Sula by Toni Morrison, follows the story of two young women from childhood into adulthood, in their monotonous hometown of The Bottom. These two girls, Nel and Sula, are presented as opposites of one another throughout the book. As kids, Sula lives a non-traditional life, in a busy boarding house with her grandmother Eva, and her promiscuous mother Hannah; Nel, however, lives in a very ordinary and structured home with her strict mother Helene. Nel longs to be more like Sula, free and individual. Together, they seem to be two distinct parts that make a whole. Even as adults they seem to be binary, with Sula often presented as evil, immoral, and the black sheep of the community, while Nel is presented as good, moral, and the epitome of a proper
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Morrison writes of her “Now Nel belonged to the town and all of its ways. She had given herself over to them, and the flick of their tongues would drive her back into her little dry corner where she would cling to her spittle high above the breath of the snake and the fall”(120). Nel has now become the embodiment of morality in the Bottom, as she has done exactly what it’s women are supposed to. She has remained in the Bottom, gotten married, had kids, never slept around and was involved in the church; even from a young age Nel was obedient and proper. Being what she was expected to be, made her good and virtuous to the community. On the other hand, Morrison writes of Sula “When the word got out about Eva being put in Sunnydale, the people in the Bottom shook their heads and said Sula was a roach. Later, when they saw how she took Jude, then ditched him for others... they forgot all about Hannah's easy ways (or their own) and said she was a bitch. Everybody remembered the plague of robins that announced her return, and the tale about her watching Hannah burn was stirred up again”(112). Sula left the Bottom, lead a promiscuous lifestyle and often rejected the expectations placed on her as a woman by the community. She was labeled the devil, a bitch, a venomous snake, and a roach. To the Bottom she was a plague. She was the venomous snake in the garden of Eden who took men “trying them out and disregarding them”(115). She put her grandmother in a home seemingly for no reason, she didn't flinch as she watched her own mother burned to death, she cut off her own finger, and upon her return she was accompanied by a migration of Robins, dying and falling out of the sky with their
Morrison writes of her “Now Nel belonged to the town and all of its ways. She had given herself over to them, and the flick of their tongues would drive her back into her little dry corner where she would cling to her spittle high above the breath of the snake and the fall”(120). Nel has now become the embodiment of morality in the Bottom, as she has done exactly what it’s women are supposed to. She has remained in the Bottom, gotten married, had kids, never slept around and was involved in the church; even from a young age Nel was obedient and proper. Being what she was expected to be, made her good and virtuous to the community. On the other hand, Morrison writes of Sula “When the word got out about Eva being put in Sunnydale, the people in the Bottom shook their heads and said Sula was a roach. Later, when they saw how she took Jude, then ditched him for others... they forgot all about Hannah's easy ways (or their own) and said she was a bitch. Everybody remembered the plague of robins that announced her return, and the tale about her watching Hannah burn was stirred up again”(112). Sula left the Bottom, lead a promiscuous lifestyle and often rejected the expectations placed on her as a woman by the community. She was labeled the devil, a bitch, a venomous snake, and a roach. To the Bottom she was a plague. She was the venomous snake in the garden of Eden who took men “trying them out and disregarding them”(115). She put her grandmother in a home seemingly for no reason, she didn't flinch as she watched her own mother burned to death, she cut off her own finger, and upon her return she was accompanied by a migration of Robins, dying and falling out of the sky with their