CHAPTER III
COMMUNITY VOICES
In Beloved and Paradise, Morrison provides isolated women with a voice within their community as well as outside their community. In Beloved, the women and community learn to accept the past and let it go in order to proceed into the future because it is not a story to pass on. In Paradise, the community of Ruby tries to silence the women at the convent because they are different, but they are not successful. The voices of the women provide a collective voice for the African-American women’s heritage and community.
Beloved
Morrison provides a voice to those in transition from bondage to freedom. The protagonist, Sethe, recovers her voice after years of pain and silence that are the effects of slavery. Even though Baby Suggs has been dead for several years, she is given a voice because of her ex-slave status. Denver provides the voice of the new generation of free African-Americans. Paul D reflects the voice of all the African-American males trying to fit into traditional white American culture. Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver, and Paul D’s voices provide knowledge of the difficult transition from slavery to freedom, and their successful transition provides a voice for their new self-identities. Morrison uses myths, the characters’ memory and the community’s behavior to reveal the silence of African-American women.
The characters focus on a single episode that occurred eighteen years earlier, when Sethe refused to be taken back into slavery or allow her children to be taken. Sethe takes control over her body and children, and she wants to keep it that way. Her act of possession can be looked at as an emotional appeal to the reader because no mother would want a child to suffer the brutal acts that are committed in the name of slavery. The institution of slavery denied motherhood to African-American women for centuries and Sethe, not agreeing with the white traditional ruling class’ belief that her children are a commodity, broke the oppression of motherhood. Sethe knows that she has the right to motherhood and nobody has the right to deny her this. This attitude helps her get through her pain and silence for eighteen years.
Morrison presents the theme of silence differently in this novel than in the first two novels because in the first two novels, the characters actively look into the past and try to find out as much as they can; in this novel, however, the past is painful and the characters’ try not to think or talk about the past. This is how Morrison brings up the question of whether it is “possible to transform unspeakable horrific experiences into knowledge” (Bowers 212). In Beloved, the ‘unspeakable’ for her characters—namely, the fear of evoking a past degradation—may diminish them, humiliate them, and shame them, which is clear from the way they try to force forgetting the past into a willed activity. The past is not silent and is present every waking moment of these characters’ lives.
Morrison uses language to present the concept of who has the privilege to name people and things because there are several episodes and references about names. Most of the naming of people and places relates to the characters’ slave experiences and the transition from slavery to freedom. The power of naming people and things was in the hands of the slaver owners. The first incident is in the opening line, when Morrison names the house 124. By providing the house with a name, she provides it with its own identity. According to Morrison, “It was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city” (Beloved 91). Morrison parallels the community inside the house with the community outside 124. Stamp Paid makes several comments about the house’s identity and voices. Stamp Paid “believed undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead” (Beloved 198). He is right because the noises are the ghosts of Beloved and all like her who died as a result of slave practices and whose stories have never been told. Morrison provides a voice to “the nameless and wordless grief of the sixty million who died during the Middle Passage” (William 126) in the character of Beloved. On one level, Beloved’s haunting represents her unrest from being murdered. On another level, the haunting represents the forgotten voices of African slaves. After the community rescues Sethe, the noises from the house cease. Stamp Paid states, “Used to be voices all around that place. Quiet, now” (Beloved 264). The silence in the house implies that peace needs to be found with the past in order to proceed into the future.
A major reference occurs when Stamp Paid and Baby Suggs reject the names on their bill of sale. Stamp Paid refuses to accept the name he is given by the slave owner because he had to give his wife up to the owner’s son, so he changes his name because he feels he paid his debt to the white traditional culture. Stamp Paid is a post-mark—guaranteeing that the thing being sent would make it to the destination. Stamp Paid names himself as a badge of honor that his debt is paid, that he owes nothing to the dominant culture; like Sethe’s scars it is a sign of what Stamp Paid’s name has been through and survived. By naming himself, Stamp Paid defies Schoolteacher’s command that definitions stay in the hand of the white definers.
