INTRODUCTION

African-American Literature, as defined by many contemporary critics, is the

literature by blacks about blacks which has a didactic flavor. These narratives are
primarily consist of memoirs by people who had escaped from slavery, accounts of life
under slavery, and the path of justice and redemption to freedom. Furthermore, most of
its novels talk about culture, racism, slavery, and social equality; all concerning the role
of African-Americans within the larger American society (Ward, 1998).
One of the most promising African-American writers in contemporary literature is
Toni Morrison. She was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1993. Furthermore, her other novels Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize in
1988, Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 and Sula
secured a nomination for the Nation Book Award in 1974. Morrisons works have earned
widespread critical acclaim to a literature rich in expressive subtlety and social insight,
offering illuminating assessments of African-American identities and history. Her work
spans three decades and is characterized by an evolving concern with the study of
women's inner lives. In an interview with Morrison in 2014, she said that she writes
because of her eagerness to show how painful the constructed horrible racism was on
the most vulnerable people in the society- women, poor girls, and black girls.
According to Tyson (2006), most of Toni Morrisons novels centers on womens
issues and struggles due to the oppressive dominant environment around them. The
problems posed in most of her novels were the burden of inescapable memories of
slavery and the damage of internalized racism can do to every member of the
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community especially the women. Essentially, these circumstances consequently

contribute to the psychology and behavior of the women in the novels which entirely
affects the posture of their personality and the situation of their lives.
Therefore, attention should be drawn to the significance of struggles of women in
the novels. Thus, the researcher came up with this study.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
African-American Literature
African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States
by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writer
as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of slave narratives, African-American literature
was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. African-American literature
reached early high points with slave narratives of the nineteenth century. Writers of
African-American literature have been recognized by the highest awards, including
the Nobel Prize to Toni Morrison. Among the themes and issues explored in this
literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, AfricanAmerican culture, racism, slavery, and social equality (Ward, 1998).
African-American literature has both been influenced by the great African
diasporic heritage and shaped it in many countries. It has been created within the larger
realm of post-colonial literature, although scholars distinguish between the two, saying
that "African American literature differs from most post-colonial literature in that it is

written by members of a minority community who reside within a nation of vast wealth
and economic power (Mohanram and Rajan, 1996).
By the close of the 20th century, African American culture was represented in
literature, theater, television, and film. In the 1990s, Toni Morrison became a Nobel
laureate and August Wilson won a second Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Piano
Lesson. Writers of this period produced work that was determined to cure what
Morrison deemed the national amnesia around the history of slavery, and slave
narratives became a part of the American canon. Other African American authors
reshaping the canon included Pulitzer Prize winners such as Rita Dove and Yusef
Komunyakaa in poetry, Charles Johnson and John Edgar Wideman in fiction, Ntozake
Shange and George Wolfe in theater, and Alice Walker in fiction and nonfiction. These
writers produced work distinguished by:
(1) the acknowledgement of the multiplicity of African American identities;
(2) a renewed interest in history, as writers imagine the psychological and spiritual lives
of African Americans during slavery and segregation;
(3) the emergence of a community of black women writing;
(4) a continuing exploration of music and other forms of vernacular culture as
springboards for literary innovation and theoretical analysis; and
(5) the influence of African American literary scholarship (Taylor, 2015)
Ultimately, the African American renaissance of the late 20th century grapples
with the diversity of the African American experience. It is inspired by their literary
forefathers and foremothers, contemporary African American authors, while innovative

in their own respective ways, echo the strife and raw emotion expressed by their
predecessors. Alice Walker, for instance, comments that The Color Purple is her love
letter to Zora [Neale Hurston]. Gathering inspiration from those who came before them,
African American authors of the contemporary generation frequently engage in
scholarship, learning from the past in their writings while simultaneously enriching it for
future generations (Taylor, 2015).
Thus, present-day authors raise searching questions about African American
identity. Their work reexamines racism and allows readers to view its social, economic,
and political ramifications. Slavery, though abolished in the nineteenth century, is not an
ideological construct barred from the American consciousness. African American
society, as a whole, has progressed fruitfully over the past few decades, and the voices
of African Americans are finally being heard. Many years have passed since the
attestations of Bostons elite confirming Phillis Wheatleys literary ingenuity, yet African
American literature today still grapples with some of the very same tensions and desires
present in the 18th century. African American literature produced during this period
rewrites the American narrative, creating a more complex and diverse view of America
(Taylor, 2015).
Women in African-American Literature
Before the 1960s the protagonist in the African American novel was generally a
male who was part rebel and part victim, striving to define himself in the whirlwind of
social and cultural forces that denied or threatened to destroy his humanity. On a
deeper level, his journey was a ritualistic or allegorical reenactment on a smaller scale
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of the larger historical experience of his people in the United States. However, since
1960s, black protagonists such as Janie, Vyry, Miss Jane Pitman, Sula, Velma, Celie,
and Sethe have been reclaimed, reimagined, and reconstructed to challenge male
hegemony and to illuminate the joys and sorrows of those who are poor, black, and
female. Stereotypes and archetypes, romantic and realistic characters contend with
each other as the novelists seek to create fictions that explore the wide range of black
American character and celebrate the self-redemptive, community-empowering values
of black American life while criticizing destructive forces. The most distinctive character
types include the preacher, the hustler, the matriarch, the messianic leader, the bad
nigger, the liberated woman, and the blues-jazz figureboth male and female (Bell,
2006).
Black feminist critics, such as Mary Helen Washington in her introduction to Black
Eyed Susans and Barbara Christian in Black Women Novelists, applaud the realistic
images by black women writers such as Morrison, Walker, Meriwether, Marshall, and
Bambara. As illustrated in their fiction, interviews in Black Women Writers at Work, and
the pioneer essays on black feminist criticism by Barbara Smith and Deborah E.
McDowell, many black women novelists deploy to a greater or lesser degree the
following signs and structures: (1) motifs of interlocking racist, sexist, and classist
oppression; (2) black female protagonists; (3) spiritual journey from victimization to the
realization of personal autonomy or creativity; (4) centrality of female bonding or
networking; (5) shared focus on personal relationships in the family and community; (6)
deeper, more detailed exploration and validation of the epistemological power of the

emotions; (7) iconography of womens clothing; and (8) black female language (Bell,
2006).
Until the 1940s, the images of black women have been stereotyped. During the
slavery and reconstruction periods, especially southern white literature assigned black
women a role that further nourished submission. The pattern of mammy, Aunt Jemina,
the most known black figure in southern white literature was presented as the utter
opposite of the white woman. Mammy was portrayed as fat, enduring, strong, kind, and
nurturing. A woman who needs so little. She was a woman with a round shape and big
breasts, a woman who was desired and needed, unlike the white woman who had to
debase herself to perform the role of a mother. The white woman was described as
pretty, frail and unable to do hand work. Hence, the two images depend on each other;
the white womans image would be as crystal-like as it was portrayed by white southern
writers if she labored and took care of children. The roles of mammy were mainly
physical. She worked and showed the sensuousness that white women feared to show.
Therefore, the black woman was used as a surrogate of all the physical functions that
the white woman was so afraid to perform (Abel, 1997).
In the decade preceding the blossoming of the Harlem Renaissance, black
people had moved in large numbers from the agricultural South to big cities like New
York. That great migration paved the way to Harlem Renaissance, which was the Mecca
of black people in the twenties when jazz, urban blues and a new pride in ones race
were flourishing. Literature was affected by the new spirit of the age and huge body of
literary works was shaped. Black women also migrated to big cities, and despite their
hopes for a better and improved life, the substance stayed the same. Things looked
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different but were in reality the same. Instead of working in fields picking cotton or
cleaning the houses of the white masters, the black women worked as domestics,
factory laborers, or prostitutes, in other words, black women were at the lowest bottom
of the societys working scale (Dixon, 1987).
The period 1945-1975 was a very rich one for black women writers who covered
a large scope of themes, some of which were dominant. In the genre of the novel four
novelists marked their dominance: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Chester Himes and
Ralph Ellison. In Wrights novels Native Son or The Outsider the woman is generally
seen as a victim whose fate was decided by the society around her. In Black Boy, we
learn just a little about Wrights grandmother and mother representing the suffering
religious women who stand as a reminder of pain for the author. The character of Mary
in Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man takes us back to the nineteenth century image of
mammy when she vanishes from the book after saving the solo alienated hero from his
illness. Chester Himes female black characters were sex kitten portrayed as sexual
subjects or toys as in Pinktoes. His characterization of women was more like a
caricature which was probably a comment on the very stereotype (Carby, 1987).
The images of the black women in these four novels are very close to the
stereotypical images of black women generated by the white Southern writers in the
second half of the nineteenth century. During this period black women writers had to
step up speak for themselves. The black woman had to reflect on her own situation and
discover her own identity. She had to start considering her growth and relationship with
men, children, society, history and philosophy based on her own experiences. Those
years were overwhelming and some women writers tended to deliver explosive
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comments which projected how intense, diverse and complex the lives of black women
can get through their own unfiltered eyes. The writings of black women in this period
were characterized by trends. The characters of black women were given new physical
and psychological images. The mammy was no longer a needless caring entity; her
character was taken to a whole new level where her needs and desires are expressed.
The relationships of men and women were also moved from generic to more detailed
scrutinings which focused mainly on the social restraints on marriage. More strikingly,
the black woman was not only seen as a tool or a sufferer, but also as a thinker, a feeler
and a conscious human being. The black woman was finally seen as a three
dimensional person not just a picture on the wall. She had a culture, a gender, a race
and visions to share with the world. Those were not stereotypes because the stereotype
is the antonym of humanness. The stereotype whether positive or negative is a powerful
renderer of the worthy to the worthless and of the human to the inhuman (Cone, 1890).
Paule Marshall (1994) studied thoroughly the creation of character. In her essays
and lectures she focuses on the importance of crafting real distinct people who affect
and are affected by the two vital elements of society and culture. She dives into her
characters to discover the incentives behind their actions as well as the time and pace
in which they live. The black women she creates in her books are rounded out. She
represents the usual figures of the black woman: a devoted mother, a prostitute or a
martyred woman but instead of the flat stereotypical characterization, she tries to unfold
the complex layers of the psyches of those women until the stereotype is totally melted
in the mind of the reader. Creating a space for the female character was an innovative

