ENL 177: “Relationships: the Ties that Bind in A Mercy and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison”

Jolene Patricia Brown
Dr. J. Rose
ENL 177: T. Morrison
9 March 2010

Relationships: The Ties that Bind in
A Mercy and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Now I am thinking of another thing. Another animal that shapes choice.  Sir bathes every May.  We pour buckets of hot water into the washtub and gather wintergreen to sprinkle in.  He sits awhile.  His knees poke up, his hair is flat and wet over the edge.  Soon Mistress is there with first a rock of soap, then a short broom.  After he is rosy with scrubbing he stands.  She wraps a cloth around to dry him.  Later she steps in and splashes herself.  He does not scrub her.  He is in the house to dress himself.  A moose moves through the trees at the edge of the clearing.  We all, Mistress, Lina and me, see him.  He stands alone looking.  Mistress crosses her wrists over her breasts.  Her eyes are big and stare.  Her face loses its blood.  Lina shouts and throws a stone.  The moose turns slowly and walks away.  Like a chieftain. (Morrison, A Mercy 82-83)

“When we were little girls, before you were born, he took us to the ice-house once.  Drove us there in his Hudson.  We were all dressed up and we stood there in front of those sweating black men, sucking ice out of our handkerchiefs, leaning forward a little so as not to drip water on our dresses.  There were other children there.  Barefoot, naked to the waist, dirty.  But we stood apart, near the car, in white stockings, ribbons, gloves.  And when he talked to the men, he kept glancing at us, us and the car.  The car and us.  You see, he took us there so they could see us, envy us, envy him…First he displayed us, then he splayed us.  All our lives were like that: he would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon.” (Morrison, Song of Solomon 216)

    Relationships are an important theme in Song of Solomon and A Mercy by Toni Morrison.  They give a foundation to the events in the novel and allow Morrison more avenues with which to fully explore the dilemmas she presents the reader.  In building relationships between people, time periods, and places the reader begins to understand the dynamics of the novel more clearly: by emphasizing relationships, or a lack thereof, Morrison reinforces the disconnect that her African characters often endure in the course of the novel. In depriving her characters of familiar places, times, and people Morrison recreates slavery in an emotional arena, forcing them to construct connections without a cultural context and enter into relationships based on what they see around them, instead of what is taught by close relations.  These connections are much like those forced upon slaves who are uprooted from their homes, fighting to survive in an institution that views them as little more than cattle, and forming relationships with people that would not have formed without the institution of slavery in the United States.

In A Mercy, Florens learns much of what she knows from those people she encounters around her.  The passage on pages 82-83 gives the reader a glimpse into what Florens sees as choice:  Florens is desperate for social context, and sees “choice” as dictated by objects, like an animal, which is the case in this passage.  The images in this passage are mixed in origin, creating a crossroads of culture in what Florens witnesses.  First is the bathing ritual that occurs once a year for Jacob and Rebekka. This is symbolic of the white culture during this period, consisting of a people who are working hard to establish their own customs in a land that is foreign to them.  In bathing, Jacob first has his wife scrub him, washing from him a year’s worth of dirt, but also a symbol of baptism or rebirth.  The dynamic between Jacob and Rebekka is unequal as he does not reciprocate the scrubbing, instead going indoors to dress leaving Rebekka alone with only slaves and nature.  It is not, however, the slaves that bother Rebekka, it is nature. A moose, a symbol of nature, wanders from the woods and watches as Rebekka “crosses her wrists over her breasts” (83) protecting herself from the view of the animal: Florens recognizes the indifference of the animal towards Rebekka, but Rebekka only sees the animal as a threat.  The moose also represents the Native Americans during this time, who wanted nothing more than to be left alone and live in peace.  Whites were always encroaching on tribal lands to make more space for farming and agriculture, but at the fringe of those settlements were the Native lands.
In this passage Florens relates the interaction between several people who have influenced her life: Lina, Mistress, Sir, and nature, represented by the moose.  The un-reciprocated washing of Sir sends a message of uneven duty and respect, since Jacob is not obligated to wash Rebekka in return.  The moose witnesses Mistress’ own washing of herself, but seeming voyeurism attributed to this act by Rebekka is meaningless to Florens because she does not comprehend the importance of physical privacy, something that slaves were not accustomed to.  Instead of seeing the moose as a threat, Florens compares the moose to a “chieftain,” no doubt a word she learned from Lina who, as a Native American, would have used that vocabulary in front of Florens naturally, since a “chieftain” is a head of a native tribe (OED).