Baby Suggs uses the name her husband gave her—Baby—because she wants to keep her identity tied to her relationships with other African-Americans, rather than to the papers developed by the white slave owner that is part of her status as a slave. The decision shows the importance of relationships to identity, as does Baby Suggs’ search for her family. Baby Suggs’s inquiries about her own name and search for her family reveal the absence of self-knowledge and self-recognition under the system of slavery. The absence of a name signifies the denial of her humanity because her old master never called her by any name at all. Many African-Americans are nameless to the slave owners because they are considered property and not human beings. Along with many African-Americans writers, Morrison has reclaimed and validated her culture in American society.
Before Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid becomes the definers, they are the defined by the white slave owners at Sweet Home. Morrison uses the ‘inherent language’ to present how the slave owners had control over the African-Americans through language. The slaves are not allowed to learn to read or write under the traditional laws of the institution of slavery because the ruling class “knew that literacy was power” (Plasa 44) and they did not want this to change. The narrator states, “In their relationship with Garner was true metal: they were believed and trusted, but most of all they were listened to” (Beloved 125). Garner, the original owner of the plantation Sweet Home, is rare as a slave owner because he allows the slaves to have a voice to an extent. The Garners represent the stereotypical illusion of slave owners in traditional American literature. Morrison presents the change in the slaves’ treatment from Garner to the Schoolteacher. “It was the Schoolteacher who taught them otherwise” (Beloved 125). The narrator tells the reader about an incident between Sixo and Schoolteacher. “Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers-not the defined” (Beloved 190). Sixo refuses to use English and when he does at the end—he sings Seven-o—he speaks in riddles. Sixo’s manipulation of language and logic is punished because he threatens Schoolteacher’s control of language. Morrison removes the power of naming and places the power in Baby Suggs’ and Stamp Paid’s control.
Another reference to names is that when Sethe overhears the schoolteacher telling his nephews to list her animal characteristics, she decides to take possession of her life. Sethe found out that this is not an easy task to complete. Escaping and “freeing yourself was one thing, but claiming ownership of that freed self was another” (Beloved 95). Sethe took possession of herself and her children because she did not want her children to witness the horrors of slavery as Baby Suggs and she did. Sethe does not want the Schoolteacher naming or defining her because she knows she is fully human—not an animal—and she wants the human power to name and define herself. Morrison, as we have seen, uses several different narrative techniques to subvert linear and chronological time. Again, she juxtaposes reality with the Cinderella fairy tale, the ‘Us and Them’ myth, and the African-American flying man myth. The Cinderella fairy tale is the prince riding up on the white horse to rescue the princess from the realities of life, marrying, and living happily ever after together. The Cinderella myth is perpetuated in American society by the traditional culture, literature, and films, but Morrison dismantles this fairy tale by contrasting it with the reality of the institution of slavery and the African-American quest for freedom. Non-fairy tale endings are closer to what ordinary people in America live rather than the fairy tale of Cinderella, and this is what Morrison wants to write about. Sethe’s marriage begins as the Cinderella fairy tale begins, but ends in the disappearance of her husband, two sons, the death of Beloved, and Baby Suggs. Morrison uses this fairy tale to show that the events of Sethe’s slave life had no fairy tale qualities; it is Sethe wanting a normal life with her family that turned out to be the fairy tale.
Morrison uses the ‘Us and Them’ myth in some form in all of her novels. The ‘Us and Them’ myth is one culture, race, or group defining themselves by using negative comments about another culture, race, or group. The myth is represented on two levels; in the representation of the relationship between the slave owner and the slaves. The schoolteacher presents the reality of the ‘Us and Them’ relationship and the Garners represent the fairy tale version of the institution of slavery. The narrator explores the fairy tale, “Everything rested on Garner being alive. Without his life each of theirs fell to pieces” (Beloved 220). This shows how dependent the slaves are on the slave owners because of the characteristics of the institution of slavery.
