The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s

Song of Solomon
Rima Bhattacharya*

Toni Morrison’s novels are deeply embedded in the African cultural

heritage and primarily concerned with the experiences of African
American women, whose quest for individual identity is integrally
intertwined with a sense of community and cultural history. Therefore,
it is not surprising that women of color play prominent, strong, and
powerful roles in her novels. Morrison’s Song of Solomon is one
such novel where the main protagonist, Milkman’s development is
framed by the sacrificial stories of three women important in his life.
On the surface, these female characters are shown to be living pathetic
lives where rebellion is almost impossible. Their lives are constructed
around men’s desire or fancy. However, if one goes deeper down the
surface to examine these female characters critically, then one would
find that in reality, these women play a huge role in reconstructing
cultural memory and demonstrating the importance of the past to the
male protagonist. This paper critically looks at Morrison’s Song of
Solomon in order to establish that the ultimate experiences of these
black women are not the loss and sufferings endured by them in the
name of slavery, racism, and gender. Instead, their creative voices
that connect one generation to another are the true markers of the
potential of their womanhood.

T
oni Morrison’s novels explore issues of African American female identity in stories
that bring together elements of oral tradition, unique literary techniques, and the
supernatural to give voice to the experiences of black women living on the margins
of the American society. A Nobel Laureate and a bestselling African American female
author, Morrison is an inspiration for several other black women novelists who are trying
to make their mark in the mainstream publishing industry. Although Morrison’s stories are
deeply embedded in the African cultural heritage and engage in the complex examination
of problems within the African American community, power dynamics of gender, and
issues of racism, her primary interest lies with the experiences of African American
women, whose quest for individual identity is integrally intertwined with their sense of

* Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
E-mail: rima.b.mukherjee@gmail.com

©302016 IUP. All Rights Reserved. The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016
community and cultural history. In fact, at times, the dominant tropes of oppression like
class, race, colonialism, and slavery seem to be the metaphorical representation of the
oppression of women (Pathak 2007, 104)
Grewal (1998, 80) expresses that Morrison’s overarching thematic concern throughout
her oeuvre is with issues of African American identity in the contemporary world: “African
Americans must negotiate a place for themselves within a dominant culture; how they
situate themselves with respect to their own history and culture is a pervasive theme of
Morrison’s novels.” Song of Solomon (Morrison 1977) is one such mythical novel relating
the story of Macon “Milkman” Dead, who is born in the North but journeys to the South
in search of familial roots and personal identity. He discovers that he is a descendant of
Solomon, a well-known figure among a mythical West African tribe whose members can
fly. According to the myth, this talent of flight was mainly used by the enslaved Africans
taken forcibly to America, in order to escape their bondage and fly back to their homeland.
Milkman’s development is framed and illuminated by the sacrificial stories of three
women important in his life, and the presence of these subplots in the tale of a male
protagonist is a good indication of the importance of female contribution to a man’s growth
in Morrison’s thought. In Morrison’s novels, women’s voice plays a huge role in
reconstructing cultural memory and demonstrating the importance of the past to the male
protagonist. Therefore, it is not surprising that women of color play prominent, strong, and
powerful roles in her novels. Hove (2002, 254) observes, “Morrison’s fictions repeatedly
challenge cultural traditions defined by patriarchal, assimilationist, and totalizing standards.
Ever since her first novel . . . she has set herself in opposition to the European American
white mainstream by portraying and celebrating unique, powerful voices of the marginalized
women from American history and contemporary American life.”
The emotion of love is inseparable from the heart of women, and wherever there are
women characters, there will be a parable of love. For Morrison it is no different, as she
confesses, “Actually, I think, all the time that I write, I’m writing about love or its absence.
Although I don’t start out that way. . . . But I think that I still write about the same thing, which
is how people relate to one another and miss it or hang on to it . . . or are tenacious about love”
(quoted in Bakerman 1981, 541). Certainly, the theme of love is also evident in Song of
Solomon, where the female characters are searching for love, for valid sexual encounters,
and, above all, for a sense that they are worthy of or important to their male counterparts.
Although the novel’s theme might be identified as an individual’s search for the meaning
and genuine value of life, for Pilate Dead, Hagar Dead, and First Corinthians Dead, as for
many other female characters, such female aspiration is just a joke. In spite of the
characters’ having potential, female rebellion is not possible in such a world. Therefore,
they marry in defeat or go mad, their lives marked by an inevitable sense of failure. Pilate
invents her own standards and lives almost outside the society, a choice which eventually
brings tragedy upon her family. Corinthians takes a lover and lives a diminished life, with
total dependence on her partner. Hagar attempts to transform herself but dies. All live
lives of profound isolation in a society which does not want them.

