Gender in Sula

Gender in Sula

            In Sula, although men are an integral part of the women characters' lives, the women form relationships with them based only on need and not on love. The relationships between men and women are at best friendships of utility. They are never deep, honest or loving as the relationships between the women are. The most deeply explored relationship in the novel is that of Nel and Sula. The two women grow up together, know each other better than anyone else, and love each other. Their friendship falls apart over Jude. When Nel asks her, Sula is honest about her reasons for sleeping with him. She says, "Well, there was this space in front of me, behind me, in my head. Some space. And Jude filled it up. That's all. He just filled up the space"(144). While Nel is initially angry that Sula took her husband away from her and didn't even love him, she too realizes that Jude didn't mean all that much to her. It was Sula she was sad to lose because that was the relationship with love in it. Another shallow male-female relationship is Sula's with Ajax. Sula and Ajax only last together while their relationship is based on lovemaking and companionships. As soon as Sula shows signs of wanting to enter into a deeper relationship, Ajax leaves. "Ajax blinked. Then he looked swiftly into her face. In her words, in her voice, was a sound he knew well. For the first time he saw the green ribbon. He looked around and saw the gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected the scent of the nest. Every hackle on his body rose.  . ."(133). Overall, Sula sends a message about gender that men and women cannot have deep relationships with each other. While they can be friends, and fill each other's shallower needs, they can never enter into the sort of relationship that women can. They can't know each other as Nel and Sula do. Also, Sula portrays men as unreliable. Not only are they incapable of having deep relationships with their wives or lovers, but they can't even be expected to fulfill the role of a father. As Sula says, "[If I had children] then I would really act like what you call a man. Every man I ever knew left his children"(143). 

Vocabulary

1)Solicitous
- Characterized by or showing interest or concern in
- Adjective
- The same hope that kept them . . . solicitous of white people's children. . .
- The parents were too solicitous of their teenage daughter; she began to get into trouble just to spite them.

2) Malevolence

- A wish to do evil to others 

- Noun

- There was the promise: leaf-dead. The teeth unrepaired . . . the slurred remarks and the staggering childish malevolence of their employers.

- There was a certain, unnerving, malevolence in the way he glared at his enemy. 

3)  Fastidious

- very concerned and attentive to accuracy and detail.

- Adjective

- She had neither iron nor clothes but did not stop her fastidious lining up of pleats or pressing out of wrinkles even when she acknowledged Nel's greeting.

- The wedding planner was especially fastidious about the table decorations.

4) Dirge

- A mournful song, or piece of music, chant, or poem. Especially having to do with funerals or death. 

- Noun

- On January third the sun came out-- and so did Shadrack with his rope, his bell and his childish dirge.

- The funeral dirge was so beautiful and sorrowful that it made even those at the funeral who weren't close to the deceased weep. 

5) Unassailable 

- unable to be attacked questioned or defeated

- adjective

- The sealed window soothed her with its sturdy termination, its unassailable finality.

- The heavily guarded fort was unassailable.

6) Timbre 

- The character or quality of a musical sound or a voice as distinct from its pitch and intensity.

- Noun

- It gave her voice the timbre she wanted it to have: free of the least hint of retribution.

- Depending on what kind of song you are singing, you'll want to play with the timbre of your voice for stylistic reasons.

7) Ornate 

- Made with intricate or complex details.

- Adjective

- An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured. . . his magnificent presence.

- The picture frame had many details and was very ornate.

8) Mercurial 

- Subject to sudden or unpredicted changes of mood or mind

- Adjective.

- . . . she more than loves him, she admires him, as though his mercurial nature. . . served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him. . .

- Two year olds have  naturally mercurial behavior; one minute they're laughing and the next they're screaming.

9) Trepidation

- a feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen.

- noun

- LINDA, hearing Willy outside the bedroom, calls with some trepidation: Willy!

- My sister opened the admissions letter from Washington University with much trepidation.

10) Imbue

- Inspire or permeate with a feeling or quality

- Verb

- That's just the spirit I wanted to imbue them with!

- The pastor imbued his congregation with a good feeling through his lively sermon. 

