Sula and The Third Space
The third space, is a theory that exists within post-colonial theory and was made popular by Homi Bhabha. In general terms, hybridity is defined as a new heterogenous, non-binary identity arising at the liminal space of cultural enunciation. In essence, hybridity is the joining of unlike people and cultures, the mixing of two ‘pure’ cultures to create a new distinct culture/identity that is rejected by both dominant cultures/narratives. Hybridity often brings into question the validity and the fluid nature of one’s identity. Homi Bhabha believes that (cultural) identity isn’t inherent but is created through the process of cultural difference. He believes that where cultural difference is enunciated there exists a Third Space. The intrusion of the ‘Third Space’ “makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process [and] destroys [the] mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code” (Bhabha 21). The Third Space uproots rigid dichotomies and allows new forms of culture, relationships, and identities to form and to take place.
Toni Morrison plays with the concept of hybridity and the Third Space throughout her book Sula. Morrison states in her forward to Sula that some of her driving questions behind the novel are “What is friendship between women when unmediated by men? What choices are available to black women outside their own society’s approval? What are the risks of individualism in a determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially static, community?” (Morrison xiii). Symbolically, Morrison creates two cultures within her novel. One being, the colonized patriarchal culture, and the other the native black culture. Essentially, she is asking what, and if it is possible to exist outside these spaces—to create a third space where women can reside without the intrusion of these outer forces. She explores this avenue throughout her two main characters: Sula and Nel’s lives. Both women (even as children which is when they meet) are described as having “made each other’s acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams” (Morrison 51). Due to their almost otherworldly connection, dependency, and loyalty to one another, Nel and Sula are able to create a hybrid space that exists outside of the colonized patriarchal culture as well as separate from their native black culture. In doing this, the two women are able to form a third impenetrable space, in which they create a purely female ‘culture’ where their relationships are untainted by men, allowing them to bend social norms and explore female relations unlike any other represented in the novel.
Nel’s exposure and evading of the conventual patriarchal culture comes from observing her mother as a young child which leads to her proclamation to be ‘me’. As a young girl. Nel’s mother Helene, had been taken from her home in New Orleans by Wiley Wright, her father and placed in Medallion all shiny and married. Helene is fully ready to take on the responsibilities of married life, but she finds out that her husband is never around. Determined to make something of herself, Helene becomes a figure head within the community. Everyone in the Bottom says that “she was an impressive woman, at least in Medallion she was” (Morrison 18). Helene’s accomplishments are immediately undercut due to her location—The Bottom, the lowest of the low, but in the poorest of the poor, she is at least considered the richest of the rich. Helene is “a woman who won all social battles with presence and conviction of legitimacy of her authority. Since there was no Catholic church in Medallion then, she joined the most conservative black church. And she held sway” (Morrison 18). Despite all her improvements for the community and her accomplishments in general, there is one battle that Helene lost over and over again “the pronunciation of her name. The people in the Bottom refused to say Helene. They called her Helene Wright and left it at that” (Morrison 18). Even with all that Helene has accomplished, she has not accomplished them on her own. Her identity, her accomplishments, her acclimates are all attached to her husband’s. She is a woman that is bound to a man—she isn’t free from the patriarchal society, she tethered herself to it through her marriage to Wiley. When she moves to Medallion there are a set of expectations that she must follow, lines that she cannot cross, and boxes that she must fit into. All of her relationships be them with other men or women are rooted deep within the expectations of the patriarchy. She has her place and she shall not rise above or exist outside of it. Helene tries to teach Nel her place within this colonized patriarchal culture, rising to the task of motherhood as if it is the only true fulfillment that she, or a woman, will ever have. It is under Helene’s “hand that the girl became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by her mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground” (Morrison 18). Helene is trying to force Nel to conform to patriarchal standards, by wiping away any individualism or imagination that she might contain. Rather than being filled with awe towards the world and a feeling of being unbreakable her mother attempts to break her and turn her into a polite, obedient glass doll. Yet Nel doesn’t fall victim to her mother’s or the patriarchy’s snares. Rather, any respect that Nel had for her mother melts away while they travel to see her grandmother as she watches her mother submit and act foolish for one of the first times in her life—the patriarchy (men) crush and humiliate her. While staring at herself in a mirror she notes how that trip had changed her. With her refection staring back at her Nel whispers in an act of defiance I’m me. She continues, unsure of her meaning saying “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me” (Morrison 28). In this moment, Nel gains her own, unique autonomy as she rejects her given identity as the daughter of Helene and Wiley Wright. She now knows that she is the master of her own fate and is determined to never submit to any man the way her mother did via marriage or on that train. She will never turn into jelly, nor to let the patriarchal society that she lives in discredit her and squash her dreams. She begins to exist outside her colonized culture as an outsider looking in—a lonely soul in search for a friend.
