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.
