In Sula, Toni Morrison chronicles the lives of two African-American women whose close friendship is torn apart by infidelity. In the novel, Morrison describes the relationship between the female leads, Sula and Nel, as one of fulfillment, encouragement, and support. Patriarchal heterosexual relationships, on the other hand, are portrayed as unsuccessful or harmful by restricting free will, leaving women to raise families alone, creating competition, and causing division within female friendships. According to Adrianne Rich, author of Compulsory Sexuality and Lesbian Existence, patriarchal heterosexual relationships should be examined as an institution just like the economic system of capitalism or the caste system of racism. Rich believes that required patriarchal heterosexuality was established as a means of restricting women's unique identities and perpetuating male dominance, with the result that it "keeps countless women psychologically trapped, trying to integrate the spirit , the mind and sexuality in a prescribed scenario because they cannot watch. beyond the parameters of acceptable. This demands the energy of these women” (657). Morrison mirrors Rich's beliefs in Sula when she crafts the male presence as a negative force in the lives of the women in the novel, where men are generally absent and marriage is seen as work. As the novel's two main characters, Sula and Nel, go through a period of disconnection, both women eventually realize that their most intimate and essential relationship is with each other. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get an original essaySula and Nel become friends very quickly, Morrison describes, after realizing at a young age that they are "neither white nor male." » (52). Knowing that all freedom is forbidden to them, each girl decides to become something else; they are able to use each other to develop. The two become so intimate that they often act in tandem, performing identical tasks without needing to speak. The author demonstrates the girls' nonverbal collusion when Nel and Sula dig holes in the earth during a sunny summer day: together, the girls remove the bark from the twigs and use the twigs to dig two separate holes; still without speaking, they join their two small holes to form a single larger hole and, when Nel's twig breaks, the two girls throw away their twigs, add pieces of trash, then fill the hole they created. Reflecting on their relationship, Nel says that “talking to Sula was always a conversation with herself. Was there anyone else she could never be stupid in front of? For whom was inadequacy a simple idiosyncrasy, a character trait rather than a deficiency? (95). The two girls bear witness to Rich's feelings that "identification with woman is a source of energy, a potential spring of feminine power" (657). In each other, the girls find total acceptance and an emotional connection that is not found in any of Sula's heterosexual relationships. As a product of this constant intimacy with each other, Morrison reports that Sula and Nel develop their content and no longer feel the need to conform to Bottom's expectations. For example, Nel's mother, Hélène, advises her daughter to pull her nose with a clothespin in the hope of making her look more "attractive"; Nel fulfills this duty with enthusiasm but without expectation untilwhich she meets Sula, at which point she removes the clothespin for good. Plus, while Nel can still tolerate having her hair straightened with a hot comb once a week, she no longer enjoys the effect. Morrison's details of Sula and Nel's relationship are faithful to Rich's description of the benefits of female friendship. Quoting author Audre Lord, Rich writes that female companionship is "the joy that empowers us and makes us less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other states of being that are unnatural to me, like resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial” (650). Like Rich, Morrison illustrates that close female companionship allows women to resist conformity. Marriage, in both Sula and “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” is seen as the destructive, but inevitable, result of the patriarchal heterosexual mold. Detailing the wedding, Morrison writes that Eva, after being hospitalized following Hannah's death, remembers Hannah's dream from the previous night of getting married in a red dress. remembers that marriage, in dreams, always means death. Morrison's views on marriage encouraged by patriarchal heterosexuality are expressed even more clearly through Sula's eyes: those with husbands had retreated into starched coffins, their sides swollen with flayed dreams and bone regrets. of others. Those without men were like sour-tipped needles with one constantly empty eye. Those who had men had seen the sweetness of their breath sucked out by steam ovens and kettles. Their children were like distant but exposed wounds whose pains were no less intimate because they were separated from their flesh. They had looked at the world and their children, and Sula knew that only a clear young eye kept the knife away from the curve of the