Nel’s realization and rejection of her native black culture also takes place through her mother and ends with the same realization that she is an individual being. Her mother decides to take her on a trip to go and visit her dying grandmother. Not particularly wanting to return to the South which is chalked full with racism, Helene prepares by making one of her nicest dresses. However, as Nel witnesses, her mother makes a fatal error that forever alters Nel’s perception of herself and her mother. The two stepped onto a white car, filled with white men and women. The conductor arrives on scene and questions Helene saying “What do you think you’re doing, gal?” (Morrison 20). A flood of old vulnerabilities, fears, and thoughts of being flawed bubble up in Helene’s stomach and her confidence begins to disintegrate. In an attempt to save face Helene sheepishly says “We made a mistake, sir. You see, there wasn’t no sign. We just got in the wrong car, that’s all. Sir” to which the conductor replies, “We don’t ‘llow no mistakes on this train. Now git your butt on in there” (Morrison 21). Then to everyone’s confusion, but even more so to Nel, Helen smiled a dazzling, coquettish type of smile towards the conductor. Nel was so mortified that she physically, “looked away from the flash of pretty teeth to the other passengers” (Morrison 21). Nel considered her mother foolish and took pride and pleasure in the fact that the men on the train, “unlike her father who worshiped his graceful, beautiful wife, were bubbling with a hatred for her mother that had not been there but had been born with the dazzling smile” (Morrison 22). She than realized for the first time in her life how much of a face and façade that her mother puts on in order to pass in a world that is not her own, thus she gets rejected from her native culture. Nel becomes repulsed by her mother’s nice clothing:
wanting to believe in its weight but knowing that custard was all that it hid. If this tall, proud woman, this woman who was very particular about her friends could…could quell a roustabout with a look, if she were really custard, then there was a chance that Nel was too” (Morrison 22).
Nel rejects this concept, there for rejecting her native culture, her native identity and protesting the standard idea of what is available to a black-women. What is possible for a black woman, what can they accomplish, what power can they hold? Nel resolves “to be on guard always. She wanted to make sure that no man ever looked at her that way. That no midnight or marbled flesh would ever accost her and turn her into jelly” (Morrison 22). Here Nel is not only rejecting the colonized patriarchal culture because she is determined to have no man make her look and feel foolish like her mother, but she is also rejecting her native culture because she refuses to let her ‘custard’ skin color diminish her power and worth as a person. She concludes, as she does with the colonized culture that she is an individual, that her blackness, is a defining factor of her but not the defining factor of her. That she is Nel, and that while her native culture might be and aspect of who she is it does not fully encompass and dominate her life which allows her to create her own space of existence.
