Sexuality and American Culture

In Sula, Toni Morrison imagines a town in which men are deemed valuable and necessary in order to effectively run society. Men must be in charge, and women must remain dependent on them. "You can't act like a man. You can't be walking around all independent-like, doing whatever you like," Nel tells Sula, as she lay on her deathbed (142). Yet, oddly enough, the city of Medallion is, for all intents and purposes, a matriarchy. Men, as individuals, are portrayed as immature, irresponsible, and, in many ways, insignificant. Female-female relationships are valued above all others, and women are the ones who hold the true authority of society in their hands. 

The lack of power men actually have is reflected by the names of almost all the male characters in the book: "Teapot," "Tar Baby," "BoyBoy," "Chicken Little," "Ajax," "Plum," et cetera. They are not names, but nicknames, and serve to infantilize those who are adults. Then we have the deweys (not even with a capital "D") who are three separate individuals yet regarded as one, a holy trinity, of sorts, and we are told that they will never grow. Their physical growth is assumed to be stunted, if only because "they remained boys in mind" (84). In Morrison's world, boyhood is marked as "[m]ischievous, cunning, private, and completely unhousebroken" and appears to remain as such, even with age (84-85). Though the deweys are different ages and look nothing like, people have trouble telling them apart.

The nicknames of the men are significant because in conventional patriarchy, there is an inherent link between society and male names. Children are assigned their father's last name, and women take their husband's. Male last names are intrinsic to the proliferation of society on the whole and inform the identities of all individuals. Yet we certainly do not have this mechanism at play here; we have only these silly, boyish nicknames. The most prominent last name in the book, "Peace," is associated, first and foremost, with the women who have inherited it. Although it is the last name of Eva's husband, she and her daughters have come to take it over, to claim it for themselves. Eva's husband has abandoned her, and no one thinks of him anymore when hearing the name "Peace." Thus, a matriarchal system, at least within the Peace household, has largely been established, and is perceived as such by the rest of the town.

As Eva's husband has deserted his family and wife, so, too, have all the other husbands and lovers in the book. "Every man I ever knew left his children," Sula says (143). Sula's lover "Ajax" (Albert Jacks) eventually abandons her, and she seems most upset by the fact that she never actually knew his real name. She feels that if she never knew his real name, she never could have actually known him. Again, we have the strong connection between one's identity and one's name, and its relationship to maleness is shattered. And although Nel's husband Jude, one of the only male characters referred to by his real name, leaves Nel for her best friend, Nel later comes to realize that the end of her friendship was more devastating to her than the end of her marriage.

Hannah and, later, Sula's many lovers whom they take into the basement for sex, aside from Ajax, are all nameless and faceless bodies and are not distinct from one another in any particular way. They are all there to serve the same purpose, pleasure, and they are not necessary for anything else. They all produce the same reaction in Hannah as she walks up the basement stairs, always with the same smile on her face, and, as individuals, they are simply unremarkable. The one man with whom Sula may have actually fallen in love only ends up disappointing her, as well. After having slept with a series of men who have eventually "merged into one large personality," she discovers that "a lover [is] not a comrade and could never be - for a woman" (120-121). Women are the only true comrades for one another in Medallion; they remain faithful, loyal, and responsible even after decade-long separations or feuds. Though the two are no longer friends, at least not in the same way that they used to be, Nel comes to visit Sula when she is sick and even buys her medicine. Nel is the last thought on Sula's mind before she passes away. It is clear that their relationship with one another is the most important relationship of both of their lives. 

Though men are, in words, said to be important for more than just sex, it's clear that in the reality of the novel, they're generally not.