Morrison uses the African-American flying myth in the sections about the Middle Passage. The myth is about an African tribe of people that could fly. The myth’s implications are different in this novel than in the Song of Solomon. In this novel, Beloved is to show what really happens—the men being separated from the women, which leaves the women to teach the children their names and the names of dead ancestors in order to maintain familial and cultural history. Baby Suggs, Sethe, and a few other women are the ones to provide Denver with knowledge of her family history. Paul D did provide Denver with background information about her father, since she did not remember him because she was not born yet when he disappeared. The responsibility of family history falls heavily on the shoulders of the wives and mothers who remain behind, so that the women become the historians of the family and the African-American culture in the community.
The characters’ perspectives and memories play a major role in subverting the linear and chronological narration. Morrison expresses the theme of silence directly and indirectly through the narration. Many of the characters encounter episodes in which they could not speak because of the pain that would be invoked inside them if they did. One of the first episodes of the unspeakable occurs between Sethe and Paul D in a conversation about their past; Sethe says, “I didn’t plan on telling you that” (Beloved 71). Paul D responses, “I didn’t plan on hearing it” (Beloved 71). Their conversation about past events has never been discussed before with anyone because of the pain and embarrassment. Paul D states, “Maybe. Maybe you can hear it. I just ain’t sure I can say it. Say it right, I mean it wasn’t the bit—that wasn’t it” (Beloved 71). The narrator shows how the past can painfully intermix with the present for the characters. Their pain had been silenced along with their voices because the institution of slavery denied the slaves the right to express themselves as separate individuals. As Sethe and Paul D talk about their painful past, they are able to release their feelings and begin to lay the past to rest. According to Morrison in an interview, “The collective sharing of that information heals the individual” (Plasa 33). Sethe and Paul D’s story becomes a collective voice for many Africans and African-Americans that did and did not survive the institution of slavery.
From Sethe and Paul D’s conversation the reader learns that each hassurvived some horrible experience at Sweet Home and afterwards. The narrator states, “She and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying so that it was unspeakable” (Beloved 58). The past is painful for these two women because of the loss of their husbands and children. “Everybody I knew dead or gone or dead and gone” (Beloved 42). The unspeakable for Baby Suggs and Sethe is that it is not safe to love anyone because if they did, the loved one could be sold or killed at anytime. Another dilemma is whether to keep silent about the enslavement and racism because it might crush Denver’s hope and the potential of other children. This provides Sethe with the dilemma of recovering history, but also the need to deny history at the same time because it is painful.
Another incident of not being able to speak is when Paul D saw Halle with butter all over his face because Halle witnessed what the schoolteacher’s nephews did to Sethe. He is unable to help or save her from their brutal assault and he could not mentally deal with this. The incident leaves Halle with no other avenue, just as Pecola had no other avenue. Paul D could not speak to Halle or help him. The horse bit is a physical way to break African-Americans’ resistance during slavery. Because according to the “scientific” theory of the time they were believed to be animals, the same “domestication” techniques could be applied to them as were applied to the animals. Paul D manages to survive slavery because he put his heart in a small tin and never opened it until the end of his journey.
Another person silenced at Sweet Home is Sixo. Sixo “stopped speaking English because there was no future in it” (Beloved 25) for him. Sixo realizes that he lives in a white traditional culture and he is an African-American, which is represented as the other. His decision to be silent represented those that refused to assimilate into the white traditional culture. Sixo’s actions are similar to Empire State not speaking anymore in the Song of Solomon. According to Morrison, the absence or the silence, whether chosen or enforced, is ideologically and politically motivated. This represented all the slaves that were silenced by the language and the culture of the institution of slavery.
When Baby Suggs gives up on language and the community, she represents those that had tried and tried and finally given up on having a ‘normal’ free life. The reason she gave up was that she had done everything right and still the white man came into her yard. Stamp Paid remembered telling Baby Suggs, “You can’t quit the Word. It’s given to you to speak. You can’t quit the Word, I don’t care what all happened to you” (Beloved 177). When Baby Suggs stops preaching, she allows life to silence her, and she becomes the reflection of chaos created from slavery in the African-American community that did not end. Baby Suggs represents the African-American folklore of the elder wise preacher who brings a community together. She did this, but the community rejected her because of jealousy and denial. She realized she couldn’t fight both the flaws of her own community and the injustice of the white culture.