This memory is an intersection of cultures, between the white cultures represented by Jacob and Rebekka; the Native American culture represented by Lina and the moose; the culture of women and that of men; the older generation and the new.  It is Florens who is watching this scene, a young black woman who is looking back on this memory as she interprets her first ideas of love.  “Another animal that shapes choice” (82) is significant to the opening of this memory: the moose “shapes choice,” as she describes in the passage.  The ability to choose, to a slave, is a luxury because slaves were not allowed choice in their lives. A choice is “That which is specially chose or to be chosen on account of...excellence” and “care in choosing, circumspection, judgment, discrimination” (OED).  Rebekka chooses to run to her husband at the end of the passage instead of choosing to continue cleaning herself: the choice is one of comfort, not available to slaves regardless of how well-treated they are in slavery.  Rebekka can choose; Florens cannot because she is a slave and her life is without choice whether that choice is for place, comfort, even where she can go or what she can do.

In the close of the passage Florens begins to disagree with her original memory and interpretation of choice.  Lina, at end of the memory, separates the “world" from the individual, which Florens suddenly cannot understand:

We never shape the world she [Lina] says.  The world shapes us.  Sudden and silent the sparrows are gone.  I am not understanding Lina.  You are my shaper and my world as well.  It is done.  No need to choose. (83)

Florens does not need to choose because of her love for the blacksmith, which turns what she has known until this point into a fiction: the blacksmith is kind to her, reciprocates her love, and his watching her has meaning.  For Florens, the Blacksmith is her world and her shaper, and Florens feels this was not a choice on her part, or that of the world.  The truth of the Blacksmith lies in his embodying all things for Florens and becoming all those things she desires.  All of what she has seen in her youth is suddenly wrong because the context has changed, and she finds herself closer to that which she should have known all along: a connection to Africa and a person who embodies the traditions and cultures she has come to lack.
In the second passage, from Song of Solomon, Corinthians tells Milkman of a memory she had from her youth when her father took his daughters so others might envy them. Two words in this passage stand out immediately: “displayed” and “splayed.”  According to the OED, “displayed” is “unfolded, unfurled, spread open to view” and also “To disclose, reveal, or show, unintentionally or incidentally; to allow to be perceived, to betray.”  Macon I took his daughters to show them off to a crowd of men who would, according to Corinthians, “see us, envy us, envy him” (216).  By “displaying” his daughters he betrays them to those men, making them objects, like his car, that would inspire desire.  “Splayed,” in the OED, means to “spread out in an awkward manner” but also to “have the ovaries excised.”  In showing his daughters as objects Macon I deprives them of everything that makes them people, but also of their rights as women. The relationship between father and daughters is jeopardized, and also jeopardizes the relationships between these women and their future men, as neither woman later marries and has children.

Corinthians and Magdalene are placed on a pedastal by their father, but instead of making them feel good about being women it deprives them of their femininity and, by objectifying them, disconnects them.  There are several instances of physical disconnect that occur in the passage including between Macon and his daughters, Macon and the Men, the girls and the other children.  The disconnect, however, goes beyond the physical: there is a distinct disconnect between these characters socially that might not have occurred except for a need to escape the confines of the slave-mentality.  Macon intended to put on a show for those men in order to have the men envy him: his position is superior to their own, as demonstrated by his two beautiful daughters, his nice car, and his willingness to “share” the view with his neighbors.  The display is only a ruse, and as soon as the physical boundary is breached--the little boy reaching out to Corinthians’ hair--the social boundaries are then raised to compensate for the lost distance.

The example that Macon I sets for his children isolates them and, in turn, sets an example for Milkman in the way to treat women. Corinthians describes that “he [Macon] would parade us like virgins through Babylon, then humiliate us like whores in Babylon.”  Women became objects of envy and jealousy, to be displayed when one needed to show superiority over others, regardless of the need to.  Objectification of women was not uncommon during slavery:

There was a marked sexual component to the assaults: rape was common. Kinship was disregarded, particularly the paternity of children. Their status reflected the enslaved status of their mothers, no matter who their father might have been. Slave owners treated their unpaid, overworked labor forces as mere chattel. (“The Transatlantic Slave Trade”)