way to dispel stereotype, and was a strategy to free the black woman character from
limitation and predictability.
Toni Morrisons novels The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1974) are illustrations of
another theme which grew more mature and subtle with her work. Both novels
demonstrate the search for beauty in the midst of the ugliness and restrictions of life
inside and out. The women in her novels are double faced; looking inward while
wandering outside. They live within themselves and without. The contradictions and
complications of life are measured and analyzed by the friendships that Morrisons
women have with other women. So, the black woman looks for continuity within herself
and between people in the cycle of life. Toni Morrisons characters are not only human
beings; her characterization patters are full of symbols and signs. Robins, wind, fire and
marigolds are characters that live and leave a trace in the same manner human
characters do.
For instance, in The Bluest Eye Morrison uses the subtlety of her language to
describe the psychological trauma of a group of black girls who grew up in a society
where blue eyes and fair hair were the standards of beauty. She explains the continuity
between the perception of ones physical appearance and the development of the
psyche. The black girls in the book dont only search for the beauty which comes along
with having blue eyes but the peace, clarity and harmony that the color blue symbolizes.
Toni Morrisons characters are proof of how far literature moved from the types of the
nineteenth century. Hence, the prevalent characteristic of this literature is the constant
removal of stereotypical images (Cone, 1890).

Stereotype is a comforting way of escaping the bitter realities, and moving away
from set images could be quite aching. Fine Afro-American women writers like Zora
Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker wrote from different political, cultural,
historical and philosophical points of reference. They wrote about county and city life.
They wrote fantasies and tackled issues as social realists. They dared play with their
styles from traditional to experimental, they leave us with the diversity of the experience
of black women in America, what she made of it and how she is transforming it. The
black woman has now a tradition of her own which allows the reader to discover the
experience of black women with all of its racial and historical particularities, and their
aspirations of how the future will be (Carby, 1987).

African-American Criticism
The term African-American Criticism belongs to a wide range of critical
approaches to the study of literature and society cultural studies. Cultural Studies is
a kind of umbrella term that not only includes approaches to the critical analysis of
society such as Marxism, feminism, structuralism, deconstruction, and new historicism,
but also refers to a wide range of interdisciplinary studies, including womens studies,
Asian, Native American, Latino studies, African-American studies, and other types of
area studies (DiYanni, 1995).
African American Criticism shows both mild and militant pictures of racial protest
and hatred, of personal portraits of what it means to be a black writer struggling with
cultural, personal and national identity. It is a sense that criticism is inevitably ideological
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and political, and that black experience and the expression of that experience is a
historical, cultural formation of oppression. The art of black art is inevitably, then, a very
complex cultural formation. Black criticism has substantial ties to Post-colonial Criticism
and to the issues in it of the representation of the other, the reclamation of identity in
the forms and language of the oppressor, and the notions of parody, mimicry and
hybridity (Lye, 2008).
It is a sense that black writing comes out of a sociological, political, ideological
and cultural situation marked by oppression and marginalization. 'Black' reading then
must negotiate the difficult boundaries between textual and cultural meanings, between
'aesthetic' and ideological impacts. It attempts to recognize and celebrate that which is
distinctively and positively black in black art, that is, which owes its meaning and
expression to the particular expressions and traditions of black culture and experience
(Gates, 1988).
Toni Morrison, for instance, argues that American culture is built on, and is
premised by, and always includes, the presence of blacks, as slaves, as outsiders.
Morrison likens the unwillingness of academics in a racist society to see the place of
Africanism in literature and culture to the centuries of unwillingness to see feminine
discourse, concerns, and identity. She posits whiteness as the 'other' of blackness, a
dialectical pair (each term both creates and excludes the other): no freedom without
slavery, no white without black.
Morrison believes that one can read blackness in white American writing
because, in cultural, ideological, political terms, race is intrinsic to America: if one says

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someone is an African, one then says they are a white or a black African -- you
designate either; if one says someone is an American, that means they are white,
unless otherwise noted -- the 'white' is automatic. In the terms of the European theorist
Jurgen Habermas, the violence against blacks is embedded in the uses of language
and in the cultural practices of the nation (Peterson, 1995).
Relevance of African concept of Beauty to Literary Criticism
Much of the literature on colonialism and slavery focuses on the domination of
African and indigenous peoples by Europeans, and skin color is often discussed in this
literature in terms of the creation of racial hierarchies. Light skin is associated with
Europeans and is assigned a higher status than darker skin, which is associated with
Africans or indigenous people, and is assigned a lower status. These colonial value
systems are forced on the colonized and often internalized by them (Freedman, 1986).
The creation of skin color hierarchies for African Americans dates back to the
American system of chattel slavery. Slave owners used skin color as a basis to divide
enslaved Africans for work chores and to create distrust and animosity among them,
minimizing chances for revolt. This early skin color hierarchy has persisted in the African
American community. The message of white supremacy was then doubly reinforced
from European and American racial hegemony (Hunter, 1999).
Physical appearance tends to be a more important status characteristic for
women than for men, although appearance is becoming increasingly important for men.
For women, light skin color is closely associated with definitions of beauty. In fact, the

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connection between the two is so close that they are often conflated. Consequently, to
be defined by mainstream U.S. society as beautiful, most women must have light skin
and European facial features, especially women of color. Since beauty is highly
racialized, and informed by ideals of white supremacy established during slavery and
colonialism, beauty operates as a tool of white supremacy and a tool of patriarchy by
elevating men and whites in importance and status. "There is a surprisingly high level of
agreement about who is beautiful and who is not". Although the overt racial standards of
beauty are often unspoken, people across ethnic groups and class levels tend to agree
about who possesses beauty and who does not (Freedman, 1986).

Formalistic Approach
The formalistic approach to literature was developed at the beginning of the 20 th
century and remained popular until the 1970s, when other literary theories began to
gain popularity. Today, formalism is often dismissed as rigid and inaccessible, used in
Ivy League classrooms as the subject of scorn in rebellious coming-of-age films. It is an
approach that is concerned primarily with form, and as its name suggests, and thus
places the greatest emphasis on how something is said, rather than what is said.
Originally, formalism was a new and unique idea. The formalists were called
New Critics and their approach to literature became the standard academic approach.
Like a classical artists such as da Vinci and Michelangelo, the formalists concentrated
more on the form of the art rather than the content. They studied the recurrences, the
repetitions, the relationships, and the motifs in a work in order to understand what the
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work was about. The formalists viewed the tiny details of a work as nothing more than
parts of the whole. In the formalist approach, even a lack of form indicates something.
Absurdity is in itself a form-one used to convey a specific meaning (even if the meaning
is a lack of meaning).
Formalist Critics, such as the New Critics, assume that a work of literature is a
freestanding, self-contained object whose meaning is established in the complex
network of relations between its parts (allusions, images, rhythms, sounds, etc.)
Formalists believe that a work is a separate entity- not at all dependent upon the
authors life or the culture in which the work is created. No paraphrase is used in
formalistic examination, and no reader reaction is discussed.
According to the formalist view, the proper concern of literary criticism is with the
work itself rather than with literary history, the life of the author, or a works social and
historical contexts. For a formalist, the central meaning of a literary work is discovered
through a detailed analysis of the works formal elements rather than by going outside
the work to consider other issues, whether biographical, historical, psychological, social,
political, or ideological. Such additional considerations, from the formalist perspective,
are extrinsic, or external, and are of secondary importance. What matters most to the
formalist critic is how the work comes to mean what it does- how its resources of
language are deployed by the writer to convey meaning. Implicit in the formalist
perspective, moreover, is the readers can indeed determine the meanings of literary
works- that literature can be understood and its meanings are clarified (DiYanni, 1995).
The primary method of formalism is a close reading of the literary text, with an
emphasis, for example, on a works use of metaphor or symbol, its deployment of irony,

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its patterns of image or action. Poetry lends itself especially well to the kinds of close
reading favored by formalist critics because its language tends to be more compressed
and metaphorical than the language of prose- at least as a general rule. Nonetheless,
formal analysis of novels and plays can also focus on close reading of key passages
(the opening and closing chapters of a novel, for example, or the first and last scenes of
a play, or a climactic moment in the action of drama, poetry, fiction). In addition,
formalist critics analyze the large-scale structures of longer works, looking for patterns
and relationships among scenes, actions, and characters (DiYanni, 1995).

Psychological Approach
Psychoanalytic criticism derives from Freuds revolutionary psychology in which
he developed the notion of displacement, fixation, and manifest and latent dream
content.
According to Freud, the unconscious harbors forbidden wishes and desires, often
sexual, are in conflict with an individuals or societys moral standards. He explains that
although the individual represses or censors these unconscious fantasies and desires,
they become displaced or distorted in dreams and other forms of fantasy, which serve
to disguise their real meaning (Diyanni, 1995).
Among the most important of the categories derived from Freud that
psychoanalytic critics employ are those Freud used to describe mental structures and
dynamics. Freud recognized three types of mental functions, which he designated the
id, the ego, and the superego. Freud saw the id as the storehouse of desires,

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primarily libidinal or sexual, but also aggressive and possessive. He saw the superego
as the representative of societal and parental standards of ethics and morality. And he
saw ego as the negotiator between the desires and demands of the id and the
controlling and constraining force of the superego, all influenced further by an
individuals relationship with other people in the contexts of actual life (Diyanni, 1995).
The foundation of Freud's contribution to modern psychology is his emphasis on
the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. A brilliant creative genius, Freud
provided convincing evidence, through his many carefully recorded case studies, that
most of the human actions are motivated by psychological forces over which have very
limited control.
The oldest and best meaning of the word "unconscious" is the descriptive one:
"unconscious" is any mental process of the existence of which an individual is obligated
to assumebecause, for instance, an individual infer it in some way from its effects
but of which he/she is not directly aware.
That most of the individual's mental processes are unconscious is thus Freud's
first major premise. The second, has been rejected by a great many professional
psychologists, including some of Freud's own disciplesfor example, Carl Gustav Jung
and Alfred Adler, is that all human behavior is motivated ultimately by what we would
call sexuality. Freud designates the prime psychic force as libido, or sexual energy. His
third major premise is that because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain
sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed.
To analyze a text in the lens of psychological criticism, one must look for:

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Instances of repression, isolation, sublimation, displacement, denial, projection,

intellectualization, and/or reaction formation in the actions of characters.

