Toni Morrison's novel Sula focuses on the complex nature of love between women. The story follows Sula and Nel, whose close childhood bond is later threatened. Morrison examines how society punishes women's independence. While love initially provides hope and security for Sula in her relationship with Ajax and Nel in her marriage to Jude, their happiness is undermined by suffering. Nel finds fulfillment through being needed by others but is consumed by her desire to be loved. Ultimately, Morrison shows that love alone is not enough to ease the characters' suffering in face of society's expectations.

1. Surname 1
Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Subject
DD Month YYYY
Contacts for help:dorineadalyn@gmail.com
Love in Toni Morison’s Sula
Toni Morrison’s Sula focuses on a young Black girl called Sula who in the process of
maturity, faces strong adversities, destructs, hatred from her African American community,
however, she demonstrates a strong determinations for what she believes in. In Sula, the author
delves into strong love and relations between women and how their bonds nurture and threatens
the identity of these women. To a great extent, the novel questions how far women go to protect
her children from the harsh society and whether or not the instincts demonstrated by the mother
are productive or destructive. While love is a rescuing theme in the novel Sula, Morrison uses it
to express how society punishes women. This essay aims at exploring how love is expressed in
the novel? In what ways the love in the novel ease the suffering of the characters and how is love
not enough to appease the characters in light of their suffering?
Sula’s relationship with Ajax become an avenue to new feelings. However, she discovers
how love is possessive. At some point, she condemned Nel for conforming to the societal
expectations, yet, she falls in the trap after being seduced by security that her love for Ajax

2. Surname 2
seems to offer. The untimely negative experiences in her love confirms her suspicion that she
cannot obtain a close security while in love with a man than what she has with Nel. Thus there is
an implicit constants between love between women and love between a woman and man.
There is an instable need to be loved expressed by Nel that corresponds to deficiency of
love paradigm. Nel’s longing is satisfied at first by her mother Helene who need someone to take
care of her when her father is away. 'Her daughter was more comfort and purpose than she had
ever hoped to find in this life' (Sula 18). Helene needs somebody who she can ravishingly spend
her time and energy with, and therefore, by Helen allowing herself to dote on her, Nel in turn
satisfies her own desires to be loved (Chin 3). While it might seems possible for Nel to acquire
self—actualization and develop independence once her needs are met, there is an inherent
counter force presented by her because she prevent Nel from attaining this goal thus stunning her
personal growth. Helene effectively squelches any sign of independence by determining how she
behaves and who she friends. This set Nel on a path of self-denial and subordination.
Consequently, when Jude and Nel meet and recognizes their deep burning desire for one
another, Nel accepts to fulfill the need to love and to be loved. Nel’s wish to appease the person
she loves is born out of her own primal desire to be loved. Jude’s obsession to prove himself as a
man manifest in his love for Nel when he failed to get employment from a white contractor. He
presses Nel about settling down because he wants to fulfill his manly roles (Sula 82). In this
light, despite Jude’s loving Nel, he cannot be in peace because other than loving Nel, he needs to
prove himself by providing for his family. Soothing he cannot do effectively due to lack of stable
job. At the same time, there is strong desires for Nel to be needed and when she acquiescence her
marriage proposal, her needs are appeased. The narrator explains that, '[Jude] wanted someone to

3. Surname 3
care about his hurt, to care very deeply' (Sula 82). By comforting and caring for Jude, Nel is also
able to fulfill her own desire to be needed.
Love in the novel is not enough to ease the suffering of characters in the novel. Morrison
depicts Nel’s dependence on Jude by making her subservient to Jude. While love was formed on
a strong relationship between them as people with equal statues, Jude’s opinion, feelings and
decision often take precedence while Nel acquiesces, uphold and comforts him (Stein 146). Nel
is consigned in the novel through her own proclivity to the role of passive individual and
designates Jude to acquire the dominant position in the marriage. By allowing Jude to be
dominant and setting her desires below him makes Jude to be superior. As a result, “Jude and
Nel together makes one Jude” (Sula 83). Through getting someone who loves her, Nel fulfils the
parameters of her deficient love because she has been consumed by desire to be loved.
By removing the object of love, Morrison indicates society derision. This is shown by
Jude’s infidelity that makes Nel to be self-reliant. Nel is obliged to rise to the occasion because
Jude is no longer there to provide for her. Nel is forced to discover her self- apart from Jude and
develop to be a complete person. Morrison demonstrate through Nel’s separation to Jude by
commenting on how society punishes Nel for her independent nature. Morrison denies her the
prospect of love because looking at the future, Jude understood what the future hold for her to be
a single parent. “That they be all she would ever know of love” (Sula 165). Nel must live a life
without love until she overcomes her independent nature and her pathology of deficient love.
Toni Morrison takes a look at love in novel and how it affects the life of characters like
Nel and Sula. First, she look at maternal love and how its absence can affect the life of Nel. The
love between Nel and Jude and Sula and Ajax at some point gives hope and security, however,
the happiness they hoped to achieve become subservient for their suffering

4. Surname 4
Works cited
Chin, Steceyann. What Toni Morrison Taught Me about Love and Death? Afropunk. (2019). P.4.
Retrieved from: https://afropunk.com/2019/08/staceyann-chin-on-toni-morrison/
Morrison, Toni. Sula. Knof. (1973.
Stein, F. Karen. Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Black Woman’s Epic. JSTOR. Vol. 18. No. 4. (1984).
P.146. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2904289?seq=1