Joys of Motherhood - Elizabeth Kelman

        Reading The Joys of Motherhood has been painful. Over the course of reading the first hundred and thirty pages, I had to physically put down and close the book dozens of times out of sheer emotional strain. Despite being mostly unfamiliar with the culture and environments described in this novel—any knowledge I do have came from reading Things Fall Apart in a postcolonial literature course in high school—I still felt a connection to the characters, especially the female ones, and was upset by all the travesties that befall them.

Perhaps more upsetting than the unfortunate events, however, are the social structures that I want to denounce but know that, as an outsider, I have no right to pass judgment on them. In particular, I repeatedly read that women are viewed as property in the societies described in The Joys of Motherhood. A woman is the property first of her father, and then of her husband. If her husband dies, her husband’s closest male relative inherits her and her children. Nnu Ego’s mother, Ona, belongsc to her father and was forbidden to marry. Nnu Ego belongs first to her father, then to her first husband (with whom she had no children), then to her father once more, and finally to her second husband, Nnaife. As her owners, these men could beat her, chastise her, and force her to do things against her will. She is expected to cook, clean, raise children and be respectful—even reverent—of her husband, father and male children. In return, she is provided with a home and access to food, clothing and other necessities.

When I read Things Fall Apart, there was a fair amount of discussion about the difference between the European dowry system and the African bride price custom. Whereas in the dowry system a bride’s family must pay the groom to marry their daughter, a bride price means that the groom’s family must pay for the privilege of marrying the bride. In both systems the woman is objectified, but we agreed that the bride price system was better because it seemed to value the female more than the dowry system, in which she is seen as a burden.

While reading about marriage in The Joys of Motherhood, I came to doubt this assumption. Emecheta presents the bride price as the purchase of a woman from her family, which entitles him to the many benefits that come with having a wife. Even Nnu Ego’s name reflects the way women are perceived as objects within an economy, to be traded from father to husband when the time is right; her father said “That should be her name, because she is a beauty and she is mine, Yes, ‘Nnu Ego’: twenty bags of cowries” (26). A woman’s value is based on her family’s social status, the number of children she bears, especially male children, and her youth/beauty. Men, on the other hand, “are never ugly” (75); “A woman may grow ugly and old but a man is never ugly and never old. He matures with age and is dignified” (71). To express his daughter’s value and his own wealth (which are intertwined) upon her first marriage, Nnu Ego’s father sends her off with an array of animals, people and objects. The practice of having a bride price affects the husband’s perception of his wife’s role. As Nnaife says to Nnu Ego early in their marriage, “Did I not pay your bride price? Am I not your owner?” (48). I squirmed with discomfort upon reading such dialogue, as well as less direct descriptions of this inferior position of women. Though for the most part the female characters seem to have internalized their oppressed status, there are occasions in the story when a female character (mostly Nnu Ego) challenges this role, and these few moments give me hope that perhaps the system will change—if not within her lifetime then for her daughters. 

Sula 1st half by Narolyn Mendez

Narolyn Mendez

Sula

            Reading a novel by Toni Morrison is similar to being a detective in how you have to search for the meaning that is attached to a sentence or passage. Sometimes you’re forced to read a passage or sentence multiple times because of the complexity and significance her analogies and metaphors carry. They’re filled with so much meaning that so much is intended without blatantly saying so. Morrison uses adjectives to describe a scheme of feelings, situations, relationship and people in ways that are almost unimaginable. While reading Sula, Morrison’s unique style and one of a kind and uncommon descriptions by way of adjectives and analogies is very much evident and dominant from page to page.

At times she presents events that although the reader knows is loaded with meaning is not very clear until further explanation is given. An example of this is Eva’s killing of her son Plum. All the trouble of picking up her own weight and going down the stairs with one leg on crutches does not make any sense until she sets him on fire. Naturally the shocked feeling of how a mother could possible commit such a monstrous act leads way to many questions. A mother is the person that usually is responsible to give a person life and taking it away seems like the drastic opposite.

Plum’s drug addiction did not make him the ideal son that every mother wanted to have but it did not make him a necessarily bad person either. Many say that there are not many things that can compare to a mother’s love, because of how immensely deep and unconditional it is. Killing seems to exemplify the opposite of what love is, usually an act of hate that spews from deep dislike and threat. Although this is predominantly the negative connotation that is associated with killing, it might be an act of love also. Eva gives Hannah a very emotional explanation when she says, “ After all that carryin’ on, just getting’ him out and keepin’ him alive, he wanted to crawl back in my womb and well…I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it.” (71). Eva obviously loved her son very much, the way any mother loves her son or maybe even more, and how she cared for him in the beginning of his life is evident of this. The passage speaks to how Eva loved Plum so much that she just could not bear to watch him grow dependent on her all over again because of his addiction to drugs.  His dependency made him a child all over again in her eyes and she had raised a man with dignity and respect. Plum’s actions demonstrated the opposite of this and so it was heart-breaking for her.