Internal conflicts present in characters that cause them difficulty fitting into
society or being happy.

Expressions of the unconscious in characters dreams, voices, creative acts (or

any actions), slips of the tongue, jokes, etc.

Descriptions of the unconscious in texts.

Patterns or repeated behavior in the text.

How a characters identity is developed (Kennedy, Gioia, 2011).

Trauma
The word trauma is etymologically linked to the Greek word wound. It is
derived from the verb which means to pierce.
In the earlier stages of Freuds psychoanalytical theory, trauma was basically
seen as excessive influx of excitations (which is related to the economic theory of
Freud, when excitation is very much, there is the traumatic effect). Trauma is a kind of
breach, puncturing. Ego acts something like a layer, shield that protects the psyche from
external stimuli, letting only right amounts. When the shield breaks, too much excitation
comes in so general level of the circulation of the energy should be restored or reduced
in order to restore the pleasure principle. This is the basics of the traumatic theory or
neurosis in the early Freud. In trauma, a pathological defense is settled; in the normal
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state of things when the psyche is threatened by excitation, healthy ego redirects the
attention to something else. When organism cannot deal with it, the ego develops a
pathological defense: Repression. The ego represses the excitation and this creates
neurosis. For Freud, in this early stage, 1895-1900, this is basically the traumatic theory
of neurosis. Freud considers trauma as a triggering factor in neurosis. Besides, he
considers it as essentially sexual terms; overflow of the libidinal energy that the
organism cannot bear. Emphasis on the external effects isnt that strong in his theory;
well, something happens for sure but the real trauma is inside the psyche. For example,
a sexual scene, seduction by adult become traumatic only later when something that
reminds the subject occurs, and becomes invested with all fear, anxiety which the event
elicited in the subject. Eventually, that scene becomes the cause of neurosis. Freud
asserts that hysterics basically suffer from reminiscences, memory. It is the memory that
makes the event hysterical. Let us say that the child is exposed to something, the initial
event is something the child represses without reacting to it and even experiencing
anxiety, fear. Hence, one can conclude that the event which causes the trauma,
happened, but at the same time not happened (Nas, 2009).

Freud emphasizes fantasies triggered by traumas rather than the trauma itself.
He mainly sees trauma as a supporting factor to neurosis. Additionally and more
importantly, Freud later considers trauma with its relation to the disposition of the
subject. What lead him change his theoretical approach is that he reconsidered trauma
as a form of neurosis; when analyzing another kind of traumatic event, traumas of the
war during the First World War. Freud begins to think about traumatic neurosis in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). First, he argues that trauma is connected to
18

repetition compulsion. He observes the compulsion to repeat in the victims of trauma

in two forms. 1) He is informed about the repeated dreams about the traumatic events.
Soldiers constantly dream about the war front, wounding, and killing. This is something
in need of explanation for Freud because this is a counter example for Freuds theory of
dreams; dreams are wish-fulfillments. 2) Many victims unconsciously tend to recreate
conditions, scenes of their traumas. For example, a child abused by his father, dreams a
man like him and the abuse continues (Nas, 2009).

In Freuds dealing with trauma, there is a kind of tension. Freud is bothered by

the idea that this kind of trauma is perceived as different from libidinal trauma. Freud
confesses that it is difficult, nearly impossible to connect war traumas to early childhood
experiences. He doesnt say they cannot be connected. After Freud, especially in
Lacan, what motivated to return to trauma isnt Freuds idea of libidinal connections, but
another one: that it is an event fundamentally impossible to integrate into ones sense of
selfhood, identity. The notion and the studies of trauma has been expanded from the
individuals experiences to collective kinds; collective traumas (Nas, 2009).

In Lacan, especially in his essay on Hamlet, the notion of trauma is used very
frequently, also in relation to literature. In Lacanian terms, trauma can be defined as the
loss of unity with the mother, intrusion of language in the symbolic order, loss of phallus;
fear of castration is the original trauma for Lacan. It is something that shapes, marks the
subject forever. It is also something that the subject doesnt experience. In Lacans
theory, trauma is in the origin of the subject. The whole processes of desire,

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substitution, objet petit a, fantasies, could be seen as repetition compulsion for Lacan.
All these experiences are not mastered by the subject, but they produce the subject. In
this regard, ones whole life can be considered as repetition compulsion. Trauma is the
universal element of psychoanalytical theory of the subject. On the other hand, specific
kinds of trauma that threatens normal functioning of the psyche, and which result in
more drastic symptoms, difficulties becomes more interesting focuses of attention;
especially in the collective forms of trauma (Nas, 2009).

Guilt
Freud describes guilt as a self-punitive process that takes place entirely within
the individual through sanctioning or censuring all violations of moral standards,
identifying ethical norms dictated in part by universal moral laws and in part by specific
regulations of a given culture. The behavioral correction is carried out by fear of guilt,
which warns people that what they are about to do is wrong (Carni, 2013).
Freud assumed that guilt was a necessary precondition in the development of the
Super-Ego (interiorized social rules that also guide the individuals behavior in
adulthood) and a consequence of the Oedipus Complex. According to this view, guilt,
with its unpleasant feeling, has the function of punishing impulses considered
unacceptable, which violate interiorized norms. Therefore, guilt is fed by a conflict
between the Ego and the Super-Ego and has the function of keeping human behavior in
line with moral standards.

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Rank (1929) also held that the infantmother attachment and the consequent
fear of losing the loved object generate guilt, which operates as a force that perpetuates
that relationship.
Mosher (1965), on the other hand, proposed that guilt is a generalized
expectation of self-inflicted punishment accompanied by an unpleasant feeling of having
violated ones internal standards of behavior. Subsequently, other authors have
considered guilt a negative affective component, which, following a violation of personal
standards, punishes individuals for their transgressions.
Freud (1961) has probably been the first to state that excessive guilt is at the
base of all neuroses. According to his view, guilt not only has the function of punishing
individuals who err, but also motivates them to desire punishment when they feel they
are in the wrong. Guilt induces people to engage in self-punishing conduct that can lead
to failure in normal daily activities. The self-punishment function has been widely upheld
in psychoanalytic literature, in which it is associated with masochistic behaviors.
Moreover, unlike the preceding authors, Fromm (1985) held that the fear of being
guilty should not primarily be ascribed to the possibility of losing the love of someone
close. What dominates is the fear of having outraged an authority, even an unreal
interiorized authority, and guilt is a sort of power that authority has over people. People
who feel guilty are particularly willing to do anything to obtain authoritys approval to
mitigate their guilt. This mechanism could clarify the possible role of guilt in cases of
homicides followed by the killers suicide. Indeed, the extreme guilt experienced after

21

killing someone can result in the desire to deserve an equally extreme punishment and,
therefore, in suicide.
Although some studies have reported that guilt is associated with the expectation
or the fear of being punished, none of them demonstrated that the person who feels
guilty always desires to suffer or be punished; this seems to happen, instead, only when
specific conditions occur, as demonstrated by. They called Dobby effect the tendency
for self-punishment associated with the experience of guilt. The desire of expiation
arises from guilt just if the individual cannot repair his/her own wrongdoing. In a
scenario study, the authors manipulated whether subjects felt guilty or not and whether
it was possible or not to repair the harm done; they found that guilt evoked selfpunishment (in that case, higher levels of self-denied pleasure) only if participants could
not compensate for the transgression that caused the guilt experience. The authors thus
highlight a functional relevance of guilt-induced self-punishment behavior (or intention)
that may be considered as a signal of acceptance and future compliance with violated
standards (Nelissen and Zeelenberg, 2009).
There is another aspect of the psychoanalytic argumentation about guilt that
needs to be addressed. In fact, to some authors within the psychodynamic approach, it
is not clear how guilt is distinguished from other emotions. The idea that the individual is
induced to prevent specific behaviors to avoid unpleasant feelings clearly indicates the
possibility that he is experiencing just fear to be guilty. Moreover, in adulthood, fear of
guilt associated with moral violations emerges not only after individuals have acted in a
non-ethical way, but also as a simple anticipation of the intention or the possibility of
transgression: Therefore, this emotional state could be better understood as anticipatory
22

anxiety rather than guilt. Prinz and Nichols, for example, state that guilt could be a
learned by-product of other emotions, like fear or sadness. We propose that guilt is
actually a form of sadness or sadness mixed with a little anxiety. When young children
misbehave, parents withdraw love. Love withdrawal threatens the attachment
relationship that children have with their parents, and losing attachments is a paradigm
of sadness. It can cause anxiety, insofar as attachment relations are a source of
security. The threat of losing love leads children to associate sadness with
transgression, through associative learning. The anxiety-tinged sadness about
wrongdoing is then labelled guilt. In accord with this view, guilt should be considered as
a consequence of a combination of anxiety and sadness, rather than a pure emotion
(2010).

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study analyzed the novels of Toni Morrison. Specifically, this study answered
the following questions:
1. Who are the female major characters and what are their struggles in the
novels?
2. How do these struggles shape their personality?

