Braddy

Lindsay Braddy

Property among Themselves:

The Futility of Female Bonds in Morrison’s Sula and Martin’s Property

Luce Irigaray, in her book This Sex Which is Not One, expresses hopeful thoughts in the concluding paragraphs of the eighth and ninth chapters. After she has outlined the role of women as commodities in society, how they are used as objects that facilitate business among men, she leaves us with her solution to this problem as she has presented it. She suggests that when women refuse to participate in the patriarchy’s abuse of their bodies and their “usefulness,” it is then that women will be able to claim a language and a desire of their own. But is this really possible? Valerie Martin’s novel Property and Toni Morrison’s novel Sula each present us with a pair of women who possess strength and determination—enough, it seems, to at least partially overcome some of their most difficult circumstances. It even appears as if they somewhat understand their forced position of commodity in their respective societies. So are these women—Manon and Sarah, Nel and Sula—exemplary of the hope Irigaray articulates? Do they derive enough strength from their female bonds to surmount the restrictions of male domination? After reading these texts against Irigaray’s chapters, I have concluded that no, they do not. While Irigaray’s theories aptly describe the patriarchal system with which the women are surrounded, the fact remains that these characters treat each other as commodities themselves, thus undermining any significant hope of change for them.

Irigaray’s argument centers around the idea of women as commodities. Women’s bodies and their value as reproductive tools, she says in the eighth chapter, “Women on the Market,” are essential to the maintaining of the social order. She uses the terms “homosexual” and “incestuous” to refer to the type of interaction among men that involves the trading, buying and selling of commodities in this way. Emphasized by Ms. Irigaray is the idea of investment in a commodity to give her value: “there is no such thing as a commodity, either, so long as there are not at least two men to make an exchange” (181). Women are thus not valued for anything intrinsic in their nature, but merely for their value as a “mirror” (181) of the desires of men. The worth of “the name” is also mentioned, as this is a fundamentally patriarchal idea, with the name of the father being passed on to the son through the commodity, etc. The woman is merely a tool for the desires of men (here, reproductive desires) to be passed through. Irigaray states that the only way that women relate to each other within this social structure is as commodities, that as long as they are together in this system, they are “amorphous and confused,” without “any possible identity or communicable value” (188). In the ninth chapter, “Commodities among Themselves,” Irigaray writes of female sexuality, homosexuality in particular. She discredits Freud’s view of female homosexuality as a mere imitation of a male model that perpetuates “theft and rape” (197), and instead offers a hopeful, idealistic view of a world where pleasure and mutuality are not for economic gain.

In looking at the women of these novels, it seems equally important to examine the men. Irigaray seems fascinated with men’s dominance in the patriarchy, and obsessed with the simple inquiry into why women are subordinate to men. Perhaps, actually, the most basic question she is asking is what makes men and women different, and consequently, why are they treated differently? Manon’s relationship with her father and her opinions of him are central to her character, as is her relationship to Joel Borden. It is also fascinating to look at the role of Jude in Sula, how he as a character can appear in only a small fraction of the novel and yet have such a large impact.

Manon’s father is described as being obsessed with his slaves, that he spent more time with them than he did with his own family. How is it, then, that Manon can idolize him as she does? She reflects: “When our home was gone and we moved to the city, I learned that Father, who was so strong, loving, stern, and fair, was all that stood between my innocent happiness and chaos” (Martin 23). Manon thus is described as relying on her father for her happiness; it is from him she takes her knowledge about how slaves are supposed to be treated. It seems that in this way, Manon was bred to never escape the patriarchy. When she expresses her thoughts, it is always in the terms of how she has been taught to think—by her father, by her husband, by her slaves themselves. Manon thinks with the mind of a man, according to the models that males have established and followed for eons. Telling though it is that “thinking like a man” seemed revolutionary for a woman of her time, we still see Manon as trapped. Though she recognizes the relative tragedy of her situation and the pain that it has caused her, she doesn’t ever display a capability to move beyond it and still retain her identity—she seems unable to take the first step to even think about why things are they way they are.

Jude Greene is the man that ultimately destroys the relationship between Nel and Sula. We see him from the beginning as someone who is looking for a woman to take care of him, to make him feel needed and thus bolster his faltering masculinity. Because Jude is a black man, he cannot get the work that he wants—he resorts to marriage to make him whole: “The two of them together would make one Jude” (Morrison 83). This seems to be almost the cruelest sort of objectification: purely selfish use of a woman as ego boost and source of unconditional love, in addition to furthering his name with his children. There was no reciprocity in their relationship; it was only as deep and possessing as much mutuality as Jude let it have.