The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 31

 Christian (1985, 57) comments that “in dramatizing the traditions of her community,
Morrison’s novels resemble the oral technique of the storyteller.” Equally pertinent to this
study is the importance of storytelling within the context of the novel itself. An African
woman storyteller, Morrison tells the tale of the Flying Africans to keep her traditions and
culture alive on paper. Within the discourse of the novel, her characters voice the stories
of family and ancestral life. Although Pilate is unmistakably Morrison’s preferred storyteller,
the other stories and the differing voices further emphasize the oral quality of the novel.
Many times, two characters have different versions of the same story. Within an African
context, the woman played the primary role of educating the children into the culture.
Ada Mere, a sociologist, comments on the role of women as tale tellers and instructors.
Women, she writes, “are the most primary and constant agents of child socialization”
(quoted in Wilentz 1992, 64). Furthermore, as agents of this education, women “are the
mainstay of the oral tradition” (ibid.).
The story, as it is told, comprises mythic elements and is not free from the politics of
gender. Therefore, the text of Song of Solomon, even when seen as a “myth,” serves as
a wonderfully appropriate site for the enactment of black feminist criticism. Campbell’s
(1949) discussion on women’s roles within the male monomyth confirms the omission of
females, acting as a subject in sacred narratives. According to Campbell (1949, 116), the
informing principles of a myth project women as a supplement or an extra figure. She is
a lesser being to be “redeemed” by the heroic male’s “eye of understanding,” portrayed
as one who requires male “kindness and assurance” to escape pejorative evaluations of
her character and being. Validating the Adamic myth of woman’s origins inside man,
Campbell certifies the phallocentric belief that women’s role is to complete—to make
whole—the psychologically fragmented and defeminized male hero (Awkward 1990, 487).
Song of Solomon is a mythic record both of transcendent (male) flight and of the
immeasurable pain that results for the female who, because of her lack of access to
knowledge, cannot participate in this flight. In projecting the monomythic sequence,
Morrison provides the possibilities for a resistant feminist reading which suggests the
consequences of male epic journeys: the death-in-life, or actual death, of the female
whose only permissible role is that of an aggrieved, abandoned lover. Flight is a recurrent
image in many African American parables which is philosophically connected to the
phenomenon of transformation and transcendence. Morrison’s Song of Solomon too
foregrounds cultural metaphors of flight and dominion (Holloway 1994, 202). Femininity,
therefore, acts as a hindrance to the achievement of a transcendental state for the females,
who are usually left behind in such male acts of flight.
The novel, time and again, portrays the rootlessness of the female characters, indicating
the extreme difficulty of the black woman’s search for self-determination. Pilate, the
aunt of the protagonist, Milkman, has no real identity at all, and in a long flashback,
Morrison reveals the reasons for this lack as she recounts that Pilate has never known
her mother’s name, and her father’s, that of the first Macon Dead (Milkman’s grandfather),
whose name was invented by a careless, belittling white official. Even the circumstances
32 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016
of Pilate’s birth dramatize her rootlessness: “immediately after their mother died, she had
come struggling out of the womb without help from throbbing muscles or the pressure of
swift womb water. As a result . . . her stomach was as smooth and sturdy as her back, at
no place interrupted by a navel” (Morrison 1977, 57).1 However, in spite of her rootlessness,
Pilate appears to be the most powerful figure in the book with her calm acceptance of
life’s challenges. She literally breaks away from the established society to create an
individual life for herself. She is thoroughly at home with herself and in harmony with
earth and nature (Mickelson 1979, 136). There is something splendidly pagan and primitive
about her and she depicts her power by elevating her situation without any semblance of
self-pity and petty sentiment.
Pilate’s capacity to stand alone and place herself beyond the margins of the society is
truly appreciable. She rejects the traditional image of woman by cutting off her hair,
wearing a turban, and donning clothes suitable to her way of life. She steadily supports
her daughter and granddaughter by becoming a bootlegger and selling wine and whiskey.
She is also cautious enough to keep herself away from debased businesses like traffic in
women flesh. Soon Pilate acquires the economic independence that is a dream of every
black woman. As an economically independent woman, she is able to sustain her family
and herself without the patriarchal support and face successfully the social constraints
that are constant threats to the black women (Mickelson 1979, 141-142).
The first years of Pilate’s life are, nevertheless, promising, and she, along with her
father and brother, lives and thrives on their Pennsylvania farm until a powerful white
family covets their land and murders the first Macon Dead. Pilate recalls, “I saw Papa
shot. Blown off a fence five feet into the air. I saw him wigglin on the ground” (77). She
is soon separated from her brother Macon after a quarrel over a man he has murdered
and over gold buried at the murder site.
Such incidents leave Pilate absolutely isolated. She gradually learns painfully that she
is not welcome in any community: “I was cut off from people early. You can’t know what
that was like” (238). The narrator recounts, “It isolated her. Already without family she
was further isolated from her people, for . . . every other resource was denied her:
partnership in marriage, confessional friendship, and communal religion. Men frowned;
women whispered and shoved their children behind them” (250). Life and death hold no
fear for Pilate, who, the author informs, has not shed a tear for sixty-eight years, and still
extends politeness in return for rudeness.
Twice, she joins bands of pickers and gets on well with them until the groups expel her
taking the lack of a navel to be an unnatural sign. When she finds a refuge on an isolated
island off the coast of Virginia, she contrives to conceal her belly from her lover, and after
their baby is born, refuses to marry him, reasoning that she cannot hide her lack of a navel
from a husband forever. She is cut off from permanent sexual commitment, which is
usually considered to be a sign of leading a fruitful life. However, in spite of having the
1
Subsequent citations from this source include only the page numbers.