23

Scope and Delimitation

This study analyzed three (3) novels of Toni Morrison, namely Beloved, The
Bluest Eye and Sula. These novels were purposively chosen from all of the published
novels of Toni Morrison because of the riveting insights it gives to the readers into the
painful lives of her black female protagonist as they confront racism in all forms in
American society. The female major characters of these novels were identified. These
female characters were Sethe of the Beloved, Pecola of the The Bluest Eye and Sula
of Sula
The analysis of this study was limited only to identifying the female major
characters of the novel, their struggles, and the importance of these struggles in
shaping their personality.
This study used the African-American Criticism, one of the disciplines in Cultural
Studies. This is to show the bitterness of the struggles of women over the relation of
race and gender and cultural situations marked by oppression, and to distinguish the
forces from which the female major characters in the novels construct their actions and
decisions towards the situations they are in.
Formalistic Approach was also used to describe the characters of the female
major characters in the novels.
Furthermore, Psychological Approach was also used to explore the psychology
of the female major characters. Thus, it is used to carefully examine what lays
underneath the novels- the unspeakable memories, motives, and fears that covertly
shapes the personality of the female characters.
24

Significance of the Study

The study The Struggles of Women in the Novels of Toni Morrison may be
significant to the following:
To the society, this study may help in promoting equality on the rights of AfricanAmericans especially the women; this may promote positive social view among women
especially on cultures whose women are oppressed.
To the school, this study can be a source or guide to develop a better
understanding about literature, culture, life, and women as well.
To the teachers, the result of this study may be useful as a teaching material to
provide basis in their teaching of literature especially the novel and its themes; and for
them to develop further studies for examining more unexplored aspects of literary
analysis.
To the readers, this study will be a great material for them to appreciate and
discover the novel not only as a good literary piece but also as a good source of
discipline and a guide to living. Furthermore, this study will be a huge help as a source
of information to the students who will have the same endeavor or will undergo the
same study.
To the researcher, this study will help her to better understand the complexity and
inequality of the human race. As reflected in the literary works, the researcher will be
able to understand the vulnerability of women especially the oppressed black women.
Moreover, this will help her acquire virtues that may improve her principles. Most

25

importantly, this study will help her to appreciate literature more as a form of expression
which voices the soul, and discover the capacities, and illuminates the strength and
weaknesses of women.

Definition of Terms
For better understanding of this study, the following terms are defined
conceptually and operationally:
African-American Criticism is a criticism under the scope of Cultural Studies
which focused on a number of recurring historical and sociological themes, all of which
reflect the politicsthe realities of political, social, and economic powerof black
American experience. It shows both mild and militant pictures of racial protest and
hatred, of personal portraits of what it means to be a black, struggling with cultural,
personal and national identity (Tyson, 2006).
Operationally, it was the type of literary criticism used in examining the (3) three
novels of Toni Morrison. Specifically, it delved into the bitterness of the struggles of
African-American women in the society.
Character is the person presented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are
interpreted by the reader as being endowed with moral, dispositional, and emotional
qualities that are expressed in what they say and by what they do (Abrams, 1993).
Operationally, it referred to the female major characters of the three novels of
Toni Morrison. These are Sethe, Pecola and Sula.

26

Formalistic Approach is a literary approach in literature. It involves a close

reading of the text. Formalistic critics believe that all information essential to the
interpretation of a work must be found within the work itself (Lief, 1981).
Operationally, it referred to the approach used in describing the characteristics of
the female major characters in the novels.
Personality is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a
character that uniquely influences their environment, cognitions, emotions, and
motivations in various situations (Allport, 1937).
Operationally, it referred to the personality of the major female characters that
was influenced by their struggles throughout the novels.
Psychological Approach derives from Freuds revolutionary notion of the
unconscious. According to Freud, the unconscious harbors forbidden wishes and
desires that are conflict with an individuals or societys moral standards. Freud then
explains that the repressed and censored fantasies and desires of the individuals
become displaced or distorted in dreams and other forms of fantasy (Diyanni, 1995).
Operationally, it referred to the literary approach used in analyzing the three
novels of Toni Morrison. Specifically, it referred to the psychological analysis of the
female major characters in the novels through their actions, speech, behaviors and
attitude.
Struggle is defined as a long effort to do, achieve, or deal with something that is
difficult or that causes problems. It is a physical or mental fight (Cambridge Dictionary,
2015).
27

Operationally, it referred to the physical, psychological and social struggles of the

female major characters in the novels.

28

Chapter II
REVIEW OF RELATED STUDIES
This chapter presents various materials that were gathered by exploring books,
internet sources as well as unpublished materials that are significant to the study.
Holms (2010), in her study Sexuality in Toni Morrisons Works, examines how
the novels themes of gender, oppression and love are expressed through the
characters sexual conduct. In her study, the selected three novels of Toni Morrison
show how gender oppression in American society marks individuals and relationships.
Her study used the New Historical Criticism which sheds light to the writings of Toni
Morrison, as her writing portrays behavior as a social and cultural construct.
Holms study is relevant to the present study since both studies used the same
author, and specifically, it emphasizes how the American society marks an AfricanAmerican descent and constructs the behavior of the characters in the novels. Such
finding is very useful on distinguishing the struggles that shaped the personality of the
female major characters in the present study.
Torrefiel (2010), in her study Women in the Short Stories of Farzana Moon,
studied the circumstances that shaped the characters of the women in the stories. In
her study, she presented the life of women in Pakistan and their situation in the
patriarchal society wherein women were treated as subordinates. In her study she also
emphasizes the prejudices that are present in the society.
This study is relevant to the present study because it discusses how culture and
society greatly influences the life and role of women in the bigger community.
29

Furthermore, the study also utilized the use of Psychoanalysis to study the emotions
and thoughts of the female characters, which was also used in the present study.
Espino (2008), in her study Women in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy she
studied the womens role and functions in the society, as well as the circumstances
which affect the behavior and attitude of the women. Her findings show that war,
religion, economic conditions, status of women in the society and relationships within
the family and other people affect the attitude and behaviors of the major women
characters.
This study is relevant to the present study because it discusses that
circumstances affect the attitude and behaviors of the women. In addition to its
relevance to the present study, Espino used psychological approach on finding out the
psychology of the women through their actions, speech, behaviors and attitude.
Franco (2003), in her study Women in Selected African Stories: Implication to
Gender Bias studied the roles that women play in the society. In her work, she showed
how women are treated unequally in Africa. The study found out that African women are
regarded as subordinating class. They are treated as second class citizens and were
given less importance than men.
This study is relevant to the present study since both deal with Black womens in
inequality, oppression and struggles in the society.

30

CHAPTER III
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
This chapter consists of three (3) parts namely: 1.) Research Design which
presents the type of research design and the approaches used in the study; 2.) Data
Gathering Techniques, which presents the procedures in gathering the data for the
study; and 3.) Data Analysis, which presents the cognitive steps applied by the
researcher in analyzing the novels using literary approaches.

Research Design
This study used descriptive-content analysis type of research design. Content
analysis determines the meaning, purpose, or the effect of any type of communication
as literature, newspaper, or broadcast of study and evaluating details, and implications
of the content, recurrent themes, and many more (Krippendorff, 2012).
This study employed African-American Criticism to analyze the three (3) novels
of Toni Morrison focusing on the struggles of the major female character in the novels.
The approach determines how the womens circumstances shaped their personality.
Moreover, Formalistic Approach was used to identify the characteristics of the female
major characters in the novel. Furthermore, Psychological Approach was used to
analyze the psychology of the women- their emotions and thoughts that influenced the
personality of the novels major female characters.

31

Data Gathering Techniques

The researcher gathered the materials from books and other reading materials
both published in paperback and in portable data format, which included the novels,
biographies, journals, textbooks, and magazines. The study utilized the library facilities,
reading materials and other resources that are helpful and relevant, especially
biographies of the Toni Morrison and various studies in African-American Literature,
African-American Women and Literary Criticism as well.
The study used purposive sampling in the selection of the three (3) novels. The
novels selected were: Beloved, The Bluest Eye and Sula. The researcher focused
on the novels which portray the struggles of women in the African-American society.

Data Analysis
After the setting of the research design and gathering of materials, the study
proceeded into interpretation and analysis:
The researcher did an initial reading in African-American Literature. From the
initial readings, the researcher decided to utilize the works of Toni Morrison because of
the rich representation, through her characters, of the Black American experience.
Furthermore, readings about African-American Criticism, African-American women and
Literary Criticism were

also employed. The researcher also utilized and studied

other materials related to the study which included films and interviews with Toni
Morrison.

32

After the preliminary procedures, the researcher read and re-read the three (3)
novels until the researcher was able to identify the struggles of women in the novels, as
well as the circumstances that shaped the womens personality.
To answer sub-problem number one, the researcher used the formalistic
approach to characterize the major female characters in the novels. Moreover,
Psychological Approach was also employed in identifying the struggles of women in the
novels. Essentially, African-American Criticism was utilized in identifying the struggles of
the major female characters in the novels. The researcher considered important aspects
such as environment, family background, past memories, culture, and society as a
whole to identify the womens struggles.
To answer sub-problem number two, Psychological Approach was utilized
wherein the female characters own speech and actions, other characters comments
and criticisms and the authors direct comment revealed their personality. The
researcher analyzed the struggles that affect the attitude of the female characters in the
novels and how these struggles do shaped their personality and as to how it affected
their lives as individuals, as part of their family, and their society. Fundamentally,
African-American Criticism was further utilized to support the analysis of the study.

33

Chapter IV
PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS, AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA
This chapter contains the presentation of the three (3) novels of Toni Morrison
namely, Beloved, The Bluest Eye and Sula. The analysis delves into the lives of the
novels major female characters; it specifically identifies their struggles and how does it
reflect their personalities.