Sula is able to evade to patriarchal culture that surrounds her due to her unique upbringing that mainly contains strong female characters, and a casual view of sex. All of the women in the Peace household defied patriarchal standards. Their house is old, moldy, and dismal—the exact opposite of welcoming. It was a house that provided very little privacy. The residents and main influences on Sula’s life are her grandmother Eva Peace, her mother Hannah, and the people that come and go through her house like ghosts. Eva Peace, “who sat in a wagon on the third floor directing the lives of her children, friends, strays, and constant stream of boarders” (Morrison 30) is a powerful female presence in Sula’s life. Since she only has one leg, she is bound to a wheelchair, and while there are many stories as to how Eva became this way the most popular was that Eva cut off her leg in order to receive money. Eva is willing to do anything it takes to survive, a trait that Sula latter inherits, and though she is confined to a wheelchair people “had the impression that they were looking up at her” (Morrison 31). Eva had let BoyBoy (her husband) take her away from her people, and into a life of immense hardship and then he abandoned her leaving her to face the cruelties of life all on her own. But it is Eva’s hatred for BoyBoy, for the patriarchal society, that allows her to “get on with it, and have the safety the thrill of consistency of that hatred as long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen her or protect her from routine vulnerabilities” (Morrison 36). However, as Sula grows up with this defiant attitude towards men in her life, she also is taught to love all men, but in an unconventional way. The townspeople describe it as “manlove that Eva bequeathed to her daughters [and thus to Sula]. Probably, people said, because there were not men in the house to run it. But actually, that was not true. The Peace women simply loved maleness for its own sake” (Morrison 41). Sula grows up around an abundance of female sexuality, which the patriarchal society rejects and tires to diminish and hide. Sula’s mother, Hannah “rippled with sex…and had a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her friends and neighbors” (Morrison 43). Hannah taught Sula that “sex was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable” (Morrison 44) Sula reflects the actions of both her grandmother and her mother as a future adult. Not only is she never attached to any man via marriage, she continually puts herself and her needs be them sexual or not before others. Her whole life, men were unable to penetrate through the Peace women—they were not able to break down their personal identities, their resilience, their desire, their intellect and into their hearts and soul; rather like mice being led to a trap they fell straight into these women’s charms and rarely came out unscathed. It is due to Sula’s unusual upbringing, her view towards sex as a commodity/ a avenue for pleasure, and her unique manlove that sets her outside of the colonized patriarchal culture. Though she is exposed to men, she is the one colonizing them. Sula refuses, and cannot exist within the patriarchal society. She must find a third, feminine space where she can be accepted and allowed to truly thrive.
Sula defies cultural norms in her native black culture, which in turn forces her to be an outcast. This has more of an effect on Sula as an adult, when she returns to Bottom and is rejected by society. There are small illusions to Sula’s future as a pariah as an adult when she is a child. The first time is an interaction between Sula and four white boys that had been harassing her and Nel. Sula refused to let the boys intimidate them any longer, and had come up with a plan, when the boys came up to mock the girls, she whipped out a knife and cut off the tip of her own finger and said, “If I can do that to myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?” (Morrison 55). Nel notes the look on Sula’s face which seemed to be miles and miles away. This is the first time that Sula makes it very evident that she is not afraid to break perceived cultural norms, that she is the master of her own fate. Secondly, Sula watches her own mother burn to death and though she was paralyzed with a dumbstruck look on her face, Eva “remained convinced that Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed but because she was interested” (Morrison 78). Sula continues to express her individuality outside of her native culture by being one of the first people to actually leave Bottom—and on her adventure around the South, she attends college, which is quite controversial for a black woman at the time. When Sula returns to the Bottom there is an invasion of robins, and invasion of evilness as the town believes and Sula welcomes the judgement with open arms. When she “stepped off the Cincinnati Flyer into the robin shit and began to the long climb up into the Bottom. She was dressed in a manner that was as close to a movie star as anyone would ever see” (Morrison 90). Hellfire resides deep inside of Sula, she has always been dangerous and hot—willing to set the rules on fire to meet her needs. Her willingness to do this, to allow herself to indulge in what pleases and interests her has made her an outcast, a demonic figure in her native culture, thus forcing her to create her own space of existence.
Given that both Nel and Sula are able to exists outside of both the colonized patriarchal culture and their natural culture the two, together, are able to create their own hybrid culture and thus a third space in which they are able to sustain a purely female culture. The two are described to have:
made each other’s acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound that it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer shared the delight of the dream. (Morrison 51).