Denver is silent for eighteen years: “Denver’s story depends on that surrounding silence” (Moreland 49). Denver is like Sethe because she also did not want to tell others what happened in 124 Bluestone. She did not have contact with the community until she was forced to look for help to deal with Beloved. The narrator states, “It was a little thing to pay, but seemed big to Denver. Nobody was going to help her unless she told it—told all of it” (Beloved 253). Denver is not silent in the end because she ventures out into the community where she learns to have a voice within it.
Beloved appearing and talking to Denver is similar to Pecola’s friend in The Bluest Eye. A difference is that others—Sethe, Paul D, and townswomen see her, but not those who deny the past mistreatment of African-Americans and those who were complicit in that treatment. Denver believes that Beloved is a ghost, but does not realize that she is her sister’s ghost until later in the story. When Denver is asked about who she thinks Beloved is, she replies, “At times. At times I think she was—more” (Beloved 266). This relates to Beloved representing all those that died on the Middle Passage to America. Through the character of Beloved, Morrison’s language provides a collective voice to those on the Middle Passage that did not make it. According to Diane Horuitz, “Beloved stands for every African woman whose story will never be told” (93). Beloved became a major voice for all those that had been silenced by the institution of slavery. Beloved’s character is different from the others because she refuses to stay silent and demands to be the center of attention at 124. Beloved offers the American culture a story of “one people, one struggle, and one solution in this novel” (Mbalia 57). Morrison represents the African-American culture, but through language she represents the entire American culture.
Morrison uses Beloved to represent the distant past; therefore, “Beloved becomes the scapegoat for the evils of the past” (Bowers 231). Baby Suggs represents the recent past and Denver represents the future. This leaves Sethe to represent the present because Sethe does not want to deal with the past or the future: “Every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost” (Beloved 58). For “Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay” (Beloved 42). There is hope for the future because of Paul D’s comment to Sethe at the end of the story: Paul D states, “Me and you, we got more yesterdays than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow” (Beloved 273). The statement provides proof that there is a future for Sethe and Paul D because they suffer and negotiate their way to selfhood and society.
The community’s behavior and responsibilities play a major role in the narration. The community becomes jealous of Baby Suggs’ success as a freed slave because they felt no freed slave has the right to be as happy as Baby Suggs and her family. The significance of the community is seen through the context of their betrayal of Baby Suggs; nobody warns Baby Suggs about Schoolteacher’s arrival into town.
The community further ostracizes Sethe’s actions by exiling her for eighteen years after she already paid heavily to Schoolteacher because of the loss of a child. Sethe’s act of possession is why the community feels that she is too proud because a slave or ex-slave could not own anything, including their children. “Sethe’s refusal to seek the community’s approval, and each act of their disapproval, evokes a corresponding defiance from Sethe” (Furman 73). Sethe did not apologize to the community at all; in fact, she states that she would do it again. This is what separates her from the community and scares them because her actions force the community to look at their own losses and lives due to their slave history. Morrison presents a moral ambiguity: the question of is the murder right or wrong? The answer is reached at the end—it is the right thing to do, but Sethe didn’t have the right to do it. If she did not murder Beloved, they would have been taken back into slavery, but, because she commits the murder, the entire community shunned her and she is placed at the mercy of a vengeful spirit.
The community’s actions at the end of the story provide redemption for Sethe and themselves. Their redemption stems from learning to leave the past behind and concentrate on the future. The community learns this after Denver ventures out; they finally realize that Sethe might have done something she should not have done because “past errors should not take possession of the present” (Beloved 256). This is what motivates the women of the community to get rid of Beloved and lay the past to rest. This implies that the dead do more damage than the living to the present and suggests that America needs to take responsibility for past events and get beyond them in order to build a future.
