Medallion, from the top down
A child’s moment of self-awareness and self-recognition is a major aspect of character development. We discussed this theme in The Scarlet Letter when Pearl sees her reflections in the lake and on Hester’s chest. Nel’s moment of self-awareness in Sula is a more complex and nuanced situation. She gains self-awareness because she is compelled to look in the mirror after she sees the racist and sexist treatment that her mother receives on the train, as well as the beauty of her scandalous grandmother. This Elizabeth Bishop poem is about a girl gaining self-awareness through the realization of a larger world through exotic womanhood:
And while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
The inside of a volcano,
black and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots and helmets.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
The yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain…
What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth…
I said to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
(from “In the Waiting Room”)
Nel’s self-awareness at once identifies as a member of her race and gender, and liberates her from the specific constraints of modesty that Helene had imposed on her as a child. This allows her to connect with Sula, and the self-awareness they build of themselves as young women is intricately connected as a duo, two people facing the world together and being pig meat instead of vulnerable solitary creatures.
In Toni Morrisson’s world, recognizig the self is an act of unification for women, and somehow an act of isolation for the men. For example, Shadrack finds his reflection in the toilet bowl and connects his distressed mind with his body. In Medallion, he lives on the waterfront where he can fish and look at his reflection, but his cabin is physically isolated from the rest of the town.