While the two girls’ dreams differ vastly from one another, Sula fills a void that is missing inside of Nel and likewise, Nel does the same for Sula. The two act as understudies each other dreams, fulfilling missing roles—Sula is a pair of “sympathetic eyes. Someone as interested as she [Nel is] herself in the flow of her imagined hair, the thickness of the mattress of flowers, the voile sleeves that closed below her elbows in gold thread cuffs” (Morrison 51). Whereas Nel becomes “someone who shared both [Sula’s love and] taste and the speed” of adventure (Morrison 52). This other worldly meeting, makes the pair feel as if they are old, life-long friends as if the two were meant to meet and form something greater. Both had come to realizations as young children that they existed outside of both the colonized as well as their natural culture—which made them lonely—in search of someone to bond with, in search of a culture they could claim as their own. The girls knew that “they were neither white nor male [emphasis added], and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them” thus “they had set about creating something else to be” (Morrison 52). It is their unnatural defiance of their worlds, their ‘othering’ that allows them to connect at a place of cultural enunciation and create a hybrid feminine culture that cannot be penetrated by the outside world. While each girl brings in a piece of her induvial experience and identity, when they connect, they are able to create and form a third space untainted by outside occurrences allowing them experience femininity and each other on a uncurated level.
As children Nel and Sula have little to no relationship with men, which only strengthens the feminine third space that they’ve created. Both girls are distant from their mothers and fathers either due to death, hatred, or absence and “they found in each other’s eyes the intimacy they were looking for” (Morrison 52). The two experienced the world together in their “joined mutual admiration they watched each day as though it were a movie arranged for their amusement” (Morrison 55) and they were the directors. The two contain this ‘thirdness’ quality about them, a term coined by Ph.D Jessica Benjamin who defines this term as a“ quality of mental space, of intersubjective relations” (Benjamin 1). She states that to achieve this third state the two parties must have “mutual recognition, in which each subject feels the other as a like subject with a distinct, separate center of feeling and perception” (Benjamin 1). Benjamin explains throughout her article “Intersubjectivity, Thirdness, and Mutual Recognition” that there can be negative aspects to thirdness. She states that “[the] relational third can be experienced either as a vehicle of recognition or something we have to submit ourselves to, from which we cannot extricate ourselves” (Benjamin 5) It is submission disguised as surrender. The digging scene between the two young girls is perhaps the most illustrious and certainly one of the most memorable scenes between the two young girls. It is an illustration of Benjamin’s idea of thirdness as both girls enter “a quality of mental space, of intersubjective relations” (Benjamin1). Led by Nel, which can call into question the validity of the thirdness:
Sula lifted her head and joined Nel in the grass play. In concert, without ever meeting each other’s eyes, they stroked the blades up and down, up and down. Nel found a thick twig and, with her thumbnail, pulled away its bark until it was stripped to a smooth, creamy innocence. Sula looked about and found one too. When both twigs were undressed Nel moved easily to the next stage and began tearing up rooted grass to make a bare spot of earth…Together they worked until the two holes were one and the same…Neither one had spoken a word. (Morrison 58-59)
Not a word is exchanged between the girls during this scene, they are able to mirror each other perfectly—they complete each other’s’ actions. They have taken part in a “non-verbal experience of sharing a pattern, a dance with another person” (Benjamin 7). Eventually the two become as one they create one hole were there were originally two, their souls, lives, and spirits have been bound together to create something larger than just their individual identities. Now when the two are together they are able to exist on this co-created reality, this plane of thirdness where they experience a “oneness, union, [a] resonance” (Benjamin 12). Whatever, occurs during this scene, it is clear that both Nel and Sula are existing outside both the patriarchal and native space that has been set up for them and have created a purely female space. A space that is their own—in which only they exist. They both mutually recognize each other within this space, allowing them to retain some individual autonomy. It is during this scene that both girls feel seen, understood, and recognized for the first time in their young lives. They have forged a bond together, be it through sex, through child-play, through share experiences and emotions, or other intimate relations that they willingly submit themselves to in order to survive in a world in which they are rejected from.