Song for the Last Reading

This a song performed by a musical group at my synagogue. Here is the translation and a link to listen to the song. 03 Adon Haselichot

MASTER OF FORGIVINGS  Master of Forgivings examiner of hearts the revealer of depths speaker of justice We have sinned before You, have mercy upon us (x2) Glorious in wonders great in consolations remembering the covenant of his nation investigating innihilation We have sinned before You, have mercy upon us (x2) Full of gaining his entreaty is awesome drops evils to the ground answers sorrows We have sinned before You, have mercy upon us I think this song fits this last reading of Sula for a few reasons. One because there is a strong theme of religion and and not forgetting God. The different ways this song talks about God reflect different characters' relationships with Sula. Especially Nel's. If you take the words You and Master in this song and replace it with Sula I think it can depict how Nel felt at the end. She went through times when Sula was "Glorious in wonders/ great in consolations" and times when Sula "drops evils to the ground/ answers sorrows." But in the end, Nel realizes that all along she missed Sula, and I think her tears at the end are almost asking Sula for forgiveness that she did not realize it sooner. Also, when you listen to the song, the tune and mood reflect the general feeling of the people in the Bottom. Sad but strong. I was especially reminded of Shadrack's increasing feelings of loneliness. It almost seems like this song could be background music as Shadrack stares at the river remembering his one visitor.

Vocabulary

Vocab

Lauren Rekhelman

1)   Repugnance

-       Inconsistency or incompatibility of ideas or statements

-       Noun

-       All their repugnance was contained in the neat balance of the triangles- a balance that soothed him, transferred some of its equilibrium to him.

-       The repugnance of two people’s political beliefs can often lead to much dislike and tension.

2)   Abate

-       To become less intense. To be soothed or alleviated.

-       Verb (or, as used in the book, abated is an adjective)

-       Shadrack was suffering from a blinding headache, which was not abated by the comfort he felt when the policemen pulled his hands away from what he thought was a permanent entanglement with his shoelaces.

-       The lightning flashes were so frequent, and the thunder so loud, that not even the mother could abate her child’s fear. 

3)   Unequivocal

-       Leaving no doubt.

-       Adjective

-       A black so definite, so unequivocal, it astonished him.

-       It is an unequivocal fact that everyone has to die at some point. 

4)   Quell

-  Put an end to, typically through force.

- Verb

- . . . This tall, proud woman, this woman who was very particular about her friends, who slipped into church with unequaled elegance, who could quell a roustabout with a look . . .

- Her presence was so intimidating that she could quell an argument just by entering a room.

5)   Guile

-       Sly or cunning intelligence

-       Noun

-       Her flirting was sweet, low and guileless.

-       In folk tales and fables, it is common for the character of the fox to have much guile in its personality.

6)   Fastidious

-       Very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail.

-       Adjective

-       She liked the last place least . . . because her love mate’s tendency was always to fall asleep afterward and Hannah was fastidious about whom she slept with.

-       In her painting, the artist chose her colors with fastidious care.

7)   Vitriol

-       Cruel and bitter criticism

-       Noun

-       She was unquestionably a kind and generous woman and that . . . made them defend her from any vitriol that newcomers or their wives might spill.

-       When people spread vitriol about somebody it is often untrue and can be extremely harmful.

8)   Insouciant

-       Casually lacking of concern. Indifferent.

-       Adjective

-       Nel’s grimy intractable children looked like three wild things happily insouciant in the May shine.

-       The man’s insouciant attitude towards the giant squid waltzing down 5^th avenue was quite strange.

 

9)   Contrive

- create or bring about by deliberate use of skill or artifice.

- Verb (used as another one of those weird verb/ adjectives in the book- contrived)

- Their evidence against Sula was contrived, but their conclusions about her were not.

- The judge threw out the case because she said the prosecutor had contrived the evidence.

10)                  Pariah

-       An outcast

-       Noun

-       She was a pariah, then, and knew it. Knew that they despised her and believed that they framed their hatred as disgust for the easy way she lay with men.

-       In Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem, the main character becomes a Pariah because he begins to think differently from everyone else in his community.

Tuesday 2/22 reading Boss Line

"That was the scary part- seeing [the ball of fur]."-pg. 110
I chose this as a boss line because it epitomizes Nel's grief. Nel mourns things that leave or end. Earlier, she talks about how not only did Jude leave her, but the grief will eventually leave her too. While most people might look at the passing of grief as a positive, Nel sees it as another unbearable change. Something else that will end and that she can't hold on to. When her children see a scary movie, she obliges to sleep in the bed with them. She says this is to lose herself in their scary dreams and not to think about "the ball of fur." I think the ball of fur represents inevitable changes. Nel is afraid to look at the ball of fur because that would mean acknowledging the fact that more things in her life will change; her children will grow up and leave her and not need her to sleep in their beds when they have a bad dream.

Sula Drawing

This is a drawing that I think represents several different things from the reading. First of all, the fire literally represents the burning of both Plumb and Hannah. The hand in front of the flames is Eva's. I drew it like that because she had a role in both of her children's deaths. She was the one to actually burn Plumb, and she tried to smother the fire on Hannah with her own body. Behind flames (even though it's very misshapen) is a heart. This is because Eva's actions  around fire and her burning children both came from love, though they had very different intentions. 

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