I. The Female Major Characters and their Struggles

The female major characters in the novels are Sethe, Pecola and Sula. Sethe is
the main protagonist in the novel Beloved, Pecola, on the other hand, is the
protagonist in the novel The Bluest Eye, and Sula, in the novel Sula. Consequently,
these women characters in Toni Morrisons works experience physical, psychological,
and social struggles.
Sethe (Beloved)
Sethe is the main character in the novel Beloved. She is a former slave and has
been living with her eighteen-year old daughter in a haunted house at the 124
Bluestone Road, Ohio. Of all of her mothers children, she is the only one who was
given a name and was allowed to live. She is her mothers only child from a black man,
while the other of her siblings is from sexual harassment of some white men.

34

In the novel, Sethe is portrayed as an independent woman. Without a husband

and without the assistance of anybody, she alone works to sustain the basic needs of
her family.
Sethe is also portrayed as woman full of pride. She would rather choose to steal
from her job than to wait in line in a store before all the whites are served. Furthermore,
Sethe is also described by her neighbor, Ella, as prideful. Ella says that after Sethe got
out of jail from killing her daughter, she didnt even bother to talk to anybody or ask for
forgiveness for what she has done. Even though how staggering her crime is, her pride
outstrips and she lives a life having no regards on the approval of the community.
Proven in the lines:
When she got out of jail, she made no gesture toward anybody,
and lived as though she were alone

Moreover, Sethes beau, Paul D, describes her that she wore a mask with
mercifully punched eyes which means that she does not show up her true feelings to
the people around her, especially her fear and weaknesses. Instead she covers up her
true emotions to never appear weak in front of her neighbors or anybody else around
her.
Furthermore, Sethes motherly instinct is her most prominent characteristic. In
order to avoid her children to undergo the same slavery she had experienced at Sweet
Home, Sethe decides to emancipate herself and her children away from the brutality of
the white people who manage it. Proven in the lines as Paul D described her:
The best thing she was, was her children. Whites may dirty her
all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thingthe part of her that was clean She might have to work the
slaughter yard, but not her children
35

Sethes motherly instinct is clearly shown on how she responds to the situation
when schoolteacher was on the verge on retrieving her children back to Sweet Home.
With nothing on her mind but her childrens security, she gathers her children, all four of
them quickly, and go to safety.
Sethe

experiences

psychological

and

social

struggles

in

the

novel.

Psychologically, Sethes drastic measure of killing her daughter is due to her trauma of
the past. Instead of allowing her children to the physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual
trauma she had endured as a slave, killing them, for her, is a rather good choice. Sethe
killed her youngest daughter because in her mind, she views her children as an
extension of herself, and because she brought them into the world, only she can take
them out of it. Proven on her own speech, she says:
I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did
that. I had help, of course, lots of that, but still it was me doing it;
me saying, Go on, and Now. Me having to look out.

Sethe suffers more psychological damage than any of the characters in the
novel. Killing ones own daughter is beyond the psyche of any mother to ponder of
doing, but because of Sethes psychological traumas, she is unable to see another
solution.
As the story progresses, the ghost of the baby is reincarnated in the body of
Beloved. Beloved comes back into Sethes life as a grown woman which holds the
mentality of a small child. Beloveds existence intensifies the guilt that Sethe is
concealing within herself. Basically, the situation washes out her strength and vitality
making her life less enduring. Proven in the lines:
36

Sethes dead daughter, the one whose throat she cut, had come
back to fix her. Seethe was worn down, speckled, dying, spinning,
changing shapes and generally bedeviled.

In order to mitigate her guilt, Sethe does everything to obtain the approval of
Beloved. She sacrifice her job and focus on tending Beloved, spends all her savings for
delicious foods and beautiful dresses, dedicate her time tending and watching over
Beloved, even to the extent of starving herself just to give Beloved all the food she
wants.
Furthermore, Sethe throws herself to self-punishment that leads to failure in her
normal daily activities. At this point, even the simplest form of caring for herself is
neglected. Her life is emaciated by her gnawing distress for guilt from what she did in
the past. Proven in the lines:
Sethe no longer combed her hair or splashed her face with water.
She sat in the chair like a chastised child while Beloved ate up her
life, took it, swelled up with it, grew taller on it.

Her struggle for forgiveness eventually feeds her, lost herself and slowly takes
the life in her. Though how much she refrains herself from feeling guilty, the presence of
Beloved reminds her of the day when she killed her infant daughter. Moreover, Beloved
harks back the origin of trauma where Sethe is confined in.

Furthermore, Sethe suffers socially. Twenty-eight happy days were followed by

eighteen years of disapproval and solitary life. For twenty-eight days, Sethe lives as a
free individual, however it ended tragic. This results of everyone in the community to
avoid making connections with her and her family. The community wants Sethe to suffer
from her sin and pay the price of killing her own daughter. The retribution sets by the
37

society causes misery to her two sons, Howard and Burglar. Both sons ran-off from
their home because they could no longer tolerate the isolation and indifference of the
community to their family. On the other hand, Sethes daughter, Denver choses to stay
but live her life in solitude and desolation.

Pecola (The Bluest Eye)

Pecola Breedlove is the main protagonist in Toni Morrisons novel The

Bluest Eye. In the novel, she is described as an epitome of ugliness. Proven in
the lines:
She wore her ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not
belong to them. The eyes, the small eyes set closely together
under narrow foreheads. The low, irregular hairlines, which
seemed even more irregular in contrast to the straight, heavy
eyebrows which nearly met. Keen but crooked nose, with insolent
nostrils. She had high cheekbones, and their ears turned forward.
Shapely lips which called attention not to themselves but to the
rest of the face. You looked at her and wondered why she was so
ugly, you looked closely and could not find the source.

Pecolas family is described by the people around them as peculiar. Her father
is a drunkard, her mother always picks a fight with her father for money, and her brother,
attempts to abandon his family for almost forty times. These mischiefs start Pecolas
desire for blue eyes; she anticipates that if only she possess a pair of blue eyes, her
parents would do nothing unpleasant in front of her. Being a black girl, her discrete and
collective experiences negatively impact her life.
Pecola suffers both physically and psychologically in the novel. She is physically
unattractive and at a very young age, she already understands that her ugliness causes
38

her suffering and insecurities. Essentially, her physical struggles essentially contribute to
her psychology. Evident in the lines:
Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the
secret of ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised
at school, by teachers and classmates alike. She was the only
member of her class who sat alone at a double desk. The first
letter of her last name forced her to sit in the front of the room
always. Her teachers had always treated her this way. They tried
never to glance at her, and called on her only when everyone was
required to respond.

On the other hand, the societys definition of beauty makes her look up and
idealize the American aesthetics; evident on how she loves Shirley Temple and Mary
Jane candies. Pecola is enchanted to the apparent happiness of pretty Shirley and the
blue-eyed girl on the Mary Jane wrapper. The white aesthetics infiltrates Pecolas
psyche, thus, she desires to be like Mary Jane and Shirley Temple. Evident in the lines:
Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little
Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face.
Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a
world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To
Pecola they are simply pretty. She eats the candy, and its
sweetness is good. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes,
eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.

Psysically, Pecola longs to have a pair of blue eyes. Evident in her own speech "I
want them blue so people don't do ugly things in front of me and I stop being invisible."
Each night she prays and wishes for it. Moreover, an instance that contributes to
Pecolas desire for blue eyes is when she encountered Maureen Peel, A high-yellow
dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes. Like Maureen, Pecola
also wants to be adored and admired by her schoolmates and teachers.

39

Pecola suffers psychologically. She was raped and impregnated by her father.
Shame and blame are placed on her alone. This becomes the devastating turning point
of her life; Pecolas desire for blue eyes intensifies. She believes that possessing blue
eyes is her only salvation from the harshness of the world to her.
Pecola seeks for help which leads her to Mr. Soaphead Church, a misanthrope.
Pecola comes to him barely pregnant and asks him to grant her wish for blue eyes. She
wanted to rise up out of the pit of blackness and see the world with blue eyes.
Soaphead finds this pathetic request somehow moving. He believes that this little girl is
ugly and that her wish for blue eyes -- with its underlying negation and rejection of her
own race -- is a noble one.
Soaphead Church grants her blue eyes, however, no one else may see her blue
eyes unless herself. The horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil
of fulfilment. Thus, Pecola ended up to insanity.
Eventually, the violence and degradation of her life pushes her to insanity: she
created a different world for herself- away from the abusive community she had lived in.
Evident in the lines:
She spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and
down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so
distant only she could hear. Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she
flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to
fly. Beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue
void it could not reachcould not even seebut which filled the
valleys of the mind.

When her baby died before it was born, Pecola takes refuge in a world of her
own creation, discussing her beautiful blue eyes with a friend who does not exist.
Proven in the lines:
40

Oh. Dont leave me.

Yes. I am.
Why? Are you mad at me?
Yes.
Because my eyes arent blue enough? Because I dont have
the bluest eyes?
No. Because youre acting silly.
Dont go. Dont leave me. Will you come back if I get
them?
Get what?
The bluest eyes. Will you come back then?
Of course I will. Im just going away for a little while.
You promise?
Sure. Ill be back. Right before your very eyes.

Sula (Sula)
Sula Peace is the main protagonist in the novel Sula. She has a birthmark over
one of her eyes. Depending on ones perception, people think the birthmark looks like
different things: a stemmed rose, a snake, or her mothers ashes.
In her adolescence, the people in the community perceive her as an evil, a
pariah, and a witch. When Sula returns to The Bottom after her ten-year absence, it is
obvious that she has definitely changed. She comes home dressed like a movie star
and reveals that she has been to college. The people in The Bottom, who have always
found Sula to be strange since her childhood, now feel totally alienated from her. Her
difference makes her unacceptable; as a result, every bad thing that happens in the
town is blamed on her, especially after she puts her grandmother in a nursing home and
has her affair with her best friends husband.
But before being an evil in the perception of the community, Sula as a child,
grows unloved by her family especially to her mother.