The thirdness that takes place between both Sula and Nel, allows them connect on a deeper and more intimate level which further allows the two defy societal norms and exist on a different plane than the rest of the characters. Traces of this can be seen back towards the beginning of the girls’ budding friendship. It is “in the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford to abandoned the ways of other people and concentrate on their own perceptions of things” (Morrison 55). Clearly, both Sula and Nel view the world differently than those around them; furthermore, the two find each other during a perinate state in their life: childhood and adolescence. A time where individuals are in search of identity and meaning, where they rebel against society standards (usually to conform back to them) in a quest to figure out existence and truth. Nel and Sula experience all of this together as a unit, as one identity. They discover the entire world together, friendship, love, loss, sexuality, desire, forgiveness, and one of their latest themes was men. It was during “their twelfth year, the summer of the beautiful back boys, that they became skittish, frightened and bold—all at the same time” (Morrison 56). Furthermore, the two are bonded outside of society even farther, when they are the culprits and only witnesses of Chicken Littles death. In shock the two stood there, “They expected him to come back up, laughing. Both girls staring at the water” (Morrison 61). Keeping this secret between the two of them, tethers the two young women together as murders, liars, deviants, and pariahs who exist on the outskirts of society. The two do not fall in-line with society and its rules and expectations—especially for two young black women, rather they repel those standards and live outside them. They live in fear of their secrets being found out, of being called murders, of being called sexual deviants, of being torn apart from one another—the only other person that understands them and makes them whole. Consumed with terror at Chicken Little’s funeral, the two “clenched together” as if the other would anchor them in a new reality. (Morrison 66). Then slowly, “they relaxed…during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summers day wondering what happened to the butterflies in the winter” (Morrison 66). When Nel confronts Sula about why she chose to have an affair with her husband and cries out “You didn’t love me enough to leave him [Jude] alone. To let him love me. You had to take him away.” (Morrison 145). To which Sula responds “what do you mean take him away? I didn’t kill him, I just fucked him.” (Morrison 145). As young girls, the two shared everything including men, and sexual experiences; therefore, if viewing Sula’s actions through the lens of their thirdness, noting that no boundaries existed between the two one must question where they betrayal really lies. Is Nel hurt over the loss of her husband or over the loss of Sula? Is she shocked that her husband would betray her or does she feel the string of betrayal more from Sula? It is potential that Nel is jealous. Sula brought someone else into their third space—seemingly cracking it wide open. Eliminating the intimacy and trust between the two of them, which was already shaky consider Sula just left the Bottom, left Nel. Nel has been mourning Sula and the loss of her thirdness for years, pretending that Jude is some sort of replacement that he gives her purpose, that he completes her but she has been only half alive. And the moment Sula returns, she chooses sex, a man, over their coveted reunion. Over their sexuality, over their intimacy, their emotions, their past, their femininity, their mutual adoration for each other? Has she lost her mirror, her understudy? Must she exist in the world alone, again, forever? Nel has forgotten their unique set of social rules. That Sula having sex with Jude isn’t her trying to take him from her or an act of betrayal—it is simply using a man to fulfill a primal need. The two have always shared, even men; therefore, Sula doesn’t see a difference between a married Nel and a teenaged Nel. However, Sula is still bound to Nel, by having sex with Jude she is mimicking part of Nel’s life becoming a part of her, mirroring her actions. Given Nel’s amnesia she harbors hurt, she has been for a long time. Still, years later when Nel is able to release her primal cry—she forgives Sula for her actions and realizes she’s been mourning her friend the entire time despite the hurt she caused her. The two are able let go of debilitating guilt and shame so quickly because they have one another, and within their own world and their own set of social standards they’ve set up for themselves—they don’t feel shame, nor do they shame each other; rather they fully accept one another for who they are the good, the bad, and the evil.