throat. (122). From Sula's statements, it is clear that Morrison views marriage as a negative construct that women are drawn into as a way to fill what they are indoctrinated to believe is an inevitable void. Rich writes in "Compulsory Sexuality" that women marry as part of the heterosexual patriarchal institution because it is essential "to survive economically, to have children who will not suffer economic deprivation or social ostracism, to to remain respectable, to do what was expected of women because in coming out of "abnormal" they wanted to feel "normal", and because heterosexual romance was represented as the great adventure, the duty and the female development” (654). Consistent with Rich's theory, Morrison states that Nel's parents managed to dampen any spark of individuality in Nel in their determination that she be seen as a well-mannered and desirable wife. Hélène, in particular, resolutely longs for Nel to lead a more “normal” life: born to a whore and raised by her grandmother, Hélène is always prey to the need to prove, to herself and to others, how far she has climbed the social ladder, although her daughter must be proof. Nel marries Jude because he makes her feel singularly necessary; in Morrison's words, "[Nel] didn't even know she had a neck until Jude noticed it, or that her smile was anything but the parting of her lips until he see a little miracle” (84). For his part, Jude wishes to marry Nel in reaction to her emasculation by the white citizens of Medallion. Morrison explains that whites refuse to hire African Americans for decent jobs despite their superior qualifications, so Jude is forced to rely on very low pay and must turn to his mother forsupport. In Jude's way of thinking, marrying Nel allows him to justify his menial work; he can tell himself that he stays at his job out of necessity, to provide for the needs of his family. As for Sula, she encourages Nel's marriage to Jude simply because "she thought it was the perfect thing to do after they graduated from GED" (84). However, when Sula supports Nel's marriage, she does not suspect that Nel will settle down. down to the conventional patriarchal role of the possessive and sympathetic wife. When Jude complains about the difficulty of a black man's life, for example, Sula expresses her opinion that black men seem to have rather easy lives, precisely to prevent Nel from expressing the expected "lukewarm commiseration" (103 ). In response to Sula's comments, Jude views Sula as "a woman traveling the country trying to find a man to burden with many lips and mouths" (103). Just because Sula dares to express her own beliefs, Jude gets angry and concludes that Sula will cause problems for the men. After Jude leaves Nel, Morrison recounts Sula's reflection that "she knew pretty well what the other women said and felt, or said they felt." But she and Nel had always seen through it. They both knew that these women were not jealous of other women; that they were only afraid of losing their jobs” (119). Instead, by the time Sula returns from ten years at college, she belatedly discovers that Nel has changed: after Sula sleeps with Jude, Nel is unable to forgive her. Sula comes to the bitter realization that “now Nel was one of them. One of the spiders whose only thought was the next rung in the web... They were just victims and knew how to behave in that role (just as Nel knew how to behave as a wronged wife)... Now Nel belonged to the city and to everyone. his ways” (120). Ultimately, Nel becomes so enveloped by the city's customs that she blames Sula for her determination to remain independent. Although Morrison relates that Sula is happy to have lived for herself, Sula also falls in love with a man before her disappearance. When Sula first meets Ajax, she enjoys his company mainly because he does not look down on her like other men; a not-so-subtle critique of male condescension. Little by little, Sula feels a sense of possession over Ajax. When she makes the mistake of revealing too much of her emotions to her lover, he decides to leave. Sula realizes that she "didn't hold my head straight enough when I met him and so I lost it, just like the dolls" (136). Morrison's description of Sula's contempt for falling in love with Jude shows the author's view that women act like mindless "dolls" when pursuing a conventional heterosexual relationship; it also reveals another failed heterosexual connection. Additionally, Sula discovers that Ajax's real name is Alan Jacks. Since she doesn't even know his name, Sula concludes that she never knew this man at all. Their relationship represents Sula's attempt to adapt to the heterosexual institution: the need to conform creeps in so strongly that Sula constructs her own image of "Ajax"; repeatedly describing her urge to scrape off its outer layer to reveal the “gold” she is sure lies beneath (137). In the first three chapters of Morrison's novel Sula, the author portrays absent boyfriends, husbands, and fathers. Eva, Sula's grandmother, is forced to raise her family alone when her husband BoyBoy abandons her. Rekus, Sula's father and Hannah's husband, is never seen.