Morrison’s narrative techniques provide a voice to the entire African-American culture and history. She dismantles the traditional culture’s slave narrative with the representation of slave experiences from African-Americans’ perspectives and not from the perspective of the patriarchal ruling class. The direct storytelling of the horrible events that happened at Sweet Home presents a different version of the institution of slavery than the traditional slave narratives, which were written with a white, middle-class audience in mind. Again, Morrison breaks the silent narrative of African-American women and provides them with their own voice and identity that requires attention and comprehension.
Paradise
Morrison uses language in Paradise to provide a voice to the women at the convent who have been silenced by the ‘righteous’ community of Ruby. Nine freed slave families founded the all African-American community of Ruby in Oklahoma, which they modeled after the town of Haven—a small freed African-American community they passed through before settling. The convent is outside of town and they took in people who had nowhere else to go. Most of the members of the community have an attitude towards the women at the convent and one reason, perhaps, is that “the mansion-turned-Convent was there long before the town” (Paradise 10). This suggests a rivalry could take place between the two because the townspeople could be jealous because the convent was there first.
The women at the convent become scapegoats for the community because of their isolation and differences with the community. Connie states:
The women at the convent are isolated from the
town of Ruby and the rest of the world. No
newspapers in this house. No radio either.
Any news we get has to be from somebody
telling it face-to-face (Paradise 41).
The women did not have much contact with the people in the town, so they probably did not hear much news or gossip, just when someone stopped to buy vegetables or wine. The geographical location of the convent isolates it from the town of Ruby, but because of the women’s independence and modern thoughts, they become scapegoats.
Morrison examines the emotional and physical violence that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another, constructing the narration around a single episode when the nine men from the town brutally assault the women at the convent. The men are Arnold and his brother, Jeff Fleetwood, Harper Jury and his son, Menus, Wisdom Poole, Sargeant Person, Stewart and Deacon Morgan, and their nephew, K.D., who create physical violence against the five women at the convent on that fateful night: Mavis, Connie, Grace, Seneca, and Pallas.
Again, Morrison takes the privilege of naming a step further because she creates a variety of names for the people in the town and the women at the convent. Jury, Wisdom, Sargeant, and Deacon suggest justice, knowledge, order, and faith, but they reflect injustice, ignorance, chaos, and crisis. Some of these men are from the original families that settled Ruby: Fleetwood, Poole, and Morgan. The Morgan family “ran everything, controlled everything” (Paradise 217). The men feel they have the right to tell people how to live because their family founded the town. This is another reason for them to justify their assault on the women at the convent.
Morrison uses several different narrative techniques in this novel to subvert linear and chronological time. She juxtaposes the reality of violent crimes that can occur within the fairy tale Utopian community of Ruby with the American Dream, and the ‘Us and Them’ myth. reflects what happened at the convent when the nine townsmen assault the women. In an article, Morrison says, “Well, the larger point is the point of the novel, which is the construction of an isolated community which can’t survive. The larger issue is the idea of paradise, which is built on exclusion. The traditional culture uses exclusion to keep their ideals as the norm of society” (Toni Morrison).
The first line of the story tells the reality: “They shot the white girl first” (Paradise 3). This is the first murder, but the townspeople view it differently—in a letter Pat states, “Except for you and K.D.’s mother, nobody has ever died. Please note I said in Ruby and they are real proud of that believing they are blessed” (Paradise 199) because the people of the town do not count the women’s deaths at the convent. The people of Ruby feel they have a perfect community and they did not want any changes or individuals ruin what they worked hard to build:
Ruby is renewal of the deteriorating paradise of Haven
[another all African-American community]; but none of
these perfect towns remains paradisiac [...] why? The idea
of Ruby might be a noble one, but its ideals could not be
connected to everyday life; it was finally defined only
by ‘the absence of the unsaved, the unworthy and the
strange’—which is an integral part of the human
community. (Toni Morrison in Germany)
On the surface the town of Ruby presents a Utopian atmosphere, but as the novel progresses the reader discovers a deeper level to the town. The townspeople think they are the most ‘righteous,’ but in reality they are the most unsaved, unworthy, and strangest of all. This leads to the paradox of the different meanings behind words that are similar in appearance. The community feel they created a safe haven for themselves from the oppression of the traditional white culture, thus creating a Utopian atmosphere, but this is a dream in itself because no community is completely free of violence and crime. It does not matter whether it is an all white town or all African-American town, crimes do occur and so does oppression.
