Nel-Sula Patriarchal Analysis

This paper attempts to examine how Toni Morrison has employed female black solidaity as an act of resistance against the patriarchal set up. The warmth, security and sisterhood which Nel-Sula shares through their relationship not only heal the oppression meted out to the doubly marginalized black women , but also poses a threat to the heterosexual patriarchal structure. Through the two complementary characters Nel-Sula, this paper attempts to delineate how female solidarity itself can be a tool for resisting the dominant patriarchal ideologies.

“ ...they immediately felt the ease and comfort of old friends. Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male,and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden …show more content…
However it is this very contrast which binds them together. Coming from an oppressively neat household Nel likes the casual disorder of Sula’s household. Whereas Sula enjoys sitting on the ‘red velvet sofa’ in the quiet of an afternoon.Infact Nel/Sula together create a complete individual. Wheareas Sula represents the impulsive emotional one; Nel represents the practical one. In Sula’s eyes Nel is the closest thing that she has to an other and a self. Sula feels betrayed when Nel marries Jude Greene. She viewed it as a sign of betrayal because in doing so Nel is conforming to the traditional roles of the society. Therefore soon after Nel’s marriage Sula leaves Bottom for a period of ten years. However when Sula returns to the Bottom she is accompanied by a plague of robins. Everything she does seems to shock the entire community. Sula turned out to be the rebel against all society, all convebtions and nearly all moralities. In her desperate quest for freedom Sula is labelled as a witch and a doom-eager ‘demon’ in the eyes of the black community. Whereas the society insists on the discreet, consistent and confined roles Sula defies all the social conventions. Sula doesnot care whether she fits into the definition of of a black women, she doesnot care whether the men she sleeps with are married or not. She rather chooses to be a ‘misfit’, not to belong. So far as the white consciousness is concerned the question of a black women’s sexuality is very much problematized. Love making with a black female could be so alien to the white imagination that literally nothing could describe it. However, Sula through her act of love making to the white men challenges the white patriarchal society and poses a threat to it. Sula’s courage ,her determination to be free to ‘make herself’ necessarily self-victimizes her. Blackness has often been associated with serpentine and satanic