The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 33

capability of being an independent woman, Pilate too falls short of leading a life without
dependence on a male in so far as her father’s spirit becomes the source of the wisdom
around which she constructs her life. Hers is a small world which includes almost no
people except her daughter, Reba, her grand-daughter, Hagar, and her father’s ghost:
“I’ve seen him since he was shot. . . . It’s a good feeling to know he’s around. I tell you
he’s a person I can rely on. I tell you something else. He’s the only one” (238). He is the
only support system available to her.
Pilate does not really understand her father’s messages, “Sing, Sing. . . . You just can’t
fly on off and leave a body” (248) because she does not know her family history.
Furthermore, she actually returns to the scene of the murder and reclaims the dead man’s
bones which she carries about with her throughout her life. Her father’s advice further
isolates her, cuts her off from her community. Pilate has for years sung of her grandfather
without knowing it. And, indeed, she has sung because her father’s ghost came to her
saying, “Sing! Sing!” (248). The ghost wasn’t giving her a command but just trying to tell
her, her mother’s name: Sing, or Singing Bird, as Milkman surmises. After she died giving
birth to Pilate, Jake was so anguished that he had forbidden the speaking of her name,
which was later forgotten. Pilate also misunderstands the ghost’s other plea: “You can’t
up and leave a body” (248). But in actuality, the ghost of Jake was re-voicing his childhood
lament of not to be left behind by Solomon (Brenkman 1994, 69).
No matter how erroneously Pilate interprets her father’s message, at the novel’s end,
it is Milkman’s surrender to Pilate’s song that earns him back his spiritual and ancestral
place. In the last pages of the novel, a dying Pilate bestows on her nephew Milkman a
supreme gift by giving him her voice and urging him to sing. His song, “Oh Sugargirl don’t
leave me here” that “he could not stop . . . from coming” (336), enables him to reclaim his
birthright and acknowledge his ancestry.
While, on the one hand, Morrison presents women who are fiercely independent like
Pilate, on the other hand, she portrays essentially weak characters like Pilate’s daughter
and granddaughter. Ironically, Pilate, who is brave enough to lead an unconventional life
on her own, cannot inspire the other women in her house to follow her example. According
to Mickelson (1979, 146), “Reba is a single-minded woman, and Hagar is one of those
pretty, spoiled black women who either want to kill or die for love.” Out of the many
female characters in the novel, the only one who exercises individual will is Pilate. In fact,
according to some critics, Hagar’s tragic fate could have been anticipated by Pilate’s
uneventful life.
Hagar is a pampered child and the center of her mother and grandmother’s attention,
and they do their best “to satisfy every whim Hagar had” (160). Hagar however is in
many ways unlike her family. She is well-organized and likes pretty clothes. She hates
the dirt and disorganization in Pilate’s life, even as a child. Although surprised by her
demands, Pilate and Reba tried their best to fulfil them. They spoiled her, and probably
their overindulgence took away the self-respect from her character (Bakerman
1981, 557).
34 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016