Milkman “pisses” on everything, according to Magdalene, not because he intends to or even wants to; his pissing is an unconscious disrespect for everything and everyone around him because he has no direct comparison to see that his behavior is unacceptable in a respectful culture (216).  Corinthians realizes his objectification and it is what Milkman’s only example is his father, without context otherwise, who teaches his only son that there is no past, and that the future is void of any real ties outside one’s own needs and desires.
In emphasizing the relationships between characters Morrison is effective in building a case for the importance of cultural history by emphasizing the loss that occurs when history is unknown.  Milkman Dead’s father, Macon Dead I, kept his son ignorant of almost every aspect of the past which forced Milkman to go in search of his past at the close of the novel.  The discoveries he makes not only gives him an insight into his family’s past, but helps him realize his shortcomings as a son, a brother and a lover:  “As Milkman watched the children, he began to feel uncomfortable.  Hating his parents, his sisters, seemed silly now” (301).  His change in attitude is a shift from an earlier scene with his sister, Magdalene, who confronts him about his need to piss on everything in their house (216).  Her accusation is not literal--with the exception of an event in their childhood--and instead is a metaphor for his need to control the people in his life, much like his own father strove to control people.

This error on Milkman’s part to continue the unfortunate legacy of his father can be blamed on the institution of slavery and its effect on black family and community structure in the United States.   In the article “Transitioning the Caregiving Role for the Next Generation: An African-Centered Womanist Perspective," Rhonda Wells-Wilbon argues that

The institution of slavery attempted to weaken African family ties and the sense of community through the purchasing of Africans from different tribes and separating of blood parents and extended kin from their children: however, enslaved Africans reinvented kinship ties as they held on to values and elements of African family life by connecting with non-kin and forming fictive kin relationships. (89)

The same could be said of Florens, who lacks the personal relations of family to give her life context.  Florens imagines herself abandoned by a mother who preferred a son, and despite an upbringing without the traditional slave-abuse attributed to most owners, she still struggles to find a way to build her identity.

What occurred with slavery is that an entire race of people were stripped not only of their familiar locations, but also of their identity within kin groups, within a culture, and within a structure that educated them in ways not available to them once they were in the mercy of slave owners.  Consider how children were raised in traditional West Africa:

Children were not considered the sole possessions of biological parents; rather, they belonged to and were accountable to the larger kin network that consisted of surrogate fathers and mothers...all whom worked collectively in building the tribal community.  These kinship arrangements provided a foundation to the care giving system as members worked as interdependent and cooperative units for childrearing, and socialization, group survival, and collective identity. (Wells-Wilbon 88)

In African society children were not considered “possessions," and would not subsequently carry that mind set of physical ownership with them into adulthood.  In being uprooted from their culture, Africans become a people without a context, suddenly left to create for themselves an understanding of the world.  They no longer have an older generation to emulate and instead must create their own ideas of kinship, building networks with those around them.  Without proper guidance, many young people can only mimic those things they immediately see around them whether or not the example is one of quality.

The networks created among these displaced Africans were not always trusted, and did not serve the same purpose as those found at home in their native culture.  In some cases the networks were nothing more than a way to participate in the discrimination imposed upon them by creating competitions in power and seniority.

The loss of context that occurs when a people are uprooted from their culture to be planted into a new one can be jarring for physical and emotional realities.  In an interview with Cecil Brown, Morrison reflects on the idea of a name:

[the name ‘Dead’ in Song of Solomon’] shows a mistake...a clerical error...the carelessness of white people...and the indifference when they...they don’t pay much attention to what the records are.  My mother doesn’t even have a birth certificate.  My aunt has a birth certificate and her name is not even on it.  It says, Negro Child, that’s all. (461).

The white culture into which they were thrust left Africans without a course of action to protect themselves from loss of identity.  Their former lives in Africa gave them a structure to fit themselves into, a context within which to operate, giving their lives a meaning that belonged to them, and no one else.  The people around them influenced them in ways that were relevant to their own culture, instructing them on the best ways to live and the best adaptations for their surroundings.

Works Cited
Brown, Cecil with Toni Morrison.  “Interview with Toni Morrison.”The Massachusetts Review, 36.3 (Autumn 1995): 455-473.  JSTOR.  UC Davis Library, Davis, CA. 28 February 20010 <http://www.jstor.org>.
Catherine Packer-Williams. "Understanding the Impact of Maternal Messages Given to Single, Educated African American Women about Relationships." Black Women, Gender & Families 3.2 (2009): 48-67. Project MUSE. UC Davis Library, Davis, CA. 24 February 2010 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
OED
“The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” inmotionaame.org. InMotion. March 5, 2010. Online. http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=1&topic=10
"displayed, ppl. a." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 Mar. 2010.

