitol. První z nich nabízí krátkou dějovou linii tří příběhů. Druhá kapitola přináší detailní analýzu hlavních hrdinů z knihy Léčka. Třetí kapitola obsahuje rozbor díla a analýzy hlavních postav z knihy Milovaná a následující kapitola se zaměřuje na rozbor knihy Jazz. Závěrečná kapitola shrnuje hlavní tvrzení diplomové práce. Poukazuje na rysy typické jak pro mužské tak ženské postavy analyzovaných děl a zdůrazňuje podobnosti a rozdíly při pátrání po jejich identitě.

49

Works Cited

Primary sources Morrison, Toni. Beloved. London: Vintage, 2005. Print. ---. Jazz. New York: Plume, 1992. Print. ---. Tar Baby. New York: Plume, 2004. Print.

Secondary sources Atkinson, Yvonne, and Philip Page. Toni Morrison and The Southern Oral Tradition. Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 98-109. Web. 26 July 2012. . Audi, Evelyn Louise. Exile, Home, and Identity in Toni Morrison. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. . Badt, Karin Luisa. ―The Roots of the Body in Toni Morrison: A Matter of ‗Ancient Properties.‘‖ African American Review. 29.4 (1995): 1-30. Web. 18 Feb. 2013. QUESTIA. . Beavers, Herman. ―The Politics of Space: Southerness and Manhood in the Fictions of Toni Morrison.‖ Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 79-96. Web. 22 July 2012. . Chavoshian, Shohreh. ―Demystifying the Myth of the White Authenticity in Contemporary Afro-American Literature: The Anagnorisis of the ʻSamenessʼ of the ʻOtherʼ.‖ Journal of Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Literature. 1. 3 (2009): 119-31. Web. 5 Nov 2012. ˂www.sid.ir˃. Denard, Carolyn. ―Blacks, Modernism, and the American South: An Interview with Toni Morrison.‖ Studies in Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 1-16. Web. 22 July 2012. . Dueker, Kerry. ―When a Man Becomes a Woman (And Vice Versa).‖ A Web Case Book on Beloved by Toni Morrison. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. . Fultz, Lucille. ―Southern Ethos/Black Ethics in Morrison‘s Fiction.‖ Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 79-96. Web. 22 July 2012. .

50

Gluhbegović, Zia. ‗Until You Know About Me, You Don’t Know Nothing About Yourself:’ Quest for Identity in Tar Baby and Indian Killer. Web. 16 Feb. 2013. . Grewal, Gurleen. Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle: The Novels of Toni Morrison. BatonRouge: Louisiana State U P, 1998. Print. House, Elizabeth B. ―The ‗Sweet Life‘ in Toni Morrison‘s Fiction.‖ American Literature. 56.2 (1984): 181-202. Web. 23 Jan. 2007. . Jones, Carolyn. Southern Landscape as Psychic Landscape in Morrison‘s Fiction. Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 37-48. Web. 22 July 2012. . Kegley, Faye. Remembering Slavery Through Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Web. 21 Mar. 2013. . Kirkpatrick, Mary Alice. The Present Elsewhere: Theorizing an Aesthetics of Displacement in Contemporary African American and Postcolonial Literatures. Web. 6 Nov. 2012. . Krumholz, Linda. ―Blackness and Art in Toni Morrison‘s Tar Baby.‖ Contemporary Literature. 51.2 (2008): 263-92. Web. 4 Mar. 2013. . Lei, Wang. ―The Uncanny objet a in Toni Morrison‘s Fiction.‖ Literal And Cultural Studies. 246.6 (2011): 28-56. Web. 2 Mar. 2013. . Lonien, Dagmar. Houses Packed with Grief – Trauma and Home in three Novels by Toni Morrison. Web. 17 Feb. 2013. . Lupton, Mary Jane. ―Clothes and Closure in Three Novels by Black Women.‖ Black American Literature Forum 20.4 (1986): 409-21. Web. 1 Mar. 2013. JSTOR. . Mayberry, Susan N. Can’t I Love What I Criticize? The Masculine and Morrison. Georgia: U of Georgia Press, 2007. Print. Mitchell, Angelyn. ―History, Gender, and the South in Toni Morrison‘s Jazz.‖ Studies in the Literary Imagination. 31.2 (1998): 79-96. Web. 22 July 2012. . Mmphiri, Aretha. ―Toni Morrison and the Literary Canon: Whiteness, Blackness and the Construction of Racial Identity.‖ MA thesis. Rhodes University, 2009. Print.

51

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992. Print. Nelson, Emmanuel S. Contemporary African American Novelists. A Bio- Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood P, 1999. Print. OʼReilly, Andrea. ―In Search of My Motherʼs Garden, I Found My Own: Mother-Love, Healing, and Identity in Toni Morrisonʼs Jazz.‖ African American Review. 30.3 (1996): 367-79. Web. 2 Nov. 2012. JSTOR. ˂www.jstor.org˃. Payant, Katherine. Becoming and Bonding: Contemporary Feminism and Popular Fiction by American Women Writers. London: Greenwood P, 1993. Print. Piotrowska, Jagoda. The Formation of Personal and Communal Identity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Web. 26 Jan. 2013. Recker, Astrid. ―Hunting Masculinities in Toni Morrison‘s Jazz.‖ Gender Forum. Male Accounts 9. Web. 5 Sept. 2012. . Sahukar, Protibha M. ―‗There she is:‘ Reconnoitering the Miasmatic Leanings of Joe Trace in Toni Morrison‘s Jazz.‖ 1.2 (2009): 174-180. Web. 22 Dec. 2012. . Speller, Chrishawn A. ―Seeing is Believing: Exploring the Intertextuality of Aural and Written Blues in Gloria Naylor‘s Bailey‘s Café, Gayl Jones‘ Corregidora and Toni Morrison‘s Jazz.‖ 2003. 25 Feb. 2013. . Steadman, Patrick. ―Binaries in Beloved.‖ A Web Case Book on Beloved by Toni Morrison. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. . Student, David V. ―Daring to Love: Emotional Economics and the Culture of Survival in the Fiction of Toni Morrison.‖ 2009. Web. 13 Feb. 2013. . Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle. Conversation with Toni Morrison. Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1994. Print. Yuh-Chuan, Shao. The Double Consciousness of Cultural Pariahs—Fantasy, Trauma and Black Identity in Toni Morrison‘s Tar Baby. Euramerica. 36. 4 (2006): 551- 90. Web. 5 Mar. 2013. .

52