The Only Way

In a matrifocal kinship network, the relationship between mother and child is of utmost importance, and is the relation upon which all power is patterned. This integral, essential connection is blurred under the aegis of the patriarchy that defines power dynamics in the contemporary era. One could argue that the defining relationship was between father and son, with the father figure capable of shifting shape from the actual ‘head of house’ and biological forbearer of the son into, at different junctures, God, country, and company. A patri-focal society is one that operates through the masculine modes of confrontation, conquest, and compartmentalization—modes that we have all experienced and according to which much of our world is ordered. A matrifocal culture, though not inherently more flexible or more kind (much less better or worse) expresses power relations through an wholly different diction.

Toni Morrison’s Sula explores the lives of a community of women whose lives straddle the line between these two systems. In the black Bottom of Medallion, Ohio (which is, of course, the hilly top), the residue of slavery clings to every garment and comes up each spring in every yard with the dandelions. With that historical materiel comes the leftover attitude that such debasement necessitated in the hearts and minds of mothers, who remain the axises upon which life in the Bottom spins. The African-American men that Morrison shares with us are either broken by war or weak from birth: they float, adrift from purpose within their own community, and at a serious disadvantage when they try to find one in mainstream society down in the (white) valley and beyond thanks to their race. It is telling that arguably the most effectual women in the book are not those abandoned by men, but those who never ask for their support in the first place.

The further chattel life receded into the collective memory of the village (and by extension in American culture at large), the more women were forced to occupy the roles their grandmothers handled out of necessity, or else to abandon the matrifocal system of alliance entirely and try their luck in the new language of deployed sexuality that defined power relations in 20th century America. Nel and Sula, friends who buried their bond beneath the earth as children and witnessed firsthand their unwitting power to destroy a man and central characters of Morrison’s multi-generational narrative of womanhood, organize their adult lives according to the different modalities.

Which is not to say that one is devoid of the other—in fact, it is their friendship that lends the link, enabling both to know what it is like to love your mirror image. After ten years of wandering out in the world, getting an education, bedding white men, and seeing the big cities, Sula returns to the Bottom the same rambunctious and diffident girl she always was. Until she meets Ajax. Flush with her love for him, and back in the matrifocal world of her kin, Sula is tempted to settle down and assume the roles that the other women all share. Naturally he rebuffs her—for she has chosen a different path, one that isn’t compatible with the system of alliance that householding demands. In contrast, Nel lives the life women in the Bottom are ‘supposed’ to lead, both feet planted in the community’s system of alliance. When sexuality intrudes, it does so at a piercing angle, as Nel catches her man and her dearest friend in the act, and her reality is shaken to its foundations. By loving and witnessing each other, both lose the illusion that theirs is the only way.

Tags: Female Friendship, Matrifocal, slavery, Sula, War

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 at 8:38 pm and is filed under April 16, Sam Barnes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.