41

As a child, Sula is strange, mysterious, and definitely different from those around
her. Evident in the lines:
Sula, also an only child, but wedge into a household of throbbing
disorder constantly awry of things, people, voices and the
slamming of doors, spent hours in the attic behind a roll of
linoleum galloping through her own mind..

She likes spending time, her only joy as a youth, to her only best friend, Nel
Wright. Even with a great difference of personalities, the two of them find relief in each
others company.
Sula does not have an easy childhood. She suffers psychologically. Her past
traumatic experiences disrupts her perception of herself and affects her relationship with
others on her adolescence. Being fatherless and having a distant mother results in
isolation. Moreover, the distant treatment of her mother urges her need for affection and
attention which is only satisfied through her friendship with Nel.
Sula overheard from her mothers conversation with a friend that she doesnt like
her own daughter. This had become a crippling turning point for Sula with severe
consequences as she grows up. This shatters her sense of self believing that there is
no other that you could count on.
Furthermore, Sula is also traumatized by the accidental death of Chicken Little
which she herself carried the guilt. This event thought her that neither there was no self
to count on.
Not only that she suffer with the trauma of Chicken Littles death, Sula also
witnessed the unexpected violent death of her mother by fire. This event haunts her and
causes her nightmares.

42

Nels marriage with Jude left Sula having nobody to be with. Now she is alone,
Sula then resolves to live an experimental life. Thus, she leaves the Bottom. However,
her social struggles begin to take place.
Being black and a woman, Sula experiences social struggles. She discovers that
freedom and triumph was forbidden to them. In a conversation, Nel reminded Sula that
being a woman and a colored woman, she cant act like a man and cant be walking
all around all independent like. Sula pointed out that the life of being a colored woman
is just as the same in the cities where she travelled. In her own speech, she said:
All those cities held the same people, working the same mouths,
sweating the same sweat. The men who took her to one or
another of those places had merged into one large personality:
the same language of love, the same entertainments of love, the
same cooling of love. Whenever she introduced her private
thoughts into their rubbings or goings, they hooded their eyes.
They taught her nothing but love tricks, shared nothing but worry,
gave nothing but money.

Moreover, Sulas life in Bottom is not an easy one. The people in The Bottom is
vindictive. They watched her far more closely than they watched any other roach or
bitch in the town. Many said that she slept with white men; every one of them imagined
the scene, and each filled their mouths with choking disgust.
Furthermore, Sula sleeps with many different men. She goes to bed with men as
frequently as she could because for her, it was a place where she could find dominance
and power. Proven in the lines:
And there was utmost irony and outrage in lying under someone,
in a position of surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and
limitless power.

43

Sula sleeps with men and Nels husband, Jude, is no exception. Psychologically,
Sula thinks that by sleeping with Jude, whom Nel possesses, connects her with the
other part of herself, Nel, and relive the days when they are still friends. However, Nel
sees it as Sula does not love her enough to leave Jude alone and let him love her.
The final wound that inflicts Sulas mind is when Ajax left her after detecting in
her the signs of nailing him. Ajaxs abandonment of her immensely contributes to her
sadness which lead her to sickness and death.
However, it does not mean that Sula was not even affected on how the
community despises her. It affects her in way as to how she views her worth as an
individual. Proven on her own speech, she said:
"After all the old women have lain with the teen-agers; when all
the young girls have slept with their old drunken uncles; after all
the black men fuck all the white ones; when all the white women
kiss all the black ones; when the guards have raped all the
jailbirds and after all the whores make love to their grannies; after
all the faggots get their mothers' trim; when Lindbergh sleeps with
Bessie Smith and Norma Shearer makes it with Stepin Fetchit;
after all the dogs have fucked all the cats and every weathervane
on every barn flies off the roof to mount the hogs... then there'll be
a little love left over for me. And I know just what it will feel like."

44

II. The Importance of the struggles in the major female characters personality

The major female characters in the novels suffer various struggles. These
struggles greatly affect and shape the womens personality as they are presented in the
novels.
These struggles are physical, psychological and social- physically, the characters
struggle to reach the social standard of beauty; psychologically, the characters
experience trauma from past experiences, and guilt; and socially, the struggles that
affect family relationships, and relations with other people.

Social standard of beauty

Since the dominant race in the novels are the whites, beauty is considered being
as close to white as possible. Beauty in essence, is having a blonde hair, pointed nose,
white complexion, clean, and having blue eyes. Evident in the lines from The Bluest
Eye:
It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those
eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sightsif those eyes of
hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be
different. Her teeth were good, and at least her nose was not big
and flat like some of those who were thought so cute.

This grave definition of beauty had affected the lives of the most vulnerable
member of the African-American society, and Pecola is one of the victims of it. She
yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl. As a result of the ruling classs promotion of
its own standard of beauty, Pecolas self-image was destroyed.
Pecola considers her ugliness as the reason for her misfortunes and
unhappiness. Furthermore, she believes that only through possessing blue eyes she
45

can attain attention, happiness and love. Her young mind is inflicted with the idea that
by having blue eyes, her life would be much easier. The boys in her school will no
longer make fun of her, her teacher will look straight to her, and her parents will no
longer be indifferent to her.

Conforming to this social standard of beauty creates psychological effect to

Pecola. The fact that the standard of beauty is established, every member of the
community is pressured to conform to it, which causes overwhelming effects to those
member who fit and to those who merely try. Pecola is obsessed to change the color of
her eyes in order to fit into the society where she lives in.
These damaging effects of social conventions about beauty, establishes the
vulnerability of Pecolas characteristics all throughout the novel. Pecola excludes herself
to the larger group in order to prevent herself from hurt and rejection. Moreover, the
feeling of being unwanted by the people she loves intensifies her desire to become
beautiful; to be adored like Maureen Peel and Mary Jane and to find her place in the
lives of the people around her.
When Pecola was impregnated by her father, the disgust and shunning of the
community was solely upon her. This remarkable event leads to her desperation to have
a pair of blue eye.
Pecola ends to insanity. She believes that she acquired blue eyes where in fact
there is none. In her belief, the reason why the people around her do not talk about or
notice her new acquired blue eyes is because they are just jealous of its beauty. Pecola
also has her imaginary friend whom she discusses her observation on the insecurities of
the people to her beautiful blue eyes.
46

However, in the end, she becomes unsatisfied with her imaginary blue eyes and
wants to possess the bluest eye among everyone.

Traumatic experiences
Freuds definition of trauma refers to a wound inflicted not upon the body but
upon the mind. Moreover, Kai Erikson expanded the definition of trauma to make it a
more useful concept. Focusing on the traumatic effects, he insists that trauma can result
from both a constellation of life experiences and a discrete happening, from a
persisting condition and an acute event. He stresses that trauma can transform one
sharp stab into an enduring state of mind (1995).

In the three characters analyzed, Sethe and Sula experience great trauma from
their past experiences. Painful memories of the past dictate the behavior of Sethe on
how she responds when school teacher was to reclaim her children. The memories of
brutality and sexual harassment strengthen her claim to never let her children suffer the
same way as she had experienced at Sweet Home. With this very reason alone, instead
of allowing them to be taken away from her security, she resolves on killing her children.
It may be a drastic measure to take, but to Sethe, it is even more acceptable than to let
her children suffer on the hands of the oppressive whites. Moreover, the unescapable
burden of past memories continued to haunt her in the spirit of her deceased infant
daughter. The memory of killing her daughter affected her and her familys lives; it holds

47

her to move on, causes her two boys to run away and hindered her daughter to
socialize and live a happy life.
The trauma which Sethe experiences greatly contributes to her psychological
struggles. Instead of letting her children to the physical and mental torment of the
whites, killing them for her is rather sensible. Psychologically, Sethes reasoning is
intercepted by the traumas that constantly haunt her. When schoolteacher appears and
tries to get her children, Sethe was unable to think rationally, she just picks up a saw
and slash it through her infant daughters neck.
Accordingly, Sethes traumatic past affects the posture of her personality. Having
to experience the cruelty and harassment of the white men, she is molded into a woman
who always appears strong in front of her family and in the society. From then on, she
never reveals her weaknesses and pain. She does not even seek for help to anybody
and disregards the presence of her neighbors. She continues her life being independent
and alone together with her daughter.
However, when Beloved enters her life, her psychological traumas are initiated
which she fights to forget. Thus, Sethes traumatic past experiences comes back and
feed on her psyche; Sethes guilt and fear are emancipated.

On the other hand, Sulas psychological struggles from the traumatic events in
her life disrupt her perception of herself and affect her relationship with others. The
traumatic events that Sula has to deal with include being a black female, having a dead
father and a distant mother, causing Chicken Littles death, witnessing her mothers
death, losing Nels friendship, and being abandoned by Ajax. These overwhelming

48

violent events and the insidious trauma shape Sulas personality. In her adolescence,
the community of The Bottom perceives her as evil, pariah and witch; this is
because Sulas disposition does not compromise within the social conventions. She
lived her life having no regards of what is believed to be right or wrong. Sulas
aggressive and amoral behavior became her defensive strategy to survive from her past
experiences of trauma.
Sulas traumatic experiences are her main reasons to change her ways, free her
imagination, and live an experimental life. She grew up independent, doing whatever
she wanted to do, and thinking whatever she wanted to think. However, hurtful
memories from the past shatter her sense of self; she believes that there was no other
person she could count on, even herself she could not count on either. The concept of
what is right and what is wrong becomes insignificant to her. As a result, the people
around Sula choose not to love her because she is different, and her easy way in
breaking the rules of the community cause the people to despise her.