The American Dream myth is used to present the reality of those that are excluded from achieving the American Dream because of gender or race. The women at the convent were excluded because they are women and outsiders to the town of Ruby. The people in the town of Ruby are outsiders to the all-white communities that surround it since the town was founded and ruled by African-Americans. The town uses the same oppression upon the women at the convent that was uses on them in the traditional white society..
The ‘Us and Them’ myth is presented in some form in all of Morrison’s novels and her critical essays. The myth is one culture, race, or group defining itself to enhance its characteristics by using negative comments about another culture, race, or group. This occurs between the African-American people and the white people, the elders and the youth, and the community and outsiders. The characters encounter some form of the myth in Morrison’s novels and each reacts differently to the oppression that occurs, with the traditional culture perpetuating the ‘Us and Them’ myth.
Morrison discusses the ‘Us and Them’ myth in Playing in the Dark. She analyzes “how ‘literary whiteness’ and literary blackness’[are] made, and what is the consequences of that construction” (Playing in the Dark xii). The consequences are presented in the exploitation of African-Americans by the traditional patriarchal culture. She presents many of the myths in American society, showing how they are perpetuated through literature. She questions why the literary cannon has not included women and African-Americans, and concludes that the reason for the absence of African-Americans is that the traditional culture’s literature is written by and about its own image and not the “Other.”
The ‘Us and Them’ myth is carried out between the townspeople and the women at the convent and the older generations and the younger generations of the town. The patriarchal men of the town resent the women at the convent because the women did not turn to the men for help; instead they solved their problems without men. Another reason is that the town’s traditional beliefs clashed with the women’s modern beliefs, providing the metaphor for general conflict between different social beliefs and structures. The younger generations of the town are considered outsiders because they want to change the traditional community and the elders did not want any change. In an interview, Morrison states, “As one grows older, you are perhaps dissatisfied with the social order. But you begin to appreciate stability, the past. You don’t like change; the young are threatening” (Verdelle). Morrison provides a reason for the townspeople’s treatment of the women at the convent and the younger generation—Richard states, “Well help me figure this place out. I know I’m an outsider, but I’m not an enemy” (Paradise 212). Pat replies, “No, you’re not. But in this town those two words mean the same thing” (Paradise 212). Small towns are often depicted as looking at outsiders as the enemy, and Morrison uses the stereotype to present the consequences of narrow mindedness.
The community uses the ‘Us and Them” myth to justify their brutal actions towards the women at the convent. Eight of the men convince themselves that the women are evil, and they had rid the town of evil, which justifies their assault. Steward states, “The evil is in this house” (Paradise 291). Another comment made by one of the townspeople “is to say not a convent but a coven” (Paradise 276), which provides the men with their justification for their actions. There are rumors of abortions and witchcraft, and complaints against this new and obscene breed of female that dares to be self-sufficient. The women being self-sufficient made the men in town even madder because they proved they do not need a man to take care of them; they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves. Even those in the community not directly involved in the episode defend the men’s actions. The community hardly changes after its brutal assault on the five women at the convent because they act as if nothing happened. When other people from the town arrive at the convent, they ask the men questions about what happened, but do nothing about what they see or hear.
The characters’ perspective and memory play a major role in subverting the linear and chronological narration. The narration is similar to Beloved because of the circular motions of the incidents to make a whole. Lone and Deacon seem to be the only ones affected by the outcome of the events at the convent. From clues in the story, apparently Deacon was in love with Connie at one time and his brother shot her that night at the convent:
As for Lone, she became unhinged by the way the story
was being retold; how people were changing it to make
themselves look good. Other than Deacon Morgan, who
had nothing to say, every one of the assaulting men had a
different tale and their families and friends who had not
been at the convent, supported them, enhancing, recasting,
inventing misinformation. (Paradise 297)
This implies that the men and the community are proud of the men’s actions because they kept talking about the assault and the story keeps changing.
