Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Conclusion

Toni Morrison’s theory of motherhood as a site of power and her model of motherwork as concerned with the empowerment of children centers upon a rearticulation of the everyday traditions and practices of black motherhood. More specifically , this rearticulation gives rise to a new consciousness of black motherhood that accords mothers power and enables them to empower children and/or heal adults through the four tasks of motherwork: preservation, nurturance, cultural bearing, and healing. Mothers, by way of these four tasks, seek to empower their children by keeping them alive in a world often hostile to their well-being (preservation), by loving them so that may develop a loved sense of self (nurturance ), by teaching children the values and traditions of black culture—in particular the ancient proprieties and funk—so that they may acquire a strong selfdefined identity as a black person (cultural bearing), and finally by mending those adults who never received such mothering as children (healing). Motherhood , in Morrison’s view, is thus fundamentally and profoundly an act of resistance ; essential and integral to black people’s, and in particular black women’s, fight against racism (and sexism) and their ability to achieve well-being for themselves and their culture. Motherlove and motherwork in the dominant ideology of motherhood are rarely, if at all, regarded in this way; rather, the love and work of mothering is seen simply as a private and more specifically an apolitical enterprise . In contrast, motherhood, according to Morrison’s maternal standpoint, has cultural significance and political purpose because motherhood is a site of power for black women and because motherwork is the way by which black people are empowered to survive and resist. In the preface, I suggested that Morrison, in her rendition of mothering as a political enterprise, could be read as a social commentator or political theorist who radically, through her maternal philosophy, reworks, rethinks, and reconfigures the concerns and strategies of African American , and in particular black women’s emancipation in America. According to Morrison, the power of motherhood and the empowerment of mothering is what make possible the better world we seek for ourselves and for our children. This is Morrison’s maternal theory: a politics of the heart. Morrison’s theory of motherhood as power and motherwork as empowerment , however, as discussed in the previous chapters, is seldom enacted or represented in the novels themselves. Some of the characters, such as Pilate in Song, 171 Conclusion Consolata in Paradise, and Therese in Tar Baby, embody the power inherent in Morrison’s maternal standpoint of black woman as ship and harbor and inn and trail. As well, the portrayal of Mrs. MacTeer’s mothering in The Bluest Eye suggests the empowerment of cultural bearing; likewise the descriptions of Eva’s and Mrs. MacTeer’s preservative love and Sethe’s nurturance confirm the importance of motherwork for the child’s well-being. However, overall, the promise of motherhood as power and motherwork as empowerment described in her theory (interviews and articles) is not delivered in her fictional writings. The contrast between the idealized, if not romanticized, view of motherhood in Morrison’s theory and the depictions of forfeited mothering and fragmented mother-child relations in her fiction suggest, and as some critics have concluded, a contradiction between theory and fiction and, more specifically, a failure of Morrison’s maternal vision itself. However, I suggest, and have argued in this book, that the absence of fictional renditions of Morrison’s maternal theory, rather than pointing to an error in her theory, actually affirms and confirms the truth and significance of Morrison’s maternal theory. Morrison details mothers’ desperate struggles to define motherhood as a site of power and their even more desperate struggle to provide the motherwork essential for their children’s survival and wellbeing . Likewise, Morrison demonstrates the importance of this motherwork by describing the devastation, both personal and cultural, that arises when children are not preserved, nurtured, or do not receive cultural bearing. The absences therefore bespeak not a failure of the vision; rather, they signify a narrative strategy ; one that seeks to stress the crucial importance of mothering by showing the loss and suffering that occurs in its absence. The children’s suffering—the anguish of Pecola, the loneliness of Sula, the alienation of Jadine and Milkman, and the desolation of Violet and Joe—testify to the necessity of motherwork, in all of its dimensions, for personal well-being and cultural survival. The depth and severity...