"splayed, ppl. a." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 5 Mar. 2010.

Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. New York: Vintage Publications, 2008. Print.

Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Vintage Publications, 2004. Print.

ENL 177: “Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Freed Slaves”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. Judith Rose

English 177

2 February 2010

Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Free Slaves

Late that night after the fire was made, the cold supper eaten, the surface dust removed, Nel lay in bed thinking of her trip. She remembered clearly the urine running down and into her stockings until she learned how to squat properly; the disgust on the face of the dead woman and the sound of the funeral drums. It had been an exhilarating trip but a fearful one. She had been frightened of the soldiers' eyes on the train, the black wreath on the door, the custard pudding she believed lurked under her mother's heavy dress, the feel of unknown streets and unknown people. But she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids and the nose her mother hated. She looked for a long time and suddenly a shiver ran through her.

“I'm me,” she whispered. “Me.”

Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.

“I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me.”

Each time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut.

“Me,” she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I want...I want to be...wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.”

The many experiences of her trip crowded in on her. She slept. It was the last as well as the first time she was ever to leave Medallion.

For days afterward she imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious. Leaving Medallion would be her goal. But that was before she met Sula, the girl she had seen at Garfield Primary but never played with, never knew, because her mother said that Sula's mother was sooty. The trip, perhaps, or her new found me-ness, gave her strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother. (28-29)

In Toni Morrison's novel Sula there is a passage on pages 28 and 29 which contains a psychological passing of Nel through three stages of maturity that culminate in her discovering herself outside the world of her mother. Much like those freed slaves who could not fully grasp the meaning of “free,” Nel is learning what is hers, what is her mother's and what is her community's. Boundaries between freedom and slavery, joy and fear, pleasure and pain become clearer through experience and time. Though she does not fully realize her potential in this passage, she does embark on goals that are strictly hers alone: to leave Medallion, to be someone other than “Nel,” and to make a friend in spite of her mother's rules. Her transition through these stages mirrors those of the newly freed slaves who had to decide between a what they knew as home and the promise of a better place outside of that known world; the fear they had to overcome, the ideas they had about themselves and their dreams, and then putting those dreams into reality.

The first stage of the passage is fear, like the slaves who have not yet understood what it means to be free, Nel is embarking on a road not yet traveled as she tries to imagine a life different from her own. Nel catalogs her fears from the recent trip with her mother and the fears she lists all have one things in common: they deal in her fear of being judged by others, such as the urine on her legs, the disgust of the woman's face (28). She describes the trip as both “exhilarating” and “fearful,” as she remembers the world of unknowns that she was thrust into by her mother. Instead of being terrified Nel decides that a life of travel is what she desires; the exhilaration, fear, unknown—all these things gave her a new perspective which she desired to keep close to her. Nel is a girl controlled by her mother, Helene, and it is no surprise that she desires to find some other version of herself that is separate from her mother. Nel is at a point in her life where she must start to exercise her freedom from Helene but because of her Helene's controlling nature she must be careful in those things she chooses to do.

Comparing Nel's situation to that of freed slaves, the reader recognizes that a newly-freed slave will have little idea of what it is like beyond the captivity of his master. In freeing the slaves, but not providing them with an education or some means of supporting themselves outside of slavery, the slaves were left to decide what freedom means for them and how to pursue it. Jim Crow laws, set in place to discourage the rights of blacks, only reinforced the desire to move on to a better place, as this song illustrates:

I'm tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town,

Doggone my black soul, I'm sweet Chicago bound,

Yes, Sir, I'm leavin' here, from this ole Jim Crow town.

I'm going up North, where they think money grows on trees,

I don't give a doggone, if ma black soul should freeze

I'm goin' where I don't need no B.V.D.'s. (“The Great Migration”)

Like Nel, the song's singer longs to be gone from the world of “Jim Crow” where the rules are rules only for the sake of the rulers, and not for the good of those who are ruled. The comparison between Nel's mother and a white former-slave owner is easily compared in this passage when Nel's mother refers to Sula's mother as “sooty” (29). According to the OED, the word sooty is “an offensive name for a black person” which implies being “foul or dirty with soot” and also “foul with sin” (OED). Helene, though she is also black, fills the role of the oppressor well by using language that is derogatory to blacks in order to maintain the power over her daughter.

