To Shadrack, whose livelihood is catching and selling river fish, Sula's birthmark resembles a tadpole, a symbol of Shadrack's earthy nature and his psychological metamorphosis throughout the novel. What shape people perceive the birthmark to be says more about them than about Sula. Her shallow neighbors think that Serafina has "too much glory," just like the Bottom's black community despises Sula because she has an independence that contrasts to the community's own small-mindedness.ĭescribed by one critic as a "cracked mirror, fragments and pieces that we have to see independently and put together for ourselves," even Sula's birthmark over one eye is perceived differently by different characters. None of the play's characters understands Serafina's fierce commitment to her dead husband's memory her questioning his love for her would effectively negate the pride - the glory - she has for herself. In Williams' play, Serafina delle Rose, an Italian-American woman, mourns for the recent death of her husband, Rosario, who, Serafina's gossipy and cruel neighbors claim, was having an extramarital affair before his death. Their resentment of her is foreshadowed in the novel's epigraph, from Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, which hints at the independent nature of Morrison's title character. The women of the Bottom hate Sula because she is living criticism of their own dreadful lives of resignation. She refuses to settle for a woman's traditional lot of marriage, child raising, labor, and pain. As Morrison notes of her, "She was completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments - no ego."įaced with a racist world and a sexist community, Sula defends herself by creating a life, however bizarre, that is rich and experimental. As flawed as Sula is, however, she never surrenders to falseness or falls into the trap of conventionality in order to keep up appearances or to be accepted by the community.
Sula must experience events in order to reflect on them: She watches her mother burn, she commits her grandmother to a nursing home, and she has a sexual affair with her best friend's husband. Morrison tells us that Sula "had no center, no speck around which to grow" her life is like an open rainbow for experimental freedom that often touches the edges of danger. She often seems perpetually stuck in a kind of childlike impetuosity. She is not ruthless rather, she is spontaneous and unable to moderate or temper the sudden impact her actions might have on her community.
Embodying freedom, adventure, curiosity, unpredictability, passion, and danger, Sula takes little from others and gives even less.
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