Toni Morrison's Life and Sula

Sula and Toni Morrison

Sula and Her Badness

It is not a challenging task to justify Sula being a "bad woman." She simply has the qualities of a bad person. She is arrogant, inconsiderate, and seems to have no morals whatsoever. These are very obvious character traits belonging to Sula. What is interesting is the nature of her evil and its significance when considering the other main character of the book, Nel.

Nel and Sula are perfect complements of each other. They both grow up in completely different households and encounter different raising by their mothers. Nel's mother did what she could to drive "her daughter's imagination underground (Morrison 18)," raising her to be polite and obedient. Nel is a calm and well behaved girl who has no choice but to conform to her mother's wishes. Sula on the other hand grows up in a "wooly house, where a pot of something was always cooking on the stove; where the mother, Hannah, never scolded or gave directions; where all sorts of people dropped in; where newspapers were stacked in the hallway, and dirty dishes left for hours at a time in the sink, and where a one legged grandmother named Eva handed you goobers from deep inside her pockets or read you a dream (Morrison 29)." Nel has an attraction to Sula's environment which does not have "the oppressive neatness of her home (Morrison 29)." Likewise, Sula has an attraction to Nel's environment. When visiting Nel's house she would "sit on the red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time--still as dawn (Morrison 29)." Nel was raised in the image of her mother, whereas Sula has very few ties to her mother. The world of Sula must have seemed very odd and new to Nel, and likewise for Sula. They both had something that the other did not.

This lack of something is at the core of the character of these girls. They come from opposite ends of a magnet. Nel is orderly; Sula is unsettled. The comfort each of them feels in the other's home is an indication of a common desire to be one. They each want to be immersed in the qualities of their counterpart.

The one time in the book when they seem to have crossed each others boundaries was after the accidental death of Chicken Little caused by Sula. Nel, who normally keeps control over situations, flips out. Sula the disorderly one, on the other hand, tries to take some control over the event by running to Shadrack. The guilt of both the girl's seems to be the catalyst that merges them into one. That moment when Sula and Nel interchanged personalities demonstrates this merger. "Their friendship was so close, they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one's thoughts from the other's (Morrison 83)." To Nel, "Talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself (Morrison 95)."

The oneness did not last forever. There came a time when Nel and a man named Jude "together made one Jude (Morrison 83)." This is the splitting of Nel and Sula. They once again become individuals. This time they move further opposite than when they started, because neither one of them desires what the other has. They desire what they have and the environment they grew up in. Nel struggles to a conventional woman and thrives on community approval. Sula becomes unsettled and adventurous. They split. Without Nel as a complement, Sula is an unattended half of a soul. She has nothing to ground her, to guide her motives, if you can say she even has any. There is no ambition or attachment to anything. She is like a kite in a storm without a hand to hold its string. An "artist with no art form (Morrison 121)," she had a "craving for the other half of her equation...(Morrison 121)."

Sula then has frequent sex, throws her grandmother out of the house, and even threatens to set her aflame. This evil soul half is interesting because its pureness seems to frighten people into denying the evil in themselves. Bad mothers take a sudden loving interest in their children. Wives coddle their husbands. Those who never cared for old people take an immediate interest in their welfare. The free born Canadian blacks feel a reactionary compassion for Southern-born blacks. It is as if Sula's evil is enough to compensate for everyone's evil in the community of Medallion. It is a force that pushes people into the good side of the spectrum. Not surprisingly, as soon as Sula dies, these new doers of good and light revert to apathy toward their fellow man and woman.

Anyone who is evil enough to inspire an entire community to turn holy has to be considered bad. Sula's "bad womanhood" was interesting, because it was not just a complement to Nel's goodness. It gave the other folk of medallion a means to define themselves, even if it was only temporary. Perhaps having people like Sula in a community should be considered a necessary evil it if motivates people to do good.

Biography

Morrison was born in 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio. Southern racism caused her parents to move up North. Morrison was able to grow up in a place that would not scar her with racial prejudices. Her family was composed of sharecroppers. She spent her childhood in the Midwest and loved reading. She enjoyed reading works from Jane Austen to Tolstoy. Morrison's father, George, sang her songs and told her folktales of the black community. In 1949 she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. Morrison continued her studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

During 1955-57 Morrison was an instructor in English at Texas Southern University, in Houston, and taught in the English department at Howard (Encarta). In 1964 she moved to Syracuse, New York, and became an editor for Random House. She edited books by black authors such as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. She also continued to teach at the State University of New York. In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University of New York at Albany, where she gave guidance to young writers during their two-year fellowships.

While working as an editor and caring for her children, Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, which appeared in 1970. The book was based in part on her story written for a writers' group in 1966, which she joined after her six years marriage with the Jamaican architect Harold Morrison broke up. The novel's main character, Pecola Breedlove, is a black girl who believes everything would be fine if she had beautiful blue eyes. Sula (1973) is about two black women friends who grow up in the community of Medallion, Ohio. It follows the lives of Sula and Nel and how their relationship with each other and their community changes over time. The novel won the National Book Critics Award.

The publication of Song of Solomon (1973) placed Morrison into an international spotlight. It was the main selection of the Book-of-the-month Club and the first novel by a black writer to be chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1949 (Bois). After the success of Song of Solomon Morrison bought a four-story house near Nyack, N.Y. In 1988 Morrison was named Robert Goheen Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.

In 1988 Morrison received the Pulitzer Prize for the novel Beloved (1987). This novel illustrates the issues of slavery and infanticide. It was inspired by the true story of a black American slave woman, Margaret Garner, who killed her baby after the infamous 1870s Fugitive Slave Act in order to save her child from the slavery she was successful in escaping.

"Jazz" (1992) was a fragmented narrative about the causes and consequences of a murder in Harlem in 1926. Morrison's first novel since the Nobel Prize, Paradise, was published in 1998 (Century 85-103).

Toni Morrison is currently teaching at Princeton.

Criticism of Morrison

In the eyes of quite a few people, Sula is an outstanding novel. "The novel itself is a visit to Baskin Robbins where new flavors of ice cream are served upon a smooth pink plastic spoon (McClain)."

The interesting mix of fascinating characters in a setting "rich in mood and feeling (Yardley)" seems to be what turns people on.

It is not just the story itself that is impressive, but how it is written. According to Sara Blackburn, "Toni Morrison is someone who really knows how to clank a sentence," her dialogue being "so compressed and life-like that it sizzles (Blackburn)."

All in all, Toni Morrison put together a masterful work. She "has served up a thought provoking story worthy of her marvelous talent (McClain)."

Works Cited

Bois, Daunta. "Toni Morrison: Biography." Voices With Wings. Online. 27 Nov. 2000.

Blackburn, Sara. Rev. of Sula, by Toni Morrison. New York Times Book Review 30 Dec. 1973: 3

Century, Douglas. Toni Morrison. Chelsea House Publishers. New York: 1994

"Morrison, Toni," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. Plume. New York: 1973.

McClain, Ruth Rambo. Rev. of Sula, by Toni Morrison. Black World June 1974: 51-2

Yardley, Jonathan. "The Naughty Lady." Rev. of Sula, by Toni Morrison. The Washington Post 3 Feb. 1974: 3

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