Motherhood_in_Sula

Besides being a novel about motherhood, Sula, written by Toni Morrison is also a novel about the struggles of race and social class. The book allows for an insight on the two main families in the novel, the Wrights and the Peaces. Both of these families have distinct maternal relationships, which are modified by the influences of the society. The theme of motherhood is exemplified through the exploration of the race and the many social classes in the novel. In the early chapters of the novel, Morrison describes both the Wright and the Peace families. Within these chapters, Morrison stresses the influence of relationships built between mother and daughter. Each of these families cope differently with the difficulties that race and class invoke. Eva peace is introduced as a mother who was abandoned by her husband. The society in which Eva raised her children was made harsh through the fact that she was not only a single mother, but that she was also a minority. Eva Peace along with most of the characters in the novel are black, a minority which was discriminated against in the setting depicted. Morrison further elaborates that the Eve and her children struggled through a point of life in which they were almost faced with starvation. When Eva realized that she could no longer support family, she decided to leave the children with a family friend, for what was supposed to be one day. “Eighteen months later she swept down from a wagon with two crutches, a new black pocketbook, and one leg.”(34), Eva was absent through a piece of her children’s life which in return altered the relationships she formed with her children. Eva had three biological children, “Hannah, the eldest, and Eva, whom she named after herself but called Pearl, and a son named Ralph whom she called Plum”(32). Eva’s motherly love is portrayed through a chilling scene in which she sets her son Plum on fire, ultimately killing him. Plum, who was a heroine addict was described as “wanting to crawl back into Eva’s womb”(71), Eva further explained that she did not have anymore room in her “womb” or life for Plum. This act is seen as both selfless and selfish; selfless in the way Eva cared so much about her son that she did not want to see him digress any longer, and it is seen as selfish in the way Eva went about killing him, and ultimately ending her own suffering. Through a quote in the novel, “When he wondered, will those people ever be anything but animals, fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only mules didn’t kill each other the way niggers did” (63), the reader is informed of how the white community viewed the black community. Because of the influences of race and class, Eva could not completely focus on the mothering process, thus altering the motherly relationship Eva was able to form with her daughter Hannah; when Hannah asked Eva, “Mamma, did you ever love us'”(67), Eva simply replies with instances from her children’s childhood in which she proved her love. Even through poverty and race tensions, Eva’s was able to form relationships with her children and give them a sense of motherly love. The Wrights, who are introduced as a financially stable family “a lovely house with a brick porch and real lace curtains at the window” (170), prove to have similar complications to the Peaces when it comes to motherhood. Helene Wright, a daughter of a Creole whore, escaped from the hardships of her home town by marrying a man who brought her to live a semi, middle-class life in Medallion, Ohio, the setting of the book. Helene’s attempts to stray away from her roots resulted in her failure to connect with her daughter, Nel. When Helene was forced to return to New Orleans, after her grandmother’s death, Nel was confronted with her mother‘s true identity. During the train ride to New Orleans, both the reader and Nel experienced the hardships of being an African American. Nel realized her mother, who appeared to live as a revered individual, could be easily tainted by racism. “She felt both pleased and ashamed to sense that these men, unlike her father, who worshiped his graceful, beautiful wife, were bubbling with a hatred for her mother that had not been there in the beginning but had been born with the dazzling smile.” (22) , this moment of racial disgust, and class differences on the train formed the relationship Nel and her mother would have throughout the book. Once Nel learned of her mother‘s roots, she and the reader were able to synthesize how the mother-daughter relationship between Nel and Helene would unfold. Nel understood why her mother asked her to pull her nose, and why her mother stayed with her father even though he was absent most of Nel’s life; Helene did not want her or her daughter to turn into a “Creole Whore” (17) just as her, Helene’s, mother was. Nel’s relationship with her mother was formed on a basis of morals, but all of these were negated on the train to New Orleans when Nel realized her mother was not custard, which could hold its shape, but that her mother was merely jelly which could not. Nel creates a sense of self through her relationship with her mother, “I’m me” (28), but this new found self was altered when Nel met Sula. Nel, who was raised in a middle-class family, and Sula, who was raised in a lower class family instantly clicked. Sula, Hannah Peace’s daughter, was raised in the Peace household, which included Eve Peace and an influx of other “adopted” residents. Sula’s unstable household resulted in her scarce care as a child. This is different than what Nel received which was more direct care form her mother. Nel and Sula were no exception to the “rule”, in which the lives of their mothers would ultimately become theirs. Sula in due course ended up living the independent life that her mother and grandmother lived, while Nel lived in a conformist, middle class home, with a husband who was not loyal, just as her mother did. Nel and Sula both influenced each other in childhood, and each wanted the other’s home life, “Sula who loved it and would sit on the red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time, still as dawn. As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s woolly house” (29), but they eventually grow apart. The relationships Sula and Nel had with their mothers formed the relationship they had as friends. But Nel found a way to separate from her mother, while Sula only found a replacement for the lack of a true motherly relationship; Nel married and Sula left Medallion to attend college. Morrison explored motherhood through the depiction of a middle-class family and a lower-class family. Motherhood, which was influenced by race and social class determined how the characters developed during the course of the novel. Both Sula and Nel desired to break the mold created by their mothers, but Nel married and consequently obtained a conventional life similar to her mother’s, whereas Sula developed a life of her own. But Sula’s development as a reformer was halted when she desired a more conventional life with Ajax. Each of the characters in Toni Morrison’s Sula were restricted by the chains of race and social class to even develop a new mind set from what their mothers had taught them.