Despite the appearance that Nel and Sula’s third space seems to be tainted by the influence and presence of men when the two are adults, the power of their created female thirdness ultimately wins over the impact and harm that maleness has caused. When Nel learns that Sula has had an affair with her husband she thinks to herself, “I waited for Sula to look up at me any minute and say one of those lovely college words like aesthetic or rapport, which I never understood but which I loved because they sounded so comfortable and firm” (Morrison 105). In her moment of greatest shame, embarrassment, and loss it is Sula that Nel wants comfort from. She wants to hear her say affirming words, words that wrap her up like a blanket and make her feel safe and comforted. Furthermore, when staring at the scene in front of her, it is not Sula’s nakedness that she is bothered or ashamed by. She is not angered by Sula, nor does she demand that Sula cover herself. Nel states that “you [Jude] just got up and started to put your clothes on…and she was sitting on the bed not even bothering to put on her clothes because actually she didn’t need to because somehow she didn’t look naked to me” (Morrison 105-106). Nel is comfortable with Sula’s nakedness, it is something that the two have shared before on multiple levels. They have been naked, skinless with one another their whole lives—sharing everything, keeping no secrets, living as one and then Sula goes and rips apart the fantasy that Nel has constructed. The fantasy that Nel can live an autonomous life without Sula. In her grief, Nel tries to release a primal cry. She wanted her “throat to release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss” (Morrison 107) and she is unable to find any release. Yet, amidst all her pain and anger against her about husband she thought of Sula “for Sula would know or if she didn’t she would say something funny. Ooo, no not Sula. Here she was in the midst of it, hating it, scared of it, and again she thought of Sula as though they were still friends” (Morrison 110). When Nel comes to care for and confront a dying Sula, tensions between the two reach an all time high. The two get into a very heated verbal confrontation where Sula even claims that Nel’s “lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you” (Morrison 143). Nel retorts by asking Sula why she had an affair with her husband. Bereaved she says “What about me? Why didn’t you think about me? Didn’t I count? I never hurt you. I was good to you Sula….We were good friends” (Morrison 144-145). While disguised as mourning for the loss of her marriage, Nel is really mourning the loss of her friendship and connection with Sula. She cannot seem to grapple why the one person who understands her and loves her the most in the world would seemingly betray her like this. Sula responds to Nel’s self-pity by saying, “I didn’t kill him, I just fucked him. If we were such good friends, how come you couldn’t get over it” (Morrison 145). Sula calls out Nel for being the one to abandon their friendship, it was Nel that hopped ship—not Sula. Yet despite all the harm the girls have caused one another, they still are each other’s confidants, sisters, other half. Their bond in the third space cannot be broken by men or even in death. For when Sula dies she “felt her face smiling ‘Well I’ll be damned’ she thought ‘it didn’t even hurt. Wait till I tell Nel’” (Morrison 149). Sula will never be complete, not even in death until she is reunited with Nel and they can exist together as a third entity. Likewise, throughout the rest of the novel Nel is carrying a primal cry within her that she is unable to release. It isn’t until she fully accepts Sula’s death and the physical separation and severing of the third space that she is able to release all her pain. She cries:
All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude. And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. ‘We was girls together’ she said as though to explain something. ‘O Lord Sula,’ she cried, ‘girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.’It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles of sorrow. (Morrison 174).
Sula’s death is the springboard for Nel’s final, circular cry of sorrow. Despite all the harm and pain that Sula brought her, Sula also completed Nel and allowed her to exist outside of both the colonized and native culture. She allowed her to experience a mutual recognition, a oneness, a resonance that was inexplainable. It was only together that they were seen and understood—outcasts from society—they created a world of their own in which they were the only inhabitants and the loss and power that of that connection is greater than anything that Nel could’ve ever imagined.
Even though Nel and Sula are exposed to male relationships throughout their lives it is due to their hybrid culture and third space that they are able to experience a female relationship unlike any other. This thirdness that they possess allows them to form a relationship—one that ‘completes them’. Their bond of sisterhood is so strong, and their third space is so impenetrable that even the most horrific acts, acts against one another, cannot separate the two women from one another. It is ultimately through death, once this physical bond has been severed that both women realize how important/special it was in their life. Nel can only truly mourn, a primal mourn when she accepts that Sula has died. However, given that the thirdness exists on a different plane, there is hope that the two can be reunited again, through death and once more be complete.
Works Cited
Benjamin, Jessica. “Intersubjectivity, Thirdness, and Mutual Recognition .” Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis . 2007, Los Angeles .
Bhabha, Homi K. “The Commitment to Theory .” New Formations, vol. 5, no. 1, 1988, pp. 5–23.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. Vintage, 2016.