As in Morrison’s other novels, several characters are silenced. One is Pallas, whose silence is similar to that of Sixo and Empire State with one difference: her silence is not chosen; it is forced. When Pallas was asked where she was headed, she “discovered that her vocal cords didn’t work” (Paradise 173). Again, Billie asked Pallas, but she was silent again. Pallas tries to answer, when she “touched her throat and made a sound like a key trying to turn in the wrong lock. All she could do was shake her head” (Paradise 175). Pallas not being able to speak refers to the silencing of women in a traditional patriarchal society. Pallas “had not been able even to whisper it in the darkness of a candlelit room. Her voice had returned, but the words to say her shame clung like polyps in her throat” (Paradise 179). Finally, Pallas is able to talk to Connie at the convent, which suggests that the women made strangers feel at home enough to tell their story.
The community’s behavior and responsibilities play a major role in the narration. Morrison portrayed:
Community with many layers of lessons for us—about
intergenerational disappointments, resistance to change,
the hierarchies, secrets, silences and animosities that drive
people apart, the hunger for security that produces
destructive insularity and exclusiveness, the trap of
perfectionism in an imperfect world. (Wilson)
She effectively produces an instrument of demystifying the idea that the community is neither black nor white, but a combination of both.
The community feels the young people and the women at the convent are a threat to the Utopian society of Ruby, which is how the ‘Us and Them’ struggle began. First is the struggle between the older and younger generations in the community. Many of the community members have harsh words for the young people: “They don’t want to give it nothing. They want to kill it, change it into something they made up” (Paradise 86). Many of the older generations have these same feelings about the youth of the town. Another comment made about the young people:
They had not suggested, politely, that Miss Esther may have
been mistaken, they howled at the notion of remembering
invisible words you couldn’t even read by tracing letters
you couldn’t pronounce. (Paradise 83)
The townspeople’s respond:
It would have been better for everyone if the young people
had spoken softly, acknowledged their upbringing as they
presented their views. But they didn’t want to discuss;
they wanted to instruct. (Paradise 84)
On one side, this suggested that the young people were rude to those who did not want any changes. On the opposite side, it suggested that the older generations wanted obedient drones for children instead of unique individuals. The “depiction of a community that preys upon its own young, its own women, and those outside of its narrow confines seems in some respects to return to the war between self and society” (Connor 73-4).
Morrison presents the struggle for self-identity and the individual’s identity within the community. The men are arguing about the attitude of the youth in the community. The Reverend Pullman states, “We have a problem here. You, me. Everyone. The problem is with the way some of us talk” (Paradise 85). The Reverend says this because some of the men are talking about committing violent acts towards the youth. Richard is an advocate for the rational side of the events that occur in the story. Richard states:
Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled
from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their
grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. [. . .]
But why were there no stories to tell of themselves?
About their own loves they shut up. Had nothing to say,
pass on. As though past heroism was enough of the future
to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted
duplicates. (Paradise 161)
Richard states the truth about the elderly men, but nobody listens to him because he is considered an outsider, too. The townspeople prey on the youth and then on the women at the convent.
Second is the struggle between these nine men and the women at the convent, who were perceived as outsiders. A major contributing factor in the men’s justification occurs when Soane invites the women from the convent to her wedding Mavis, Gigi, Seneca, and Pallas all attend. Some of the guests make several remarks about the women having no business being there. After overhearing some of the comments, Soane realizes she made a mistake inviting the women to her wedding. The narrator states, “That’s no place for them, you know. The strange feathers she had invited did not belong in her house” (Paradise 155). When the nine men are together discussing the women, one states, “They scandalized the wedding” (Paradise 275). The men’s anger explodes into violence in the end: “The men of Ruby try to justify the massacre by trying to find evidence of a neglect of domestic duties” (Peach 157). This statement refers to the men not liking the women’s independence and modern thoughts.
