Male Models

“So [Sula] watched her mother’s face and the face of the men when they opened the pantry door and made up her own mind” (44). In Toni Morrison’s book Sula, Sula is a girl without any men in her life except the ones her mother has sex with in the pantry. She has no idea how a normal woman in society is supposed to treat men. Because she has no male role models, Sula grows up thinking men are just for sex.

Sula grows up without any men to look up to. Hannah, Sula’s mom, “married…Rekus who died when…Sula was about three” (41). Without a father around, Sula lives with “a constant stream of boarders” (30). The only man that sticks around at the Peace house is Tar Baby. And while he is “a beautiful, slight, quiet man,” (39) he is “intent solely on drinking himself to death” (40). Sula has no examples of what a good man is, or how she should behave around them.

The only relationships Sula sees are the sexual ones between Hannah and her lovers. “Hannah simply refused to live without the attention of a man, and after Rekus’ death had a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her friends and neighbors” (42). Yet Hannah’s reputation is not damaged. On the contrary, “The men…never gossiped about her” (44) and the women felt like “she was complimenting [them]…by wanting their husbands” (115). Sula gets the idea that it’s okay to have sex with anyone, even married people, from watching her mother and the Bottom’s reaction to her.

Sula uses the ideas she learns in her childhood and translates them into adult actions. Just as her mother did, “[Sula] went to bed with men as frequently as she could. It was the only place where she could find what she was looking for” (122). Sula uses sex for her own pleasure without caring about the men she sleeps with. The one man she does feel something for, Ajax, turns out to someone she doesn’t know and even makes her question everything in her life. “I have known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was to know his name so how could he help but leave me since he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his name…It’s just as well he left” (136). Sula stops caring about Jude just like she doesn’t mind what the people of the Bottom think. Unlike her mother, “the men gave her the final label…said she was guilty of the unforgivable thing…Sula slept with white men” (112). And “the fury she created in the women of the town was incredible…Sula was trying [their husbands] out and discarding them” (115). Most of these views come after Sula has sex with an important man in Nel’s life.

When Sula comes back to the Bottom after leaving for college she visits her best friend Nel who is now married. Not long after her initial return, Sula sleeps with Nel’s husband Jude. While this action damages Nel and Sula’s relationship, Sula “had no thought at all of Nel pain…They had always shared the affection of other people” (119). Because of the roles she sees both genders play during her childhood, she doesn’t understand the roles society expects from her. How could she, “having had no intimate knowledge of marriage, having lived in a house with women who thought all men available” (119)? Sula’s views on men in her adult life are that they are good for sex because that is all she knows.

Sula, like any child, follows the example of the adults in her life. Because of this, Sula does not know that men, even ones married to her friends, are there for anything but sex. While her friendship with Nel is harmed, Sula stays true to herself and her childhood beliefs. Toni Morrison wants to show the reader that having a man or not in a girl’s childhood affects her entire life.