Guilt
Guilt is a self-conscious emotion that implies a specific negative evaluation of the
self, focused on the behavior that transgresses a moral norm and causes someone else
harm, loss or distress (Rebega, 2013).
Freud has probably been the first to state that excessive guilt is at the base of all
neuroses. According to his view, guilt not only has the function of punishing individuals
who err, but also motivates them to desire punishment when they did something wrong.
Guilt induces people to engage in self-punishing conduct that can lead to failure in

49

normal daily activities. And people who feel guilty are particularly willing to do anything
to obtain the authoritys approval to mitigate their guilt.
Sethe, of all the three characters analyzed, bears enormous amount of guilt
within her- the guilt of killing her own daughter. In the later part of the novel Beloved, her
dead daughter is believed to be reincarnated in the body of Beloved; possessing a body
of an eighteen year old but with a mind of a child. And in order to make amends to what
she did, Sethe voluntarily did everything to please Beloved. She gives up her job so that
she could play all day with Beloved, spend all her lifes savings to bring Beloved sweet
foods and beautiful dresses, she even forget to wash her own face and comb her own
hair, and to the extent of starving herself just to give all her food to her daughter. All her
attention is on Beloved, and even forget to take care of her other daughter, Denver.
There is nothing that Sethe would not do just to please Beloved and lessen her guilt.
From a strong and independent woman, Sethe turns into a desperate mother
yearning for her daughters approval and forgiveness. Guilt eventually washes her
strength, and her efforts to explain and make Beloved understand cause her so much
pain and energy. Hence, all the bitterness of the past memories comes back to her,
drowns her to frustrations and resentments, and further to the depths of misery.

Relationships within the Family and with the Community

Family relationships are a factor that brings out the personality of the major
female characters in the novel. However, insufficient connections with the family and the
community lead to the womens psychological damages and struggles.

50

This is certainly true in Sula. In the course of the events of the novel, Sula
became aggressive and amoral. Sula is a victim of inadequate mothering; her mother,
Hannah, is bereft of parental control and definitely cannot perform the responsibility of
nourishing young Sula with her needs. Moreover, Sulas household is presented as a
kind of place that is incapable of inculcating the right type of values into a growing child.
For instance, it is a place where Sulas mother 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...
Having no father, a distant mother, and indifferent grandmother to give her
adequate affection and love molds her to become an individual who is not counting on
to somebody for assistance and acquaintance. Sula in her adolescence became
distinctively different; she spends her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions,
giving them full control, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure
pleases her. Furthermore, an evident aftermath of Sulas inadequate parental guidance
is her capability to easily sleep with a man; this she learns from the sexual escapades of
her mother when she was young. It is evidently clear that Sulas psychological struggles
emanates from inadequate family relationship and guidance.
Moreover, Sulas amoral behavior results her to become unacceptable in the
community. The Bottom perceives her as an evil; if bad occurrences happen in the
neighborhood, the people would instantly blame Sula for it. Furthermore, when Sula
becomes sick, no one visits her to give her medicine and food except Nel Wright. And
after she died, no one even calls an ambulance and just neglected her dead body not
until Nel receives the news and does it herself.

51

On the other hand, Sethes relationship with the community was remarkably
dreadful. Ever since the incident of killing her daughter, the people in the community
where she lives places her apart from them. Since the unacceptable behavior of Sethe
does not qualify or breaks the law of man and God, the people around treats her and
her family with disgust. For eighteen years, the community estranges and avoids her
and her family as much as possible. However, Sethes isolation forms her to become
independent; Sethe becomes strong in order sustain the needs of her family, and does
not rely on anyone for assistance. She establishes into herself to never allow her pain
and fear be shown.
Furthermore, Pecolas relationship with her family brings out her insecurities. In
the scene where her parents are fighting, she wishes to possess blue eyes in order to
stop them. She assumes that her parents would be ashamed to quarrel in front of her
beautiful blue eyes. Proven in the lines:
If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different,
and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe theyd say, Why, look at prettyeyed Pecola. We mustnt do bad things in front of those pretty
eyes.

Same with that if she has blue eyes, people will accept and adore her. The
treatment of the community also has a big impact on her personality. In a society where
the dominant race is white, being black at the same time ugly is difficult. With no
adequate family assistance to hold on, Pecolas vulnerability is exposed, and thus
causes here serious psychological damages; it shatters her acceptance of her selfimage and identity, and leads her to insanity.

52

Chapter V
SUMMARY, FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, and RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter is consists of four parts. Part one presents the summary of the
study. Part two shows the findings of the study. Part three consists of the conclusions of
the study. Part four shows the recommendations for further studies.

Summary
This study is focused only to the struggles of the major female characters in the
novels Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula, and the importance of the struggles in
the womens personality.
Specifically, this study answered the following questions:
1.) Identified the women in the novels and their struggles.
2.) Determined the struggles that shaped their personalities.
This study covered the three novels of Toni Morrison, Beloved, The Bluest
Eye, and Sula. The female major characters of the novels were identified. These
female characters were Sethe, Pecola and Sula.
The analysis of this study was delimited only to identify the struggles of women
and how do these struggles shape their personalities.
The data were taken from the novels Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula and
any other related books and pdfs.

53

With the utilization of African-American criticism, the physical, psychological, and

social struggles of the female major characters were identified.
Aside from the African-American criticism, formalistic approach and psychological
approach was also employed. Formalistic approach was used to characterize the
female major characters in the novels. Moreover, psychological approach analyzed the
personalities of the characters based on their own speech and action, authors direct
comment, other characters comment and criticisms. The psychological approach
discerns the personalities of the female major characters based on their personal
experiences and struggles.

Findings
Based on the novels, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula, the researcher
came up with the following findings.
The major female character in Beloved was Sethe, in The Bluest Eye was
Pecola, and in Sula was Sula.
The women in the novel have encountered physical, psychological, and social
struggles which shaped them to a distinct kind of personality. Sethe experienced
psychological traumas from slavery, brutality and sexual harassment of the whites;
these frightful memories haunted and molded her to become strong and independent.
However, the traumas of the past misdirected her to irrational decisions; instead of
allowing her children in the hands of the oppressive whites, she rather killed them than

54

to let them suffer the way she have suffered before. Furthermore, the guilt of killing her
daughter induced her to self-punishment; to lessen her guilt, she devoted her time to
obtain the approval of Beloved, and it also leads to failure to execute her normal daily
activities to survive. Moreover, Sethes social struggles- her relationship in the
community affected her and her familys life.

Pecola, on the other hand, suffered

physically, psychologically and socially. Pecola is physically bad-looking. The societys

damaging definition of what is beautiful urged her to desire beauty and blue eyes. Her
color and ugliness caused her to a certain kind of vulnerability which is self-destructive.
Her self-esteem is destroyed and her acceptance of herself was disregarded.
Furthermore, Sula was a product of psychological damage from inadequate parental
controls and traumatic events. Sula experienced insufficient guidance from her family,
and the traumatic events of the past like the death of Chicken Little and her mother
shaped her to become amoral. Sula became socially unacceptable because of her
personality and improper behavior.
Conclusion
1.) Based on the findings of this study, the female major characters in the novels
endured different forms of struggles; physical, psychological and social. These
women experienced trauma from memories of slavery and sexual harassment,
guilt, destructive definition of beauty, and indifference of the community and
family relationships.
2.) The women in the novels are mostly subjected to psychological damages which
affected the posture of their personality.

55

3.) The women vary on how they accepted and reacted on the kind of struggles they
experienced. They culminated in a kind of personality conforming on the
circumstances they have encountered in the novels.

Recommendation
After the final analysis of this study, the researcher recommends the following:
1.) A study on the sexuality of women in the novels of Toni Morrison.
2.) A study on the significance of nature in the works of Toni Morrison such as
Beloved and Sula.
3.) A study dealing on the social pressures in the Black community in the novels of
Toni Morrison.

References
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Appendices

61

Summaries of the Novels

Beloved
The novel started in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Sethe, a former slave, has
been living with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver. Sethes mother-in-law, Baby
Suggs, lived with them until her death eight years earlier. Just before Baby Suggss
death, Sethes two sons, Howard and Buglar, ran away. Sethe believes they fled
because of the malevolent presence of an abusive ghost that has haunted their house

62

at 124 Bluestone Road for years. Denver, however, likes the ghost, which everyone
believes to be the spirit of her dead sister.
On the day the novel begins, Paul D, whom Sethe has not seen since they
worked together on Mr. Garners Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky approximately
twenty years earlier, stops by Sethes house. His presence resurrects memories that
have lain buried in Sethes mind for almost two decades. From this point on, the story
will unfold on two temporal planes. The present in Cincinnati constitutes one plane,
while a series of events that took place around twenty years earlier, mostly in Kentucky,
constitutes the other. This latter plane is accessed and described through the
fragmented flashbacks of the major characters.
From these fragmented memories, the following story begins to emerge: Sethe,
the protagonist, was born in the South to an African mother she never knew. When she
is thirteen, she is sold to the Garners, who own Sweet Home and practice a
comparatively benevolent kind of slavery. There, the other slaves, who are all men, lust
after her but never touch her. Their names are Sixo, Paul D, Paul A, Paul F, and Halle.
Sethe chooses to marry Halle, apparently in part because he has proven generous
enough to buy his mothers freedom by hiring himself out on the weekends. Together,
Sethe and Halle have two sons, Howard and Buglar, as well as a baby daughter whose
name we never learn. When she leaves Sweet Home, Sethe is also pregnant with a
fourth child. After the eventual death of the proprietor, Mr. Garner, the widowed Mrs.
Garner asks her sadistic, vehemently racist brother-in-law to help her run the farm. He
is known to the slaves as schoolteacher, and his oppressive presence makes life on the
plantation even more unbearable than it had been before. The slaves decide to run.
Schoolteacher and his nephews anticipate the slaves escape, however, and
capture Paul D and Sixo. Schoolteacher kills Sixo and brings Paul D back to Sweet
Home, where Paul D sees Sethe for what he believes will be the last time. She is still
intent on running, having already sent her children ahead to her mother-in-law Baby
Suggss house in Cincinnati. Invigorated by the recent capture, schoolteachers
nephews seize Sethe in the barn and violate her, stealing the milk her body is storing for
63