“The interests of businessmen require that commodities relate to each other as rivals,” Irigaray writes (196). In many ways, the main characters of both novels see each other this way. The rivalry between Nel and Sula arises out of their intense similarities, how attached at the hip they are. We get the distinct feeling that if they were not so close, their differences would not seem so intense. When Sula sleeps with Nel’s husband Jude, Nel feels a deep betrayal and it’s an event that affects their friendship until the day Sula dies. She is completely disconnected from the only two people who have ever really touched her: “Who could think in that bed where they had been and where they also had been and where only she was now?” (Morrison 107). Her acute sense of loneliness and loss of both her best friend and her husband lead her to blindly view Sula as a rival:

For the first time in three years she would be looking at the stemmed rose that hung over the eye of her enemy. Moreover, she would be doing it with the taste of Jude’s exist in her mouth, with the resentment and shame that even yet pressed for release in her stomach. She would be facing the black rose that Jude had kissed and looking at the nostrils of the woman who had twisted her love for her own children into something so thick and monstrous she was afraid to show it lest it break loose and smother them with its heavy paw. (138)

Nel’s sense of her enemy, her rival, is so complete that it makes her hate the thought that Jude’s blood runs through the veins of her own children. Through the eyes of man, through the lens of patriarchy, through the “taste of Jude’s exit,” Nel’s only meaningful female bond is turned into an intense rivalry that propagates Irigaray’s example of commodities.

The encounter between Sula and Jude, Nel’s husband, seems to exemplify the very ideas that Irigaray is trying to denounce. This is one of the many reasons that these novels do not paint hopeful portraits of women capable of escaping their patriarchal bonds. The affair is indicative of a deep betrayal on Sula’s part, something that Nel finds unforgivable until the end of the book. We see the occurrence of the affair through the eyes of Nel, and never get Sula’s perspective on it—we never know if she justifies hurting Nel to herself or not. Irigaray wonders rhetorically in “Women on the Market” why men are not treated as commodities by women, and then answers her own question: “It is because women’s bodies—through their use, consumption, and circulation—provide for the condition making social life and culture possible” (171). When the rift in Nel and Sula’s friendship occurs, it is not because they are merely fighting over a man, but because the bond that they had shared—a bond closer than even blood, closer than sisterhood—was broken by a man. They fight over this man because it is what they have been conditioned to do; it is what the social structure commands. It is not two women bartering for a man as a commodity, it is two women fighting each other to keep the position that they need in the eyes of Jude.

Manon and Sarah view each other as rivals in Property, to be sure. “Sometimes I think Sarah blames me for her fate,” Manon says (Martin 25). In a cruel, unjust system, these women are turning against each other instead of realizing their common bonds. Manon’s marriage, Irigaray might argue, is likened to Sarah’s slavery—any marriage could be compared to it, in fact. Each of these women wants to be in the position of the other, at least in some sense. Sarah realizes that if she were white, everything would be much simpler for her. When she escapes after the slave revolt and passes herself off as a free white man, her freedom is magnified three times over, and this fact doesn’t escape Manon: “She has tasted a freedom you and I will never know. […] She has traveled about the country as a free white man” (189). Manon is resentful not just because Sarah has escaped, and she views Sarah as her property, but she is envious that Sarah’s experienced a freedom that goes beyond mere whiteness—the freedom from slavery (something Manon will never be because she is shackled to the memory of her husband) and the freedom of being a man.

In the same way that these women consider themselves rivals at least in part, they are also treating each other as commodities. This example is best seen in Manon’s ownership of Sarah as her slave. Slavery was a dreadful, patriarchal system that exploited people for the sake of white man’s domination over the economical and sometimes personal sphere. Manon willingly takes part in this system, though she often remarks on how everyone around her is a “liar” and no one is genuine: “Lies, I thought, lies without end. We lived on them, all of us, all the time” (Martin 48), not realizing that the system in which she is taking part is the largest and most dangerous purveyor of those lies. Manon often uses Sarah as a bargaining tool to get what she wants, especially with her husband, thus assuming a male role in the “homosexual” relationship that Irigaray describes. Sarah herself treats Manon as a commodity in a way: she obviously takes pleasure in the fact that her affair with Mr. Gaudet makes Manon uncomfortable just for the unseemliness of it. Though we do not know the extent of their relationship, Mr. Gaudet, at least, harbors obvious amorous feelings for Sarah that go beyond possessor and property. This frustrates and angers Manon, and one does not blame Sarah for exploiting her already-terrible situation by deriving enjoyment from this.

