Construction, Power and Loss in Sula
I really enjoyed Tony Morrison’s Sula. It’s a unique novel in that Morrison lets the reader to a lot of work and filling in the blanks for herself. I found that both challenging and interesting especially when I was trying to recall how certain characters related to one another. Sula reminded me of Lolita in the way that I had to stay really focused while reading because though this is a short novel, it is jam-packed with rich messages. The way that Morrison can say something really powerful in just a line or two really struck me and I have a huge amount of respect for her approach to this novel.
I have to say the theme that most interested me throughout the novel, as it has in other novels we’ve read, was constructionism. The way that actions both related to sexuality and otherwise are perceived in the novel point to the way that society functions not on a set or “natural” understanding of the world but rather it functions on the intricacies of a constructed notion of reality that varies from community to community and between individuals as well.
For example, when Sula and Nell go to Edna Finch’s Mellow House and Ajax says “pig meat” to the girls as they so “dangerously” walk by their male admirers, there is a strong sense that Sula’s perception of reality is constructed based on interpretations that go against the grain (46). Sula’s hidden delight, which Nell shares, is the beginning of the novel’s exposition of Sula’s constructed reality. In the way that Humbert Humbert constructs reality in Lolita, Sula uses her own understandings and her own feelings to create reality rather than relying on suggestions of reality imposed by outside sources. That is the only link I would draw between the two, though, because I feel that Sula’s construction of reality is much less skewed by a desire to mask guilt or feel as though she is normal, for her there is no such thing as normal, it can’t exist because as she thinks, “She had no center, no speck around which to grow…She was completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property, or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments — no ego. For that reason she felt no compulsion to verify herself–be consistent with herself”(93).
Sula’s free spirit does not come without what I perceive as deep pain. While I went back and forth with disliking her character to feeling for her, I settled on sympathy as my primary attitude towards Sula. She seems to be free and open and unbound by convention, which is admirable, but the novel seems to suggest that we need convention and the “natural” to avoid experiencing absolute awareness. I think a huge theme in the novel is the idea that awareness is something that is almost lusted after, but to experience it completely is almost too painful.
Sula seems to suggest that everything we know is a construction, there is no real point of origin, but rather a series of influences that creates the reality of the times. This pointed to Foucault and I found it really fascinating. I think it’s important to note that the novel, much like Foucault, acknowledges our need for something that exists independent of our construction. The novel seems to say there is no such thing, but that many will ignore the ways in which they’ve contributed to the construction of a tradition or reality just to feel secure. For example, when Nel is deeply in pain over Jude and Sula’s affair and she reflects on the greiving processes she’s witnessed. “But it seemed to her now that it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something about the dead. They could not let that herat-smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whimpering, a slight murmer, a rose bouquet of good taste…The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss”(86). I could go on and on about this passage, I think it is absolutely loaded with interesting talking points–the way we deal with loss, the obligatory acts we carry out as to maintain control while overwhelmingly aware of the fact that while our reality is constructed we don’t actively control the way in which it is constructed, how the body can feel separate from emotions until we deliberately connect the two, just to name a few things. Loss is also an important theme in the novel that involves power relations within sexuality and other elements of society.
Rather than make this post unreadably long, I will leave it at this passage because I would really like to talk about instances of constructionism, power relations, and loss in our class discussion. Sula was a beautiful book that has me thinking about so many different elements of our course as well as other personal reflections. I am so eager to hear about what everyone else thought when we talk in class!
Tags: awareness, constructionism, Identity, loss, Morrison, Power-Relations, Sula
April 16th, 2012 at 11:58 am
Hi Whitney,
Given your continuing fascination with this issue, it might be a good topic for you to pursue for your final essay. The concept of constructionism is a complex one because there are a number of approaches to it, stemming from several disciplines as well as debates among theorists within certain fields. I think the way you are using the term, it is usually prefaced with the word social, as in social construction of reality. Foucault is one of the key thinkers in this regard and it has been taken up by a number of prominent thinkers who apply it to concepts such as essence, gender, love, and so on, to show how social arrangements create a sense of inevitability that can be undermined by demonstrating the historicity of how that concept came into being and was continued over time–with the idea that with this recognition changes can be made. I think it would be useful to you to focus on this concept and some of the main premises of it and then, as you do here, discuss some of the literary works as examples of how they illuminate the processes at work (whether they reinforce or deconstruct them).