            Eva never stopped loving her son, but some things are not matters of the heart and love is not always blind. She states,“I had room in enough in my heart, but not in my womb, not no more.”, which is proof of this ( 71). It seems that she looked at her son and recognized all she had ever given him in love and life had gone to waste and since she had given him the beautiful gift of life, she also had the power to take it away. She had the power to take him out of his misery that she much less than he, had the ability to accept.

Although all of this might be Morrison’s intended meaning, it is one that is hard to agree with. It’s hard to say if killing out of an act of love is actually helpful for someone like Plum that was an addict. It would have been easier to recognize how much love was in the act if Eva would have tried to intervene with his problem or had tried different solutions to get him sober. Her insistence would have spoken clearly to the reader, but killing is such a drastic alternative that it is hard to see just how much love Eva, as a mother had for her son.

Clara Boothby, 2nd Half of Sula

            Having so recently read Passing with the dichotomy of Irene Renfield and Clare Kendry, I was tempted to categorize Sula and Nel’s friendship as another pairing of opposites.   I could have simply pigeonholed Nel as the equivalent of Irene, the family-oriented, lady of bourgeois society, and Sula as Clare, the homewrecker with no emotional connection to family.  At the end of Sula’s life, even Nel sees herself as Sula’s polar opposite as she argues bitterly with Sula who is on her deathbed.  Nel insists that Sula wouldn’t be selfish if she was a mother (142) and she takes a shot at Sula for being unable to “keep a man” (143) in the same ways that Irene accused Clare of being selfish and laughed at her sham of a marriage. 

But if I had taken that perspective, this journal entry would have been a great deal shorter and more boring.  The strange thing about Sula is that it wouldn’t let me neatly categorize Nel and Sula as I’d been able to do with Irene and Clare.  Interestingly, the Sula gave Nel in response to her condemnation echo some things that Nel had thought herself earlier in life.  For example, Sula is proud of owning herself and says, “Girl, I got my mind. And everything that goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me” (143). Sula’s independence and embrace of self flies in the face of Medallions conventions as they are voiced by Nel.  The independent Sula does not keep a man, like the rest of the women of medallion, nor does she want to; the independent Sula is not lonely, even when she has no one but herself, because she finds her own mind to be a satisfying companion. 

 But as Nel was commenting that Sula must get lonely without any connections to husband or family, Nel forgets that as a young girl, she had been delighted by the idea that she only belonged to herself, “‘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 joy, like power, like fear” (28). Nel loved the freedom of being detached from her mother and grandmother, and was empowered by the knowledge that she was herself.  This old declaration of self from Nel’s childhood is sharply contrasts her condemnation of  Sula’a satisfaction with owning only her own mind.  If Nel’s childhood hides the same declaration of “Me-ness” that she scorns as an adult, I have to question if Nel was really meant to be cast as Sula’s opposite.  Although Nel’s words make her sound like another upright woman who follows Medallions’ conventions, her actions cast a subtly Sula-like attitude.  The way Nel’s children are barely mentioned in the narrative indicate that she is somewhat detached from them. After Jude commits adultery and leaves her, Nel is unable to cry for her husband, and later she finds that she never missed him to begin with.  It is Sula who Nel discovers she had missed the whole time.  Nel was more like Sula than she was ever like the family oriented woman she appeared to be.  Nel’s image as a good mother and wife was a façade that her upbringing had imposed on her, as Sula tells her, “But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is someone else’s. Made by someone else and handed to you. Ain’t that something, a secondhand lonely” (143).

Sula is a book that challenges the reader’s belief that the world is divided into extremes, so there must be more behind Nel’s relationship with Sula than the shallow interpretation that Nel and Sula represent complete opposites.  Once Nel discovers that she was more like Sula than any other woman in Medallion, she muddles the seemingly distinct roles of the upright woman and the renegade.  

Sula Entry (first half) by Gisell Vasquez

After reading the first half of Sula, what impacted me the most was the realization Nel had that she is her own person. This passage, found on page 28, seemed to have been plucked out right from my own memory. I once had a very similar experience in which I realized that I was independent and not a part of my parent’s lives or the part of the lives of people around. I was very young, around 7, when the thought just seemed to plant itself in my head. I realized that I could make my own decisions and have my own opinions without looking to my parents for approval. I can recall the first decision I made was what clothes I would wear for the day. In retrospect, it was the most inconsequential of decisions, but at the time, it was life changing. Nel’s experience very much mirrors my own. She looks in the mirror and says to herself: “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.” Although those were not my exact words, it was the same thought I had.

            For me, this new found identity brought a freedom that I hadn’t felt previously. I feel like this is the same thing that is happening with Nel. She decides then and there that she wants to be accomplished. She prays to Jesus to make her wonderful. She decides she’s going to go places and see things. Nel wants to get out of Medallion and at this time, this is her ultimate goal.

