Introduction
The novel titled Sula, written by Toni Morrison tells the readers the story of two Black girls – Sula and Nel – who grew up together in a poor neighborhood. Through thick and thin, the two become best friends but have to grow apart due to the differences that are vividly presented by Morrison. Owing to Sula and Nel, a young boy drowned, but they decided to keep silent and not to tell anyone about how they contributed to his death, even if accidentally. The feminist lesson that the book teaches is that friendship – irrespective of whether male or female – is one of the essential concepts in human lives that cannot be ignored. Despite going in opposite directions, Nel and Sula still dare to restore their friendship.
This essay is going to review gender and love and sexuality as the key themes that intertwined with Nel and Sula’s friendship, while also explaining how these influenced each of the two main characters. The author intends to prove that the female bond is strong enough to have women persevere through the most robust life lessons and remain loyal to each other despite societal perceptions and other external barriers.
Gender Roles in Sula
The story shows how the girls’ friendship turns into adult relationships that are damaged by betrayal, lies, and unfair treatment. Yet, the fact that Sula defied the majority of social expectations ultimately made Nel think about how there was no eventual difference between the “good” and the “bad” that she always tried to emphasize after the drowning accident. Morrison shows that the changes that people go through may influence them, but would never affect a true friendship that does not bear any connection to how good or bad a person is.
Despite the differences between Sula and Nel, Morrison successfully squeezes into her novel a thought-provoking idea revolving around men always moving away from their females. In Sula, males can be seen distancing themselves from their wives and love interests because they have jobs and claim independence. This was one of the reasons why Nel’s husband, Jude, cheated on her with Sula, her best friend.
At the end of the day, Nel asks him how he could have left her if he knew her so well, but she does not get a substantial answer from the man she trusted the most (Morrison 70). To incorporate the concept of gender roles and explain the relationships between genders, Morrison also paid close attention to how motherhood changed women throughout the novel, having them disregard all the pain in the name of love for their child: “Boys is hard to bear. You wouldn’t know that, but they is” (Morrison 49).
As Eva Peace, Sula’s grandmother, says in her dialog with Hannah, Sula’s mother, “I had room enough in my heart, but not in my womb” (Morrison 49). This is an indirect hint at the idea that women’s hearts are so big that they can give up on anything for the sake of something sacred, such as their child’s life or even friendship. The story shows how even the most challenging implicit problems cannot stop Nel and Sula from retaining their friendship.
Despite their differences, the two girls grew into women and developed their understanding of what true love and friendship are. In Sula, women see themselves as incomplete without a husband, so the theme of gender and motherhood is crucial for understanding why Sula became the moving force for the neighborhood to change for the better. The most important idea that Morrison gets through via Sula is that sometimes, the whole community could be held together with the help of female friendship because some women simply do not follow the societal urge to compete for a husband. Through sexuality, Nel and Sula find peace and the sense of life, which, for both of them, is friendship.
Love and Sexuality in Sula
On the other hand, the friendship between Sula and Nel could be explained through the theme of love and sexuality. For Sula, sex was not something controversial, while Nel was raised with the idea of sexuality being a sacred concept. As Morrison writes, “sexual aesthetics bored her,” meaning that Sula tried to find the cutting edge to her intercourse instead of looking forward to finding a husband (79). The difference in interpretations of sex shows how opposites attract each other and create a harmonious relationship that is based on mutual understanding. Both Sula and Nel are utilizing their sexuality to foster love, even if it is not so evident in the case of Sula, who relentlessly seduced Nel’s husband, which made the latter abandon Nel. Through their friendship, Sula and Nel learned from each other and had the opportunity to share experiences.
While claiming that, at some point, Sula began “to discover what possession was (not love),” Morrison hints at the indistinguishable nature of sexuality in both girls (84). Meaningful connections with men could be forged by sex, but friendship was still much more critical due to affairs being absent of any specific value (especially after Sula seduced Nel’s husband). While the bond between Sula and Nel is alive, the former cannot give up on her sexuality and hurts the one person that she loves most. Their neighborhood was an overly sexualized community that impacted their development but never interfered with Nel and Sula’s friendship, proving that a friend is a person that is worth more than anything else in the world.
Conclusion
Although solely focusing on friendship and female roles within society, Morrison successfully touched upon the idea of how ambiguous our society is. Through Nel and Sula’s friendship and destitutions, she carefully addressed the “good” and “bad” around the neighborhood and exposed the readers to the idea that there is no clear line between the two. This proper demonstration of societal vagueness turned out to be one of the critical factors for Nel and Sula’s friendship becoming so strong, as they went beyond emotions and maintained a positive relationship because they could not live without each other.
Social conventions, according to Morrison’s ideas presented in the book, should be disregarded when one is thinking about how they should live their life. As a red string of faith, the girls’ strong friendship reflects feminist values and opposes the terms of what is right and wrong to disprove both of them.
Eventually, the main characters and their actions also highlight the idea that life lessons are worth more than an evaluation from society. This means that Sula lived her life how she wanted it, picking the roles and love interests that were not necessarily in line with societal expectations. It makes the readers think that Nel was the “right” and Sula was the “wrong” in their relationship, but at the end of the day, they both explored the world in their ways and valued friendship over everything else. Morrison’s Sula is full of conflicts and diametrically opposite points of view. This book demonstrates the beauty of life through hostility, the terror of life, deception, and ambiguity that cannot be evaded.
Work Cited
Morrison, Toni. Sula. Penguin Random House, 2004.