The next stage in this passage is Nel's realization that she does not have to live strictly under her mother's rule; she is her own person and can visualize herself in her mind as what she is: “I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me” (28). This move from fear to realization is important in breaking away from her mother and, for slaves, breaking away from the rules imposed on them by their former masters. They realize themselves as a separate entity from those who had them in captivity, finding who they are beyond the chains that kept them bound. The fear is still there for Nel but she embraces it as a “discovery” about herself and asks Jesus to make her “wonderful” (29). Nel has had an epiphany in which she sees herself not how her mother would have her see herself, but as she chooses to see herself. She is no longer “Nel” or their daughter: she has become a “me.” This same move is made by freed slaves who begin to see themselves not as slaves any longer, but as people who can make their own futures freed from slavery, Jim Crow laws, and outside the perspective of whites. They become something more than just former slaves and though there might be fear, that same fear is coupled with joy, and power. The joy of freedom and the power to choose what is best for their own future, instead of being told what to do—both Nel and former slaves have new, although unclear, paths ahead.

The final move in the passage is of Nel's actualization. She takes what she has learned and uses it to create goals for herself—mainly to leave Medallion. What really happens, however, is she meets Sula and despite her mother's disapproval decides to “cultivate a friend in spite of her mother” (29). This move on Nel's part to envision a life for herself outside of her mother's realm, and to do something that she knows her mother will disapprove of takes her from the realization that she is her own person, to actualization where she becomes her own person. The same can be said for the blacks who made the migration North: instead of waiting for the future to happen, they took steps to move themselves and their families to what they felt would be a better, more inviting, and prosperous place. Though Nel's action might seem small compared to the move from South to North, it is a big move for her to make on her own, with no support from anyone else to help her do it. In her own way, Nel migrated from the realm of her mother to her own, and though she ultimately decides to stay in Medallion her friendship with Sula proves to be the one thing to change her life forever.

Nel goes through three stages in this passage that are mirrored in the lives of former slaves during the reconstruction period in the South: fear, realization and actualization. In only a few lines, Morrison manages to capture the predicament of a generation of people who must decide between what they know and what they dream; what that need and what they want; who they are and who they want to be. It is not an easy struggle for either for Nel is up against her mother and her community, and the former slaves are up against a community as well: one that consists of hate, oppression and a tradition of bloodshed dating back hundreds of years. Both will succeed in small ways at first by taking those steps Nel goes through in discovering what she she fears and finding ways to realize her strengths and seek out those things she desires, even if it is something as simple as friendship from a girl her mother disapproves of.

Works Cited

“The Great Migration: Leaving the South.” inmotionaame.org. InMotion. January 30, 2009. Online. http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=8&topic=2

ENL 177: “Journal Entry #1—Reaction to Sula by T. Morrison”

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 177: T. Morrison

January 12, 2009

Journal #1

Toni Morrison's work is highly political especially in terms of race relations (white/black) and sex relations (male/female). The marriage of Jude and Nel is an important marker of sex relations as well as race relations within the novel because Jude longs to be a “man” yet cannot consider himself a man until he finds a man's job, but those are reserved for whites:

It was after he stood in lines for six days running and saw the gang boss pick out thin-armed white boys from the Virginia hills and the bull-necked Greeks and Italians... that he got the message. So it was rage, rage and a determination to take on a man's role anyhow that made him press Nel about settling down. (82)

Jude longs to be a “man” and to do work that will give him a man's status, not “women's work” that he was performing in the kitchen at his job.

The more he thought about marriage, the more attractive it became. Whatever his fortune, whatever the cut of his garmet, there would always be the hem—the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up...Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a kitchen like a woman. With her he was head of a household pinned to an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. (83)

His dilemma—longing for manhood in a society that denies it—enlightens the predicament of many men but especially those of color because, unlike the “thin-armed white boys” and the “bull-necked” Europeans, he is not allowed the opportunity for manhood even if he seeks it out for himself. He is forced into a feminine position in white society: relegated to wash dishes in a kitchen; a job usually reserved for a woman. The message sent to him is that he is not man enough to do a man's job and it is his determination to change his forced feminine status to marry. By marrying Nel, Jude can force his way into manhood outside of the control of the white men. He dreams of being a “man” in terms of white men had failed him and “He needed some of his appetites filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he wanted someone to care about his hurt...And if he were to be a man, that someone could no longer be his mother” (82). By having a wife and, ultimately, a family to care for Jude can make that leap into manhood without the requirement of a “job” to grant him that status. It may be harder to care for his family because his job prospects are less-than wonderful, but he can take the “man's role” to care for his family.