her infant daughter. Unbeknownst to Sethe, Halle is watching the event from a loft
above her, where he lies frozen with horror. Afterward, Halle goes mad: Paul D sees him
sitting by a churn with butter slathered all over his face. Paul D, meanwhile, is forced to
suffer the indignity of wearing an iron bit in his mouth.
When schoolteacher finds out that Sethe has reported his and his nephews
misdeeds to Mrs. Garner, he has her whipped severely, despite the fact that she is
pregnant. Swollen and scarred, Sethe nevertheless runs away, but along the way she
collapses from exhaustion in a forest. A white girl, Amy Denver, finds her and nurses her
back to health. When Amy later helps Sethe deliver her baby in a boat, Sethe names
this second daughter Denver after the girl who helped her. Sethe receives further help
from Stamp Paid, who rows her across the Ohio River to Baby Suggss house. Baby
Suggs cleans Sethe up before allowing her to see her three older children.
Sethe spends twenty-eight wonderful days in Cincinnati, where Baby Suggs
serves as an unofficial preacher to the black community. On the last day, however,
schoolteacher comes for Sethe to take her and her children back to Sweet Home.
Rather than surrender her children to a life of dehumanizing slavery, she flees with them
to the woodshed and tries to kill them. Only the third child, her older daughter, dies, her
throat having been cut with a handsaw by Sethe. Sethe later arranges for the babys
headstone to be carved with the word Beloved. The sheriff takes Sethe and Denver to
jail, but a group of white abolitionists, led by the Bodwins, fights for her release. Sethe
returns to the house at 124, where Baby Suggs has sunk into a deep depression. The
community shuns the house, and the family continues to live in isolation.
Meanwhile, Paul D has endured torturous experiences in a chain gang in
Georgia, where he was sent after trying to kill Brandywine, a slave owner to whom he
was sold by schoolteacher. His traumatic experiences have caused him to lock away his
memories, emotions, and ability to love in the tin tobacco box of his heart. One day, a
fortuitous rainstorm allows Paul D and the other chain gang members to escape. He
travels northward by following the blossoming spring flowers. Years later, he ends up on
Sethes porch in Cincinnati.
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Paul Ds arrival at 124 commences the series of events taking place in the
present time frame. Prior to moving in, Paul D chases the houses resident ghost away,
which makes the already lonely Denver resent him from the start. Sethe and Paul D
look forward to a promising future together, until one day, on their way home from a
carnival, they encounter a strange young woman sleeping near the steps of 124. Most
of the characters believe that the womanwho calls herself Belovedis the embodied
spirit of Sethes dead daughter, and the novel provides a wealth of evidence supporting
this interpretation. Denver develops an obsessive attachment to Beloved, and Beloveds
attachment to Sethe is equally if not more intense. Paul D and Beloved hate each other,
and Beloved controls Paul D by moving him around the house like a rag doll and by
seducing him against his will.
When Paul D learns the story of Sethes rough choiceher infanticidehe
leaves 124 and begins sleeping in the basement of the local church. In his absence,
Sethe and Beloveds relationship becomes more intense and exclusive. Beloved grows
increasingly abusive, manipulative, and parasitic, and Sethe is obsessed with satisfying
Beloveds demands and making her understand why she murdered her. Worried by the
way her mother is wasting away, Denver leaves the premises of 124 for the first time in
twelve years in order to seek help from Lady Jones, her former teacher. The community
provides the family with food and eventually organizes under the leadership of Ella, a
woman who had worked on the Underground Railroad and helped with Sethes escape,
in order to exorcise Beloved from 124. When they arrive at Sethes house, they see
Sethe on the porch with Beloved, who stands smiling at them, naked and pregnant. Mr.
Bodwin, who has come to 124 to take Denver to her new job, arrives at the house.
Mistaking him for schoolteacher, Sethe runs at Mr. Bodwin with an ice pick. She is
restrained, but in the confusion Beloved disappears, never to return.
Afterward, Paul D comes back to Sethe, who has retreated to Baby Suggss bed
to die. Mourning Beloved, Sethe laments, She was my best thing. But Paul D replies,
You your best thing, Sethe. The novel then ends with a warning that [t]his is not a
story to pass on. The town, and even the residents of 124, have forgotten Beloved
[l]ike an unpleasant dream during a troubling sleep.
65

The Bluest Eye

Nine-year-old Claudia and ten-year-old Frieda MacTeer live in Lorain, Ohio, with
their parents. It is the end of the Great Depression, and the girls parents are more
concerned with making ends meet than with lavishing attention upon their daughters,
but there is an undercurrent of love and stability in their home. The MacTeers take in a
boarder, Henry Washington, and also a young girl named Pecola. Pecolas father has
tried to burn down his familys house, and Claudia and Frieda feel sorry for her. Pecola
loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly.
Pecola moves back in with her family, and her life is difficult. Her father drinks,
her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her brother, Sammy,
frequently runs away. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and
her life would be transformed. Meanwhile, she continually receives confirmation of her
own sense of uglinessthe grocer looks right through her when she buys candy, boys
make fun of her, and a light-skinned girl, Maureen, who temporarily befriends her makes
fun of her too. She is wrongly blamed for killing a boys cat and is called a nasty little
black bitch by his mother.
Pecolas parents have both had difficult lives. Pauline, her mother, has a lame
foot and has always felt isolated. She loses herself in movies, which reaffirm her belief
that she is ugly and that romantic love is reserved for the beautiful. She encourages her
husbands violent behavior in order to reinforce her own role as a martyr. She feels most
alive when she is at work, cleaning a white womans home. She loves this home and
despises her own. Cholly, Pecolas father, was abandoned by his parents and raised by
his great aunt, who died when he was a young teenager. He was humiliated by two
white men who found him having sex for the first time and made him continue while they
watched. He ran away to find his father but was rebuffed by him. By the time he met
Pauline, he was a wild and rootless man. He feels trapped in his marriage and has lost
interest in life.
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Cholly returns home one day and finds Pecola washing dishes. With mixed
motives of tenderness and hatred that are fueled by guilt, he rapes her. When Pecolas
mother finds her unconscious on the floor, she disbelieves Pecolas story and beats her.
Pecola goes to Soaphead Church, a sham mystic, and asks him for blue eyes. Instead
of helping her, he uses her to kill a dog he dislikes.
Claudia and Frieda find out that Pecola has been impregnated by her father, and
unlike the rest of the neighborhood, they want the baby to live. They sacrifice the money
they have been saving for a bicycle and plant marigold seeds. They believe that if the
flowers live, so will Pecolas baby. The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecolas baby dies
when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs
away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has
been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes.

Sula
The Bottom is a mostly black community in Ohio, situated in the hills above the
mostly white, wealthier community of Medallion. The Bottom first became a community
when a master gave it to his former slave. This "gift" was in fact a trick: the master gave
the former slave a poor stretch of hilly land, convincing the slave the land was
worthwhile by claiming that because it was hilly, it was closer to heaven. The trick,
though, led to the growth of a vibrant community. Now the community faces a new
threat; wealthy whites have taken a liking to the land, and would like to destroy much of
the town in order to build a golf course.
Shadrack, a resident of the Bottom, fought in WWI. He returns a shattered man,
unable to accept the complexities of the world; he lives on the outskirts of town,
attempting to create order in his life. One of his methods involves compartmentalizing
his fear of death in a ritual he invents and names National Suicide Day. The town is at
first wary of him and his ritual, then, over time, unthinkingly accepts him.

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Meanwhile, the families of the children Nel and Sula are contrasted. Nel is the
product of a family that believes deeply in social conventions; hers is a stable home,
though some might characterize it as rigid. Nel is uncertain of the conventional life her
mother, Helene, wants for her; these doubts are hammered home when she meets
Rochelle, her grandmother and a former prostitute, the only unconventional woman in
her family line. Sula's family is very different: she lives with her grandmother, Eva, and
her mother, Hannah, both of whom are seen by the town as eccentric and loose. Their
house also serves as a home for three informally adopted boys and a steady stream of
borders.
Despite their differences, Sula and Nel become fiercely attached to each other
during adolescence. However, a traumatic accident changes everything. One day, Sula
playfully swings a neighborhood boy, Chicken Little, around by his hands. When she
loses her grip, the boy falls into a nearby river and drowns. They never tell anyone
about the accident even though they did not intend to harm the boy. The two girls begin
to grow apart. One day, in an accident, Sula's mother's dress catches fire and she dies
of the burns.
After high school, Nel chooses to marry and settles into the conventional role of
wife and mother. Sula follows a wildly divergent path and lives a life of fierce
independence and total disregard for social conventions. Shortly after Nel's wedding,
Sula leaves the Bottom for a period of 10 years. She has many affairs, some with white
men. However, she finds people following the same boring routines elsewhere, so she
returns to the Bottom and to Nel.
Upon her return, the town regards Sula as the very personification of evil for her
blatant disregard of social conventions. Their hatred in part rests upon Sula's interracial
relationships, but is crystallized when Sula has an affair with Nel's husband, Jude, who
subsequently abandons Nel. Ironically, the community's labeling of Sula as evil actually
improves their own lives. Her presence in the community gives them the impetus to live
harmoniously with one another. Nel breaks off her friendship with Sula. Just before Sula

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dies in 1940, they achieve a half-hearted reconciliation. With Sula's death, the harmony
that had reigned in the town quickly dissolves.
In 1965, with the Bottom facing the prospect of the white golf course, Nel visits
Eva in the nursing home. Eva accuses her of sharing the guilt for Chicken Little's death.
Her accusation forces Nel to confront the unfairness of her judgment against Sula. Nel
admits to herself that she had blamed his death entirely on Sula and set herself up as
the "good" half of the relationship. Nel comes to realize that in the aftermath of Chicken
Little's death she had too quickly clung to social convention in an effort to define herself
as "good." Nel goes to the cemetery and mourns at Sula's grave, calling out Sula's
name in sadness.

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