 Milkman also plays a crucial role in bringing about the downfall of Hagar. He disrespects
the familial bonds and enters into an incestuous and abusive relationship with his cousin
Hagar, exploiting her sexually and bringing about her death. According to Holloway
(1994, 204), Milkman’s actions “fracture Pilate’s generational unit. He is left with a debt
that extends not only to Hagar’s mother and grandmother, but to his own spirit. He disrupts
the force and power of their lyrical memories and consequently endangers their generational
continuity.” Hagar’s commitment to Milkman is absolute: “Totally taken over by her
anaconda love, she had no self left, no fears, no wants, no intelligence that was her own”
(232). Milkman represents the hope of a new life for her which is potentially different
from the careless, disorganized life of her family. But Milkman never considers Hagar
seriously as a mate and finally breaks off the affair.
After this, Hagar sees herself only through the eyes of Milkman and comes to doubt
her own sense of beauty and self. In her view, “beauty” is the one means by which she
can hold on to Milkman, and holding on to Milkman is the only thing worth doing. When
she comes to believe that he prefers another kind of beauty, she has no other option but to
kill him. After Milkman casually breaks up the affair shortly after a Christmas with a
thank-you note, Hagar feels like killing him. She is mentally so distressed that she spends
months searching the barrels, cupboards, and basement shelves of her house for some
weapon with which to murder the only person she loves truly. Apart from the “thank-
you” card and Milkman’s callousness, this idea of revenge was inspired by the sight of
Milkman’s arms around the shoulders of a girl whose “silky copper-colored hair cascaded
over the sleeve of his coat” (217).
Milkman’s preference for a white girl above her leaves Hagar feeling insecure and
worthless. Both her guardians, her grandmother and mother, too begin to doubt her true
value and participate with her in the discussion as to whether it was possible for Milkman
to like Hagar’s hair. “How can he love himself and hate your hair?” (511), Pilate asks.
Hagar is however certain that Milkman is only attracted to women with distinctly European
features and insists, with deadly finality, “He’s never going to like my hair.” Ultimately, all
Pilate can say to console her is, “Hush. Hush. Hush, girl, hush” (510-512).
African Americans, with their traditionally African features, have always had an uneasy
coexistence with the European (white) ideal of beauty (Ashe 1995, 579). According to
Neal and Wilson (1989, 328), “Compared to Black males, Black females have been more
profoundly affected by the prejudicial fallout surrounding issues of skin color, facial features,
and hair. Such impact can be attributed in large part to the importance of physical
attractiveness for all women.” For black women, the most easily detectable feature is
hair. While contemporary black women sometimes opt for cosmetic surgery or colored
contact lenses, hair alteration (i.e., hair-straightening “permanents,” hair weaves, braid
extensions, Jheri curls, etc.) remains the most popular way to adopt a white female standard
of beauty. Neal and Wilson (ibid.) contend that much of the black female’s “obsession
about skin color and features” has to do with the black woman’s attempting to attain a
“high desirability stem[ming] from her physical similarity to the white standard of beauty.”