            This point in Nel’s life is one that I believe all people can relate to. The point where you say to yourself “I am my own person and I will have accomplishments”. Although the passage had a more morose tone to it, I couldn’t help but smile while reading it because it reminded me of my childhood and all the plans I made for myself. Some I have achieved while others have fallen off my bucket list, but the feeling of wanting something badly and making it a point to recite it to myself while looking at my reflection in the mirror is something that is etched in my memory. While reading that one part in the book, I imagined it was me who was living in that moment.

Caitlinmarie Ramirez- Sula Reading Journal

            My initial reaction on the scene where Hannah burns is to be reminded of when Eva burned Plum. The burning of Hannah is very different than Plum’s in that Hannah does not burn at the hands of her mother. The two are similar in that Eva was aiming to save her children in both situations and both her son and daughter die. In a sense the two are saved by going to the safest place available to them which is heaven. This theme of heaven as a safe haven is often seen in slave narratives where African Americans would be eased by the idea of their hardship someday ending in death. Mothers would tell this to their children who’s live had just begun as something to look forward to. For me this relates back to whether or not Eva’s burning of Plum was justified and to me it was.

            Plum had reached the bottom of a downward spiral and was lying in stagnation. He was hooked on drugs and clinging onto better times. There was no future for him and Eva knew this. The way I see the scene where Eva burns Plum he is almost like a phoenix. Before Plum is set on fire “He opened his eyes and saw what he imagined was a great wing of an eagle pouring a wet lightness over him. Some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing, he thought (Toni Morrison, 47)”. Eva is pouring kerosene over him but at least Plum is in a state of peace. Unlike Plum, poor Hannah is awake for her burning and feels the “agony so intense that for years the people who gathered ‘round would shake their heads at the recollection of it (Morrison, 76).” But Hannah also gets baptized when Mr. and Mrs. Suggs throw the water on her, the only difference is it causes more harm than good because it “seared to sealing all that was left of the beautiful Hannah Peace (Morrison, 76)”.

The fact that Hannah’s burning was not done by Eva’s hand and was portrayed as more physically painful makes me see Plum’s burning as smaller than Hannah’s. Many would see Eva’s act as insane but her intentions seemed to be just considering that her type of love is different than the typical definition of love which states that providing your child with necessities is love. Even if there was no playing with the children it was only because she lacked the luxury to do so as a single mother. Also it is not as if Eva does not show Plum indifference before the burning. She takes him and rocks him in her arms and remembers him as a child; she even cries for him. “Eva lifted her tongue to the edge of her lip to stop the tears from running into her mouth (Morrison, 47)”.

            Another important thing about Hannah’s burning is that right before it happens Eva is reminded of the dream “of a wedding in a red bridal gown until Sula came in and woke her up (Morrison, 73)”. White wedding dresses are typically worn as a sign of virginity and it was well known that Hannah Peace was well like but also promiscuous. Perhaps her burning is symbolic of retribution of her sins. She is described as a “flaming, dancing figure (Morrison, 76)” which has a very tribal undertone to it. Dancing is normally done at time of celebration. Also the fact that Sula is the one who wakes of Eva after the dream is foreboding. It seems to be foreshadowing of the traitorous act that Sula later commits against Nel by having sex with her husband. This can be brought to the final point of the scene where Eva notes that Sula witnessed her mother burn and just watched it seems “because she was interested (Morrison, 78)”. I often see Sula as an evil character because even though she can be sympathized with because she heard her mother say she doesn’t like her, she does nasty things later on. Here she watches her mother burn without any attempt to call for help or call an ambulance. Later on she will show a similar lack of compassion to Eva by placing her in a nursing home and taking over the Peace house.

Assignment Update

Dear students,
Thanks for the postings thus far on Sula and The Joys of Motherhood.  I'm enjoying reading them!  I will make comments in the "comments" sections of your posting once the rest of you get yours up, as well.  Try to do that soon.

Assignment update:  Since I was still sick on Wednesday, just continue with the same assignment I posted on Monday for this coming Monday, Oct. 31st.  And since it is Halloween, feel free to dress in costume and/or bring treats (or tricks) to share.   The assignment in review:  Groups 3, 4, 5. come prepared to discuss your passages from Sula to the larger group.   Everyone should bring the new book, The Joys of Motherhood, reading as far as you can.

And don't forget to look at the film schedule -- we have a showing scheduled for next week.

Regards to all, and see you on Monday --
Professor Hinton

Kimalee Blake- Reponse to Katherine Delgado

After reading Katherine Delgado response to The Joys of Motherhood, I cannot help but agree. This story is very touching and when you started, “When Nnu Ego loses her baby, I almost cried with her,” I too got a little teary eyed because as I mother I would go insane if I was to lose my child, especially after bonding with my child. I also agree with you when it pertains to the men in this story because I too believe the women are suppressed and overpowered by men. The fact that the men can keep and drop any women they feel like without the women having a say in the manner is total domination.