Reclaiming the Feminine

 Reclaiming the Feminine

Dr Manisha Patil 

In her article ‘She was laughing at their God’: Discovering the Goddess within Sula29, Michele Pessoni argues that in the Western World, the culturally ingrained ‘patriarchal fear of the feminine’ has resulted in an imbalanced society whose members remain numbed and indifferent to life and towards one another. This further results into a lot of destruction and a great sense of despair. She further states that patriarchy is ‘a psychic state of mind, a consciousness which often exhibits signs of hostility towards nature as well as towards any quality traditionally associated with the feminine: nurturance, community, contiguity. Patriarchal consciousness is oriented towards individuality, competition, personal acquisition – traits that are not necessarily harmful in themselves but which become potentially fatal to the species when they are over-valued at the expense of feminine traits. Then individuality becomes arrogance and isolation, competition becomes combat and envy, acquisition becomes possessiveness and mastery. (Pessoni: 440) For restoring balance back to the society and for cultural healing it is necessary to reconnect to the Great Goddess archetype. In Sula, Morrison depicts an impotent and decadent community which though victim of the white patriarchal system still perpetuates it instead of revolting against it. Against such a backdrop, Morrison foregrounds the ‘questing character Sula’ who ‘experiences and overcomes… the patriarchal fear of the feminine and eventually finds atonement with the spirit of the Goddess. She then becomes the missing center for all of the other characters in the novel, a powerful symbol of the spiritual force whom the entire community sought all along’. (Pessoni: 441) The community mistakenly labels Sula as evil because ‘They believed that she was laughing at their God’ (Sula: 115) For Pessoni however this image suggests that the Goddess embodied by Sula is a deity greater than the patriarchally created God who laughs at the apparent impotence of the traditional patriarchal God whose ‘magic government was going to lift them up out and away from that dirt’ (Sula: 160)

Initially, Sula too exhibits the patriarchal fear of the feminine. ‘Sula metaphorically rejects the nourishment of the mother when she insists, “I don’t like milk” (Sula: 124) The archetypal feminine terrifies Sula. After witnessing Eva’s burning of Plum, Sula views her grandmother as the living embodiment of the Terrible Mother, a destroyer equally as frightening as the patriarch’. (Pessoni: 443) In reality Eva is a powerful Demeter figure. She sacrificed her own body for her children. Later also she gave shelter to Tar Baby, three Dewey’s and other needy people. Most importantly, she did not discriminate among black, white and Mexican Dewey. Even her burning of Plum has positive connotations. Pessoni writes, ‘Like the Great Goddess in Homer’s hymn, Eva brings manhood and honor to Plum by refusing to allow him to return to the womb and by placing him in the mythic fires of the feminine which can make him as deathless as Demeter would have Demo-phoon’. (Pessoni: 445) Sula however fails to recognize these positive aspects of Eva. As a result, to protect herself she puts Eva into the old age home.

Sula’s rejection of Eva and by extension of feminine principle makes her doubly vulnerable. She becomes an example of a female mind controlled by masculine thought patterns. Morrison herself comments, ‘She is a masculine character… She will do the kinds of things that normally only men do, which is why she’s so strange. She really behaves like a man.’30 On one hand, Sula rejects the female role prescribed to her by patriarchy and on the other she fears the Goddess which has the power to overthrow that patriarchy. ‘Thus, Sula remains in a spiritual vacuum, isolated from the community which still tolerates patriarchal godhead and government, yet too frightened to make the leap towards the mythic implications of a ‘Goddess – centered morality’ wherein death does not exist.’31

