Toni Morrison: Sula Toni Morrison\'s

Toni Morrison: Sula

Toni Morrison's Sula is one of her masterpieces and a work that turned her into one of the most powerful African-American writers of our times. What strikes the readers about Toni Morrison's protagonist is Sula is her non-conformist, new-age consciousness that turns her into an evil figure and an unsuitable heroine. For a book of this stature, most readers wanted a heroine they could identify with- someone who was basically good despite her minor flaws and few blunders- someone like Nel. But that is not to be. Sula is the protagonist of the novel and she is by no means a traditional heroine. In fact for many, she is an evil woman who refuses to conform to societal expectations of her and does some truly inexcusable things such as sleeping with her best friend's husband.

Sula is the story of two black women coming of age in Ohio sometime during the two world wars. Sula is wild and aggressive woman with an individualistic streak and a strong desire to break free of tradition and rules. Nel on the other hand is the compassionate gentle figure who can best be described as a 'nice' person. But Sula is not interested in being the conformist. She is an independent woman whose personality is largely shaped by the place she lived in. It is for this reason that Morrison devotes four long pages to describing the area where Sula grew up- known as the Bottom. Bottom is a hard land given to black slaves as a gift from white masters who claimed that it was the best land around.

See those hills? That's bottom land, rich and fertile."

But it's high up in the hills," said the slave.

High up from us," said the master, "but when God looks down, it's the bottom... Of heaven -- best land there is" (5).

But Bottom was not even half as good as it was made out to be. It was harder to cultivate and to live in such a place, one needed to develop strength. In short, one needed to be as hard as the land itself to survive and Sula certainly had that hardiness in her personality. Like the land that refused to change despite numerous efforts to cultivate it, Sula also refused to accept other people's influence on her life. She was happy just the way she was and even though she becomes an evil figure by the middle of the novel, there is no significant change in her till the very end. Sula knew that in order to survive, she had just herself to rely on: "there was no other you could count on... no self to count on either." Two incidents that played an important role in her development include her mother's comments and her friend Chicken Little's death. When Sula overheard her mother Hannah say.".. I love Sula. I just don't like her" (57), it must have done some repairable damage to her personality and made her realize that she indeed had no one to turn to except herself. The second incident was Chicken Little's death in which Sula inadvertently had a role to play:

she [Sula] lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, hers was an experimental life-ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the middle. The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow.... She was completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments-no ego. For that reason she felt no compulsion to verify herself-be consistent with herself. (Sula 118-19)

Sula's evil self is also accentuated by a birthmark over her eye: "Sula was a heavy brown with large quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose. It gave her otherwise plain face a broken excitement and blue- blade threat like the keloid scar of the razored man who sometimes played checkers with her grandmother." (52-53)

This birthmark is a mark of evil for some critics while others associate it with Sula's sensuality. But the fact remains that such a mark combined with a disturbingly defiant behavior turned Sula into a dark figure, not worthy of reader's compassion. It is felt that this inscription suggested that there was something menacing about her as Mae G. Henderson comments: "[Sula's birthmark] is a mark of nativity -- a biological rather than cultural inscription, appropriate in this instance because it functions to mark her as a 'naturally' inferior female within the black community" (27).

Where evil is concerned, Sula shares some traits with Cain. Cain was beaten as Genesis informs and he lived with a blackened face. There is some connection between this black face of Cain and Sula's black birthmark. Similarly when near the end, Sula is questioned by her friend as to why she slept with her husband, she replies: "Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it" (144-45). This is parallel to what Cain said when questioned in similar manner: "I am not my brother's keeper." Sula is not a typical black woman by any standard. She moves out of Bottom for ten long years and comes back armed with a degree. Sula seals her fate with such actions as others views her as an outcast. She further confirms her non-conformist behavior when she refuses to settle down and raise a family. Sula is not someone Bottom can identify with as she defiantly opposes all efforts by others to contain her rather outrageous behavior. She argues with the grandmother Eva when she speaks on behalf of the community:

don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself."

Selfish. Ain't no woman got no business floatin' around without no man."

You did."