True Black Motherhood

True Black Motherhood
A black woman writer, Toni Morrison, represents the affirmative meaning of black motherhood in her novel Sula (1973). She intends to reevaluate the positive experience of the black mothers who had no choice but to strategically accept the value of self-sacrifice for the survival of the black community and their children under the late twentieth century’s oppressive conventions. Nevertheless, there have been long controversies whether the Eva’s burning her own son or Helene’s manipulating her own daughter could be estimated as an authentic motherhood in a contemporary sense. Some critics claim that several scenes such as Eva’s self-mutilation of her leg to receive insurance benefits to support her children or Hannah’s
Though, within the black community, this wholly idealized motherhood is hard to be witnessed for it being violated under the oppressive realities shaped by poverty, racism and class hierarchy. First, in the village Bottom, most black men are out of the realm of economic supporting and appear as failures, leading to their counterparts bearing dual roles of providing and nurturing. Boy-boy, Eva’s husband, left home leaving her and the three little children with $1.65, five eggs, and three beets. Then Eva, confused and desperately hungry, went out and returned with money and one leg. Hannah’s husband is dead and Nel’s father Weley Wright is never at home wandering in the sea. Tar Baby, one of the tenants in Eva’s house is an obscure one who came to the Bottom to find a private place only to drink and die, and Plum is a failure who regrets his existence after the war. The grotesque three Deweys who never grow are a mystery in the novel and Nel’s husband, Jude abandons his family after having sex with Sula. Other black men in the Bottom also fail to get a job in the tunnel construction field due to their skin color. Thus, the women in Sula are inevitably caught in the survival struggle and have neither the time nor the patience for affection toward their children. For instance, compelled to take the role as a provider, Eva even chose to sacrifice a part of herself, let alone playing with her children, which seems quite destructive but at the same time symbolizes her great maternity with physical power. Meanwhile, Helene’s formation of motherhood is slightly different from that of Eva. Helene as a daughter of a creole whore is constantly aware of her fragility against the white and other pure black people. So Helene decides to conform to society by accepting the white middle-class values and often gets caught in the