Though Sula fears and dislikes Eva, her own affinity with her grandmother, is manifested in her act of cutting her own finger to protect Nel. If Eva burns her son Plum, Sula is thrilled to watch her mother Hannah dance in flames. If Eva justifies her action claiming Plum had become unregeneratable, Sula can also be forgiven to let her futile relationship destroy itself in the form of her mother. Even killing of Chicken Little was accidental and Sula regretted it a lot (unlike Nel who was secretly happy to see him fall). The difference between Sula on one hand and Eva, Nel and entire Bottom community on the other, is unlike others, Sula accepts and explores her dark thoughts and evil nature. She has transcended the hypocrisy of patriarchy – creating absolute dichotomy between good and evil – symbolized ironically by Nel by switching over to a unitary ‘Goddess-centered morality’ which considers good and evil as two sides of the same coin. ‘Ironically, her guide is male – but he is a male who has been completely destroyed by the patriarchal system.’ (Pessoni: 446) Shadrack, ‘a flasked sign of capitalism’s maddening control of man’s fate’32 becomes the priest of Great Goddess when through his madness, he gains the knowledge of death’s importance for life and hits upon the idea of ‘National Suicide Day’ to control the fear of death. His profession fishing also links him to the Great Goddess because fish and fishing both are mythic symbols of the Goddess. When upon Chicken’s death, Sula goes to his cottage, ‘the neatness, the order startled her, but more surprising was the restfulness’. (Sula: 61) For Sula, till now Shadrack had symbolized madness, drunkenness, lewd sexuality and disorder. But his great welcoming smile quietened her fear and then ‘he had said ‘always’ to convince her, assure her, of permanency’. (Sula: 157) He sees the mark over her eye brown not as a rose (goodness) or snake (evil) but as a tadpole – ‘she had a tadpole over her eye (that was how he knew she was a friend – she had the mark of a fish he loved)’ (Sula: 156). Thus at the subconscious level, he recognizes Sula’s potential affinities with the Great Goddess. Years later, when Sula has already stepped over Bottom’s code of conduct, Shadrack tips his hat to her. ‘The tipping of the hat shows a reverence, a respect, a sub conscious recognition on Shadrack’s part of Sula as the potential “flowering from the depths”, the mythic virgin/mother/crone representative of the Great Goddess herself. Sula’s response to Shadrack through most of the novel, however, is to flee. She fears the role of Kore, the virgin, which Shadrack ascribes to her for in her mind it means descent and sure death: “…she put her hand on her throat for a minute and cut out. Went running’ on up the road to home.” (117) For most of her life, Sula runs from Shadrack and from the mythic implications of atonement with the Goddess’. (Pessoni: 448) Shadrack has promised Sula permanency and though he himself misunderstands permanency as lack of death, Sula finally rightly understands its meaning as transcending the death.

…she noticed that she was not breathing, that her heart had stopped completely. A crease of fear touched her breast for any second there was sure to be a violent explosion in her brain, a gasping for breath. Then she realized or rather she sensed that there was not going to be any pain. She was not breathing because she didn’t have to. Her body did not need oxygen. She was dead.

Sula felt her face smiling. “Well, I’ll be damned”, she thought, “it didn’t even hurt. Wait’ll I tell Nel”. (149) 

When Sula overcomes her earlier ‘patriarchal fear of the feminine’ and willingly ‘returns to the womb’, she discovers that descending into those maternal waters is not a frightening or evil journey i.e. damnation at all but a transformation switching over to the eternal life. Sula becomes one with the nature – when black people sing ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’ at her funeral, Sula answers them for it begins to rain. When they actually gather at the river on 3rd January, 1941, Sula draws them into her maternal waters and simultaneously kills a tunnel built by racist and capitalist powers which symbolizes ‘destructive nature of industrialization when it takes precedence over human life’ (Pessoni: 450) and finally when Nel yearns for her, Sula manifests herself in the trees.

‘Sula?’ she whispered, gazing at the tops of trees. ‘Sula?’

Leaves stirred; mud shifted; there was the smell of overripe green things. A soft ball of fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the breeze. (174)

This epiphany marks the re-emergence of Great Goddess at the end of Sula who reaches her height in the figure of Pilate in Morrison’s next novel Song of Solomon. 

Dr Manisha Patil