Tar Baby: Son\'s Perspective From the Point-Of-View

Tar Baby: Son's Perspective

From the point-of-view of Son, the assimilated, highly educated female protagonist of Toni Morrison's Tar Baby Jadine sees everything that is associated with being African-American ss base and inferior. Jadine is the niece of the butler and cook of the Childs, a wealthy white family. Jadine believes herself to be superior to other African-Americans because of her knowledge of European culture, and her Euro-centric manner. She is beautiful and has worked as a fashion model. But she also feels hollow inside because her education does not validate her identity as a black woman. She is continually pretending to be someone she is not. In contrast, Son believes he has a secure sense of self. He is not impressed by Jadine's fine clothing, accent, and mannerisms, given that they are simulacra of white mannerisms.

It is easy to condemn Jadine's white manners. Son, the representative of black masculinity in the book, continually reproaches Jadine for what he sees as her rejection of his culture and heritage -- what should be her culture and heritage. From Jadine's perspective, the only people she has ever seen commanding real power are whites. Whiteness is associated with literacy and culture, which Jadine aspires to achieve. The blackness which Son represents is associated with ignorance and metaphorical as well as literal darkness. The residents of the Caribbean island where the Childs reside are oppressed and even the black Sydney and Ondine, despite the fact that they work as servants, view other blacks with contempt.

Son is poor, and when he breaks into the Childs' residence he sees wealth on a level which he has never before experienced -- but also utter moral bankruptcy. Jadine is treated like a petted playing, in his eyes. Given the values under which she has been brought up is little wonder that Jadine feels that the more 'white' she can be, the more power she will have. She does not see that the Childs have power over her, culturally and economically, in a way they do not have power over their natural son Michael, whose preferences and attitudes they cannot shape because of his whiteness, maleness, and autonomy. Son sees Jadine as a kind of traitor to her race, someone who is wearing a mask rather than a real identity.

The African-American female role models presented to her reflect an ideal of domesticity and earthiness which Jadine wishes to rise above. Orphaned at birth, Jadine has known nothing but white estimations of color, and white society has praised her (in print and in life) for mimicking is mannerisms. There is, Morrison suggests, comfort for white society in role models like Jadine, who reject their African heritage and prefer "Ave Maria better than gospel music" and says that "Picasso is better than an Itumba mask. The fact that he was intrigued by them is proof of his genius, not the mask-makers' (Morrison 74). When given a 'choice,' an intelligent African-American woman like Jadine appears to prefer European culture to black culture, thus validating the superiority of white society. But Morrison suggests that society has 'stacked the deck' in favor of the colonial ideology of whiteness. People like Son make whites feel very uncomfortable because Son denies he needs whites at all, despite his poverty. He breaks down both metaphorical and literal ideological walls.

The novel presents Jadine with a dilemma: either she can accept Son, who is largely uneducated but represents the blackness she has lost, or she can embody a white ideal. However, neither seems to fully embody Jadine's self. Furthermore, there is a patriarchal aspect to both available forms of romance. Margaret Child, Jardine's white female patron, must obey the dictates of her husband and fantasizes about Son's sexuality; also, being beholden to whites means having to be like Sydney and Ondine, who are described as being good at their jobs because they are so sublimely unobtrusive: "one hardly knew if he left the room" (Morrison 74). But being 'schooled' by Son means being 'schooled' by a man and accepting an inferior feminine position. Although Son genuinely desires Jadine, his method of desire has a quality of subjugation -- not sexual subjugation, but a desire to show her that his way of seeing the world is 'right.'