Not only do they treat each other as commodities, in too many ways do these women possess a basic understanding of themselves as commodity and perpetuate themselves as such. Manon refuses to bear her husband’s children, declaring “It is because I despise my husband” (Martin 38). She is using her body, her fertility as a tool with which to torture her husband. In a system where “Mothers, reproductive instruments marked with the name of the father and enclosed in his house, must be private property, excluded from exchange” (Irigaray 185), Manon is veritably keeping herself “on the market” by not being bound to one of Irigaray’s categories of “mother,” “virgin” or “prostitute.” Sula, too, is perpetuating herself as a commodity in Irigaray’s sense of the “prostitute,” where “The qualities of a woman’s body are ‘useful.’ However, these qualities have ‘value’ only because they have already been appropriated by a man” (186). Sula, much like her mother is described as doing, takes in man after man in her grandmother’s house and has intercourse with them, earning a whorish reputation. In a sense, Sula is removing herself from the patriarchy by reclaiming her sexuality; yet, in another sense, she is completely immersing herself in it. Just as Sula’s mother Hannah was only concerned with what men could do for her; Hannah wasn’t escaping patriarchy by sleeping with every man in town. Irigaray would say that without a strong female bond and a community of women where they can be “commodities among themselves,” anything that Sula or any other woman could do to reclaim some of their identity from the system would be futile. Even the idea of a woman’s sexuality belongs to the patriarchy—“Neither as mother nor as virgin nor as prostitute has woman any right to her own pleasure” (187).

Though Irigaray discredits the majority of Freud’s theory of female homosexuality, there is some validity in noting Manon’s shift to undeniably male behavior after the death of her husband in Property. In the same way that female homosexuality is deemed a “perversion,” the manner in which Manon assumes her husband’s property and control over it was something of a perversion in itself. “A woman’s property is her husband’s,” Manon’s aunt says after Manon’s mother’s death (Martin 84). After the slave revolt that kills her husband, Manon is left horribly disfigured and mildly crippled, with a scar along the front of her face and a useless arm. No longer the pretty, golden-haired child of her father, Manon deals with her less than ideal circumstances by assuming a much more masculine role in her life as head of her household and slaveholder. She gives up hope that any man will want to marry her again, and even thinks rather distastefully of becoming a man’s property again. However, even though it may seem that on the surface Manon is gaining independence and escape from the patriarchy which has enslaved her since her marriage, she is actually still deeply entrenched in the system. How is she seeming to regain control of her body and her life? By using male models, by acting almost exactly as her husband had done when he was alive. Manon doesn’t utilize any of her inherent value as a woman aside from that which has been assigned to her by the social order. She has no language, no desire of her own; she is merely seizing and appropriating the language and desires of her father and her husband. Even as she recognizes at least in part the corrupt nature of the system, she doesn’t seek to escape it. With Irigaray’s model, for Manon to escape the patriarchy she would first need at least one strong female bond. Manon possesses no such bond, only a one-sided obsession with a slave.

The character Sarah embodies the commodity, the product of patriarchy. Both because, as a slave, she is literally someone’s property, and because she is a woman. Sarah receives her value based on her body, on her capacity to work, on her usefulness in bearing children and furthering the man’s name.

Just as a commodity finds the expression of its value in an equivalent […] that necessarily remains external to it, so woman derives her price from her relation to the male sex, constituted as a transcendental value: the phallus. And indeed the enigma of “value” lies in the most elementary relation among the commodities. Among women. For, uprooted from their “nature,” they no longer relate to each other except in terms of what they represent in men’s desire, and according to the “forms” that this imposes upon them. Among themselves, they are separated by his speculations. (Irigaray 188)

Sarah also in a sense determines her value based upon the value that she sees placed upon Manon: a free white woman, also forced to have sex with the same man as she herself. This comparison is reciprocal, for Manon does the same thing with Sarah. However, I believe that this is where the novels begin to depart from Irigaray’s ideas. Sarah and Manon are indeed “uprooted from their ‘nature’” when Mr. Gaudet is murdered. But do they start relating to each other as anything more than rivals and commodities, as anything more than possessor and possessed? Do they start to see the intrinsic value that lies inside each other once the domineering man in both their lives is dead? They do not. “You women should think about what would become of you if I wasn’t here,” Gaudet states to both Manon and Sarah on page 16, and at the time it seems as if it would be a dream come true. But what “happens” to the women once he is dead differs very little from what happened before he was dead. It is interesting to think of why this might be, and the most reasonable answer is that the master-slave relationship is an extreme relationship, and when it is compounded with the male-female dynamic described by Irigaray, it can get more than a little complicated.