Re: Jumping the Broomstick
Re: Jumping the Broomstick; Brief commentary on Sula
Power relations festered inside the slave’s realm of sexual relations. Slave women resisted sexual advances by men of both colors, fostering the idea that “principle” was the only thing they had. They sought to preserve their bodies, usually in forlorn efforts, and, on the contrary, they, many times, succumbed to the bribes of their white masters—“some slave women responded to material incentives like food clothing, and better housing that white men offered in exchange for sexual favors.” This is the practical side of the power relations. “Principle” was traded for commodity. The licentious white males even promised freedom—“Others promised, an sometimes granted, emancipation.” In other scenarios, slave women, for fear of being whipped or sent far away from their families, gave into the sexual appetites of their owners. In one instance, Sukie Abbott, physically resisted her master’s attempt to rape her. Fannie Berry recollects the following details of the scuffle: “she took an’ punch ole Marsa an’ made him break loose an’ den she gave him a shove an’ push his hindparts an ran from de kitchen, not darin’ to yell, cause he didn’t want Miss Sarah Ann [his wife] to know about it.”
The slave men were troubled with separation. Romance between slave couples was extremely rare for the fact that slaves were considered property. The location of their plantations hindered the rate of their contact. Slave owners wanted slaves to procreate in order to produce more farm hands—they treated their slaves like animals—and the majority perceived slave’s sexual relations as a capital investment.
In Morrison’s Sula, Eva, a one-legged woman, sits above on the second floor of the house—similar to James Stewart’s character in Hitchcock’s Rear Window—observing her children and her tenants and delegating this and that. Morrison writes, “… children who spoke to her standing up were eye level with her, and adults, standing or sitting, had to look down at her. But they didn’t know it. They all had the impression that they were looking up at her…” She is the sublime figure of the house—in charge of deeming Dewey-ness—and even goes as far as killing one of her tenants. She literally burns her son, Plum. In the beginning of the novel, we learn that the town of medallion, inhabited by black folk, is located on a hill above the all-white town—the placement of this town implies a sense of superiority.
In conclusion, I think that jumping the broomstick is very strange.
