Raghad Al Rumi
The theme of love has been widely portrayed and dissected in literature since its genesis. Love has been depicted in various forms, such as romantic love, sexual love, familial love, platonic love, and unrequited love. Moreover, it can be interpreted according to its beholder’s understanding and experience of love. Due to the modern, popular culture depiction of love, it has been reduced to a Hallmark sentiment associated with shallow confessions of love at the end of romantic movies. However, love’s profound impact on literature is a statement of its intricate concept.
In an interview titled the Seams Can’t Show, conducted in 1977, Morrison shares with her readers what it means to be a writer and what does the act of writing mean to her; she dissects her writing process, her novels, and characters. In addition, she states that even though her themes vary, at the centre of her works there are two fundamental themes: beauty and love, “Beauty, love . . . actually, I think, all the time that I write, I'm writing about love or its absence. Although I don't start out that way.".
In the literary field, Morrison is well known for her great ability to manoeuvre and depict violence and ferocity through her characters’ actions; the author states in the her interview that we are all violent creatures, at least in some part, that is why it is important to explore themes of violence in her art by pushing every emotion to its final consequence. However, this violence is not meaningless nor arbitrary for it all stem out of love, “All about love . . . people do all sorts of things, under its name, under its guise.
The violence is a distortion of what, perhaps, we want to do.” (Bakerman 60). Morrison’s acclaimed second novel Sula, published in 1973, explores subjects of motherhood, friendship, and society; moreover, through these subjects, she weaves an intricate pattern of the concepts of love and violence, making readers question the connection of these concepts and their subjects. This paper is going to explore the complexity of the theme of love and its correlation with violence in Morrison’s novel Sula as depicted through the characters of Eva Peace, Sula Peace, and Nel Wright. Moreover, it will analyse the way love shapes their personalities and the dynamic of their relationships by using intersectional feminist lenses.
During the twentieth century the concept of intersectionality was developed by advocates and scholars of Black feminism; it started as a social movement to advocate for Black women's and marginalised groups' interests in the United State. Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate, is credited with coining the term intersectionality to describe the way various forms of social, racial, and gender inequalities form multidimensional experiences and create obstacles that are not always understood by conventional ways of reasoning (Gopaldas 90).
Sula opens with a description of the setting, a neighbourhood called the Bottom; contrary to its name, it is situated at the top of a hill. The Bottom is filled with patches of blackberry and nightshade–a poisonous plant that can be used in the production of herbal medicines. Morrison opens her novel with an intersectional theatric of contradiction to notify the reader of the paradoxes and ambiguities the narrative carries as its centre, which sets the ground for the exploration of complex intersectional identities and experiences.
An excellent demonstration of love’s paradox is the Character of Eva Peace, whose name is an allegory to the biblical figure of Eve. Eva’s house is constructed with public spaces and open rooms, thus extending her matriarchal role to the community and the house’s varied occupants; it is a centre for old men seeking emotional and intellectual support from Eva, newly-wed couples needing free rooms to stay at, and ostracised individuals (Morrison 37).
It could be argued that Eva's acceptance and the open structure of her household is a response to her husband’s, BoyBoy, emotional and physical desertion; she fills her house with different individuals and is ardent about the company of men in general. BoyBoy's abandonment does not influence her love and tolerance for men, she still maintains an enthusiastic attitude and respect for them; which Yijin Zhu argues is a reflection of her innately nurturing motherhood (Eva’s Power 442).
In addition, this open space Eva creates, establishes a small community in which she is its chieftain, she is the only one who has a say in who to accept or reject–in this small community no one can leave nor hurt her the way BoyBoy did. Moreover, Eva adopts three boys whom she names all Dewey, each one is from a different background: Dewey one has a deeply black skin, Dewey two is light-skinned with freckled face and red hair, Dewey three is half Mexican with chocolate skin and black bangs. She also gives a small room in her kitchen to an alcoholic, white, and timid man, whom she sarcastically names Tar Baby (Morrison 38-40).
Eva’s house is a symbol for her role as a care-taker who accepts all and any with no regard to their background and race; the house and its inhabitant are a mismatch of features and characters. Additionally, the intersectional economic and social issues of Eva's time play a major role in shaping her severe character and stern depiction of love; not only that, her resilient character is a testament of the strength of her generation of women, they lived in hard times that required hard solutions. The Bottom is a community of women-centred families, for those women most days are severe and hard days that they live through with anger and determination, but never with despair because they believe that giving up is beneath them (Pruitt 188).
One of the issues women of the Bottom face is spousal abandonment, which is a common occurrence in their lives–after the desertion of her husband, Eva is left destitute and penniless with three children: Hannah, Pearl, and Ralph “Plum”. As means to secure the safety and welfare of her children, Eva mutilates her leg by a train to obtain insurance money (Morrison 31).
This incident gives the reader a clear picture of Eva's ferocious maternal love and tendency to choose desperate solutions to desperate circumstances. The narrative continues to show more of this in Eva’s treatment of her son, Plum, after his return from the war–a broken man addicted to heroin, and always seeking to return to the safety and oblivion of his mother’s womb “he wanted to crawl back in my womb and well . . . I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it.” (Morrison 71).
Eva, unable to see her son reduced to a state of wretchedness and near infancy, decides to drown Plum in kerosene and burn him to death. In his senseless state, Plum does not recognise what is happening to him, believing himself to be in “Some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing” (Morrison 47).
This atrocious act Eva commits is born out of deep love and pity for her son, for she does not want him to drown further into misery and continue to deteriorate into a state of babyhood. Another manifestation of Eva’s violent love and desperation is shown in her reaction when she witnesses her daughter Hannah dancing in flame, she throws herself from the balcony of her bedroom in an attempt to save her daughter (Morrison 75).
The burning of Hannah can be viewed as a form of cosmetic retribution on Eva's action towards Plum. Ironically, the leg Eva sacrifices for her children, which symbolises her fierce love, is the reason she could not reach Hannah fast enough. Eva is a good example of what Morrison calls violence as distortion, as stated before, all of Eva’s actions are the result of ferocious love; which illustrates the way people’s circumstances and life experiences shape the way they express emotions. Eva’s violent love is the product of the harsh circumstances she lived through, especially her sustained hatred for her estranged husband, BoyBoy, “it was hating him that kept her alive and happy.” (Morrison 37).
The narrative continues to illustrate love’s manifestations between presence and absence, and the most prominent depiction is maternal love. Hannah’s and Eva’s relationship is distraught, the daughter is doubtful of her mother’s love for her and her siblings, Pearl and Ralph “Plum”. She questions her mother's love, especially after her mother’s treatment of Plum.