Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart

Chapter Two: Disconnections from the Motherline: Gender Hegemonies and the Loss of the Ancient Properties: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby

MOTHERS, THROUGH THE TASK of cultural bearing, pass on to each successive generation of children African American culture and instill in their children knowledge about and pride in their African American heritage. More specifically, mothers pass on what I have called the motherline: the ancestral memory and ancient properties of traditional black culture. In so doing, cultural bearing or motherline mothering confers affirming images of black people and their history that, in turn, impedes the internalization of the controlling images of blackness put forward by the dominant culture and allows the child to develop a strong and authentic selfhood as a black person. Morrison, as noted in the previous chapter, affirms and confirms the importance of this task of cultural bearing by showing the suffering that occurs when cultural bearing does not take place and mothers lose and children do not acquire the ancestral memory and ancient properties that would empower them. In particular, Morrison is concerned with examining how and why women become disconnected from the motherline as well as detailing the costs and consequences of motherline disconnections for mothers as well as their daughters. This chapter will explore this theme of disconnection from and loss of the motherline in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Tar Baby. In particular, it will examine how women become disconnected from their motherline through identification with normative gender ideologies. Pauline, Sula, and Jadine, the women examined in this chapter, each become disconnected from their motherline and disregard, as a consequence, their ancient properties as a result of their internalization of a particular normative gender belief or behavior. In the instance of Pauline, the normative gender ideology internalized is that of the family and female beauty, while for Sula it is that of motherlove and for Jadine it is that of female fulfillment. Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye describes a mother’s, Pauline’s, loss of the funk and the ancient properties 47 chapter two Disconnections from the Motherline Gender Hegemonies and the Loss of the Ancient Properties: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby through her internalization of the hegemonic view of the model family and ideal female beauty, and details the devastating impact of this on her ability to mother. In Sula, disconnection occurs as a result of a daughter’s, Sula’s, adherence to normative definitions of motherlove, in particular the ideology of unconditional love, which causes her to reject her mother Hannah and her motherline. In Morrison ’s fourth novel, Tar Baby, Jadine’s belief in modern gender ideologies of female fulfillment—autonomy, self-sufficiency, independence—results in her rejection of the ancient properties and the funk of traditional black womanhood. With Pauline, a mother does not engage in cultural bearing to pass on the teachings , in particular the ancient properties, of the motherline, while in the instance of Jadine and Sula, a daughter shuns the teachings of the motherline and separates herself from it. Morrison, as critical commentary on her fiction has long observed, is particularly and deeply troubled by normative gender ideologies, in particular those of female beauty, the family, motherlove, and female fulfillment. Less acknowledged is the question of why Morrison is so preoccupied with these issues. These gender ideologies worry Morrison precisely because they cause black women to shun the very values that would empower them, namely, the funk and ancient properties of the African American motherline. Morrison’s fiction seeks to dismantle, destabilize, and deconstruct these master narratives so as to enable black women to write scripts of family, beauty, motherlove, and fulfillment in accordance with the teachings of the African American motherline. THE BLUEST EYE Much critical commentary on The Bluest Eye has centered on the primer that opens the text and introduces each chapter. The primer presents the ideal family: in “the very pretty house” live Dick and Jane with their “nice” mother and “big and strong” father. The white middle-class nuclear family of the primer is scripted as the normal family arrangement. Families are measured by this ideal and are encouraged to emulate it. The “Dick and Jane” family however is available only to a select few. Families like the Breedloves in The Bluest Eye can never be a Dick and Jane family though they will continually aspire to achieve the ideal and forever measure their own selves against it. The primer in The Bluest Eye serves to emphasize the inappropriateness of this ideal for black families and reminds us of the inevitable feelings of inferiority that come with not...