Morrison provides a twist to the end of the story. The nine men thought they killed all the women at the convent, but this is not the case when they search for all the bodies. The narrator states, “No bodies. Nothing. Even the Cadillac was gone Bewildered, angry, sad, frightened people pile into cars, making their way back to children , livestock, fields, household chores and uncertainty” (Paradise 292). The men carry on with their lives as if nothing happened and the only thing that worries the townspeople is whether outsiders would come to investigate, which ceases when “they learned there were no dead to report, transport or bury, relief was so great they began to forget what they’d actually done or seen” (Paradise 298). The men who assault the convent are not made accountable for their individual actions and they feel they are justified because each of them blames the women at the convent for something bad that occurred in their lives, which leads to the women becoming the scapegoat. The Fleetwood brothers are looking for someone to blame for the death of Sweetie’s children for a long time. Menus spent a few weeks drying out at the convent. Apparently, “those women must have witnessed some things, seen some things that he didn’t want ranging around” (Paradise 277). Wisdom wants revenge for one brother killing another brother over a woman, Billie Delia, because she is friendly with the women. Sargeant wants the convent property for his own use because he is leasing some of the land from the women. Stewart and Deacon want to control everything because the narrator states, “Stewart and Deacon neither put up with what he couldn’t control” (Paradise 278-9). Stewart feels that K.D. is ruined somehow by one of the women at the convent because of his affair with Gigi, who is a woman at the convent, but she rejects him and it makes him angry. These are some of the reasons why the women become scapegoats for the ‘righteous’ community of Ruby. According to Rene¢ Girard, scapegoating is the act of violence being “diverted to another object” (4). The community has no outlet for their grievances and feels that the women at the convent are responsible for their bad luck. The narrator states, “The one thing that connected all these catastrophes was in the Convent” (Paradise 11). “Violence itself will discard them if the initial object remains persistently out of reach and continues to provoke hostility. When unappeased, violence seeks and always finds a surrogate victim” (Girard 2). The community’s violence is unappeased until they get themselves all worked up by talking about the women’s actions at Soane’s wedding. This is the incident that provides the fuel for their actions. “The purpose of the sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric” (Girard 8). The community considers Billie Delia an outsider because of her association with the women at the convent and her attitude towards the people in the town. Some of the women and men in the community blame the women at the convent for Billie striking her mother and running off. Billie left after Soane’s wedding, when Pat, who is Billie’s mother wonders whether her “silence of this night was whether she had defended Billie Delia or sacrificed her” (Paradise 203). The community blames Billie for the incident last year because Billie was involved with the two brothers, Brood and Apollo, one of who laid “in wait to slaughter his brother” (Paradise 277). One brother shot the other because of being in love with Billie Delia. Billie Delia’s opinion of the town is ”a backward no place ruled by men whose power to control was out of control and who had the nerve to say who could live and who not and where; who had seen in lively, free, unarmed females the mutiny of the mares and so got rid of them” (Paradise 308). The women at the convent have similar opinions of the town and the people in it.
The community may have silenced the women, but Morrison provides each of the women with a voice because she devotes a chapter to each of the women’s stories. The nine men did not accomplish silencing the women because three of them survive the assault. The attempt to sacrifice all the women did not physically occur in the story, but two women are dead and three have fled the convent. Technically the sacrifice works to quell the anger and violence of the men in the community.
Morrison provides the women at the convent with a voice by providing each of them with a chapter to tell their story. Almost all the women are victims because they have spent years “grappling with economic hardship, romantic disappointment, social inequity and the stupid misdeeds of men” (Kakutani). The women overcome theirhardships through their relationship with each other and they do let the past go when they leave after the assault and continue with their lives. The community of Ruby did not let the past go because everyone kept talking about the assault and changing the story to suit their needs and to make themselves look good. As in most of her novels, Morrison presents a road to redemption for the characters; not all the characters take this road. In this novel, Morrison suggests that redemption is to be found not in obsessively remembering the past but in letting go, which is similar to Beloved.
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