Summary:
In Toni Morrison's "Sula," Nel is the good character and Sula is the evil character, a type of yin and yang found in Chinese philosophy. Nel follow the stereotypes of what a woman traditionally should be. Sula acts in an opposite fashion.
"Sula"
Yin and Yang is an ancient Chinese philosophy that says everything in the world works through opposing energies and that everything has its counter part which balances the world out. This idea of counter parts also carries into literature as shown in the book Sula by Toni Morrison. According to social conventions the character Nel is the yang (positive character/good) and Sula is the yin (negative character/evil). This is the way both characters are viewed on sole terms of how they conform to society. Nel is shown to be a good character because she plays a socially expectable role as a women and mother, while Sula conforms to no social stereotypes and let's almost nothing hold her back, thus she is viewed as evil.
The social conventions that are set up in this book play out in a small black community in Ohio called "the bottom." The community itself formed when a white slave owner tricked his naive black slave into accepting hilly mountainous land that would be hard to farm and very troublesome instead of the actual bottom (valley) land that he was promised. The slave was told "when God looks down, it's the bottom. That's why we call it so. It's the bottom of heaven-best land there is"(4), and on this lie a community was formed. The community struggles geographically to survive, having to combat bad weather and encroaching whites who want to convert most of the town into a golf course. The town unites social as they band together against Sula and her actions.
Nel follows all the stereotypes of what a woman should be. She is a simple God-fearing, church going women who marries young and is very domesticated, tending to the house and her children. Nel chooses to settle into the conventional female role of wife and mother while all throughout her life she has been careful to stick close to the "right" side of conformity. She was raised in a stable, rigid home by a family that has always been careful to keep up a socially respectable persona and an immaculately clean house. Sula on the other hand is the complete opposite. Sula gives social reforms no mind and is in a sense a wild woman that can not be tamed. She defies social conventions by never marrying, leaving her hometown to get an education and having multiple affairs with white men. The home she grew up in was in a constant state of disarray supplied by a steady stream of borders, three informally adopted boys all of whom were renamed Dewey and a line of men waiting for her openly promiscuous mother.
Racism is an issue that is carried all throughout this book. The bottom community itself is established on a racist act and later the people become so as well. The racism that develops in the town may well be a survival tactic developed by the people over years but it still exists at the end of the novel. One example of racism in this book is Helene, Nel's mothers concern over her daughters physical characteristics. Helene sees being fair skinned as an advantage but also has the mentality that "had she been any lighter-skinned she would have needed either her mother's protection on the way to school or a streak of mean to defend herself"(52). She encourages her daughter to pull her nose so that it may become narrow and less like the stereotypical wide nose held by blacks. Just as she is racist Helene herself has encountered racism as well. While traveling to New Orleans for her grandmothers funeral Helene is insulted and humiliated by a white conductor when she enters the whites only section by accident.
Racism can also be seen in the events surrounding the accidental death of Chicken Little, who falls into a river and drowns after slipping from Sula's hands when she playfully swings him. A white bargeman finds the boys body the next day and is said to be annoyed and disgusted by his finding. Annoyed because it would be an inconvenience to take the child's body to the sheriff and disgusted "at the kind of parents who would drown their own children" (63). The bargeman assumes that because the body is that of a black child his parents must have killed him on purpose and does not even react to the body as a lost life.
In the depicted society immigrants are looked down upon, whether they are black or white. Even though this is true white immigrants who come to this country knowing and having nothing are held higher than the blacks whom have spent their whole lives here and are established. This is shown when white immigrants are chosen over qualified black workers even for menial jobs. Nel's husband, Jude Greene desperately looks for a "man's job" instead of the job he has working as a waiter in the Hotel Medallion. He wants to get a job building a road, but is disappointed when he learns that only whites are being hired. He tries to emboss his social persona as a man and raise his self esteem by marrying Nel.
Another social convention that exists in the manner of yin and yang in this book is that of the role held by men and women. In this book Sula is seen as a bad person for being promiscuous. One of the things the bottom community hates the most about her is that she has slept with white men, and is open about it. This further goes to show the racism that exists in this small community. The town is horrified when they learn of this, which they use to further label her as "evil." They see interracial relationships as demeaning and unfair to the black woman involved and promiscuity in women as unjust. This is a double standard because on the other side of the matter is one of Sula's favorite lovers, Ajax. Ajax is almost idealized by people for his independence. No one looks down on him for being promiscuous and using women in the same fashion that Sula uses men.
The manner in which Sula and Nel react to different situations also sets them apart. After the death of Chicken Little, Nel is riddled with guilt. She clings even closer to social conventions in an attempt to reestablish herself as a good person. This guilt most likely comes from her strict authority respecting upbringing and her fear of being judged and seen as wrong. Nel is tormented by the young boys death and her mind is restless about it for years until she finally accepts some of the blame for the accident and stops blaming it all on Sula. Sula on the other hand, has no guilt over the accident. She sees what happened as a turn in life and does not feel like she is the cause of Chicken Little's death. She mourns his death and then moves on.
Sula has a feminist spirit and refuses to melt into the typical mold of a women. Because of this she is hated by the town. The towns hatered against her actually ends up drawing them together in a way to face on evil, Sula
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