Comparing Characters Of Sulla And Nel In Toni Morrison's Sula

Although Sula and Nel were inseparable in their adolescent years, the differences in their natures become prominent and as years go by and they lose touch with one another. After Nel gets married, Sula leaves her hometown because there is nothing keeping her in the Bottom anymore as Nel devotes her life to her husband and children and puts Sula on the sidetrack, which is a natural course of events in Toni Morrison’s view. Sula stands in opposition to the ideals of a woman because her desire is not toward getting married or having children. Friendship with Nel is Sula’s first choice. Nevertheless, when Sula loses Nel to a man, she is willing to find a new life for herself away from her family and community. But not finding what she had been …show more content…
Nel, on another hand, still lives underr the assumption that she and Sula are friends. Nel does not question their friendship and thinks that the fact that she has a husband and family does not change anything about her and Sula’s friendship. Nel is not able to see how much has changed, she does not question her life in the way Sula does. Nel’s family life makes her happy, or at least she thinks it does. But the fact that Nel does not question anything and surrenders to the way things are make it impossible for her to understand what happened with her and Sula. Nel does not understand that with her marriage, she lost a part of herself and therefore, she lost her friendship with …show more content…
The fact that men are the ones whose judgment is important suggests that women of the Bottom value their men’s opinion and that men in the Bottom have the power in decision making over African American women. The men’s need to dominate and their threats of emasculation may also be observed in the different ways they talk about Sula and her mother Hannah. Both Sula and Hannah engage in sexual relationships with numerous men from the community and are sexually free but men never gossip about Sula’s mother Hannah whereas Sula, in contrast, becomes a target of gossips and the evil of the community for doing the same thing. However, the reason why men do not gossip about Hannah is that she helped the men feel good about them and she made no demand which was a perfect combination the men in Bottom. Men are not fond of Sula because she does not compliment the men in a way her mother used to: “Sula was trying them out and discarding them without any excuse the men could swallow” (115). Thereby, Sula’s views of Marriage and her attitude towards men are not welcomed in the