Morrison suggests that Nel’s and Sula’s friendship is complex, with more to it than meets the eye. The boundaries between one person and the other are not clear, even to the friends themselves. Before Nel gets married, we are told “their friendship was so close, they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s.” And:
"They never quarreled, those two, the way some girlfriends did over boys, or competed against each other for them. In those days a compliment to one was a compliment to the other, and cruelty to one was a challenge to the other."
The storytelling in Sula, which is mostly linear in structure, becomes non-linear when Morrison talks about what cements the friendship. She starts with sex, then goes to shedding of blood (the episode where Sula slices off the tip of her finger to scare the Irish boys who had harassed Nel) and finally death (Chicken Little’s). All three would be taboo for young girls and they are no less assertive than men for breaking these taboos. It is breaking these societal taboos that cements their friendship. So much so that the friendship doesn’t rupture until personal taboos are broken. Nel is unable to share the father of her children with her best friend, something Sula can’t understand. It is only when she herself gets involved with Ajax in a way unlike she did with other men that possessiveness enters her dictionary.
Sex will play an important part in their friendship till the end. To be gazed at lustfully by men, they had made a bold foray into Edna Finch’s Mellow House like “tightrope walkers, as thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy haunches spread wide with welcome.” Their daring is stunning because they are 12-year-old girls living in a small town in the 1920s. When Ajax calls out “pig meat” the two girls guard their eyes “lest someone see their delight.” The young men tease the girls as they do in my culture, both to aggressively set limits to the threatening freedom of “modern women” and to assert their power over them. And these two girls, who had “discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them” used “each other to grow on.” This expression of sexuality adds to the intimacy they share. They go on to compare “how a boy kissed, what line he used with one and then the other.” This sharing of the details of their forays into the sexual arena is much alike how men compare the women they’ve “had”.
Morrison creates a world, the Bottom, where the yoke of sexual politics lies light on its women denizens. Unlike Paradise, in which the men of the town attack the Covent where errant women have taken shelter, in Sula, the men enjoy the sexuality of women like Hannah and Sula Peace without condemning them as sluts or assembling as mobs to drive them out of decent society. Morrison’s description of female lust is powerful as her female characters turn their gaze on men and objectify them. Nel, as a 55-year-old woman, remembers the time she had been 11.
"Jesus, there were some beautiful boys in 1921! Look like the whole world was bursting at the seams with them. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Jesus, they were fine…. The sun heated them and the moon slid down their backs. God, the world was full of beautiful boys in 1921!"
Nel, who had had as much feminine desire as Sula, never transgresses the norm. Is Sula is the doer and Nel the one who wants to do but usually never does? Is Sula only open to suggestion? Morrison’s portrayal of the two girls is complex. While it is Nel who had murmured before she befriended Sula:
“I’m me… Me. I’m me. I’m not their daughter… I’m me. Me… I want… I want to be… wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful…” For days afterward she imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious. Leaving Medallion would be her goal.
it is Sula who had travelled “not too long, but maybe too far” before drifting back to Medallion partly because Nel is there. She tells Nel when the latter meets her before her death, “Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.” While Sula was the one who swung him around and around, Nel is the one who had felt good to see Chicken Little fall.
"They never quarreled, those two, the way some girlfriends did over boys, or competed against each other for them. In those days a compliment to one was a compliment to the other, and cruelty to one was a challenge to the other."
The storytelling in Sula, which is mostly linear in structure, becomes non-linear when Morrison talks about what cements the friendship. She starts with sex, then goes to shedding of blood (the episode where Sula slices off the tip of her finger to scare the Irish boys who had harassed Nel) and finally death (Chicken Little’s). All three would be taboo for young girls and they are no less assertive than men for breaking these taboos. It is breaking these societal taboos that cements their friendship. So much so that the friendship doesn’t rupture until personal taboos are broken. Nel is unable to share the father of her children with her best friend, something Sula can’t understand. It is only when she herself gets involved with Ajax in a way unlike she did with other men that possessiveness enters her dictionary.
Sex will play an important part in their friendship till the end. To be gazed at lustfully by men, they had made a bold foray into Edna Finch’s Mellow House like “tightrope walkers, as thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy haunches spread wide with welcome.” Their daring is stunning because they are 12-year-old girls living in a small town in the 1920s. When Ajax calls out “pig meat” the two girls guard their eyes “lest someone see their delight.” The young men tease the girls as they do in my culture, both to aggressively set limits to the threatening freedom of “modern women” and to assert their power over them. And these two girls, who had “discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them” used “each other to grow on.” This expression of sexuality adds to the intimacy they share. They go on to compare “how a boy kissed, what line he used with one and then the other.” This sharing of the details of their forays into the sexual arena is much alike how men compare the women they’ve “had”.
Morrison creates a world, the Bottom, where the yoke of sexual politics lies light on its women denizens. Unlike Paradise, in which the men of the town attack the Covent where errant women have taken shelter, in Sula, the men enjoy the sexuality of women like Hannah and Sula Peace without condemning them as sluts or assembling as mobs to drive them out of decent society. Morrison’s description of female lust is powerful as her female characters turn their gaze on men and objectify them. Nel, as a 55-year-old woman, remembers the time she had been 11.
"Jesus, there were some beautiful boys in 1921! Look like the whole world was bursting at the seams with them. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Jesus, they were fine…. The sun heated them and the moon slid down their backs. God, the world was full of beautiful boys in 1921!"
Nel, who had had as much feminine desire as Sula, never transgresses the norm. Is Sula is the doer and Nel the one who wants to do but usually never does? Is Sula only open to suggestion? Morrison’s portrayal of the two girls is complex. While it is Nel who had murmured before she befriended Sula:
“I’m me… Me. I’m me. I’m not their daughter… I’m me. Me… I want… I want to be… wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful…” For days afterward she imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious. Leaving Medallion would be her goal.
it is Sula who had travelled “not too long, but maybe too far” before drifting back to Medallion partly because Nel is there. She tells Nel when the latter meets her before her death, “Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.” While Sula was the one who swung him around and around, Nel is the one who had felt good to see Chicken Little fall.
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