The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 35

 The novel reflects upon not only the black female’s encounters with the white-female
standard of beauty, but also the black female’s predicament in dealing with her black-
male partner’s conception of that standard (Ashe 1995, 580). Morrison, in Song of
Solomon, critiques the ideal concept of beauty by creating two oppositional characters
with respect to the white-beauty construct. Pilate Dead, who wears her hair closely
cropped, represents “Nature . . . [as she] energetically work[s] against the allure of
outward appearances” (Guerrero 1990, 769). Pilate’s granddaughter Hagar, on the other
hand, “fantasizes a persona that she imagines will make her more desirable to her projected
lover, Milkman” (ibid.).
Hagar’s imagined “persona” is one that will include “silky copper-colored hair,” because
Morrison primarily uses hair in Song of Solomon to draw Pilate and Hagar as opposites
where the white standard of beauty is concerned (217). Eventually, by revolving these
opposites around Milkman, the novel’s central character, Morrison devises her own African
American standard of beauty, an alternative to the white-beauty ideal (Ashe 1995, 579).
In a society where a woman’s self-definition is, by and large, dependent on the interactive
relationship with a man, Hagar’s concern about Milkman’s unwillingness to love her is,
however, injurious, utterly logical, and a bitter reality. Hagar’s helplessness is reflected
particularly in her wholehearted adoption of Milkman’s ideas on female beauty.
Milkman’s friend, Guitar, thinking of Hagar correctly identifies her problem. He realizes
that Hagar has never learned to cope with the world, has never learned who she is
because her mentors—Pilate and Reba—are themselves not sure about their past or
history. There has been no community to love and teach her, no place for her to belong
except the home of which she disapproves. The narrator tells us, “Neither Pilate nor
Reba knew that Hagar was not like them. Not strong enough, like Pilate, nor simple
enough, like Reba, to make up her life as they had. She needed what most colored girls
needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school
teachers, best girlfriends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her—and
the humor with which to live it” (497).
When even violence fails her, she decides to abort her attempt of murdering Milkman
and tries to murder her self-image instead. She decides to transform herself completely
which is also a kind of metaphorical murder. She imagines that this change will cause
Milkman to love and value her forever. Even in this pitiful attempt she fails and becomes
fatally ill. Utterly lacking in self-esteem and confidence, she fails even to imitate Milkman’s
“real,” “white” girlfriends. She is ashamed of her beauty as well as her lineage. At the
end, therefore, there remains nothing else for her to do but to die. According to Roynon
(2013, 33), through the character of Hagar, Morrison rehearses one of the most prominent
themes of her oeuvre: “the folly and danger of excessive, self-surrendering passion.”
However, at the end of the novel, one feels as if Morrison rejects the feminist idea of
establishing exclusive female communities for the benefit of black female psychic and
emotional health. Indeed, the question of gender-specific exclusion is profoundly important
to Morrison’s formulations here. Morrison seems to be aware of the potential dangers of
36 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016
a narrowly focused black feminist criticism. Incidents like the ultimate demise of Hagar
in Song of Solomon indicate that Morrison is not very positive about the establishment of
an isolated black feminist community. Clearly, for her, black female psychic health cannot
be achieved without the cooperative participation of both females and males in a creative
and nurturing role. Indeed, male participation helps to provide the novice female with a
sense of “balance” between “the best of that which is female and the best of that which
is male” without which gendered health is, for Morrison, quite unlikely (Awkward 1990,
489).
Morrison (1984, 344) says, in response to a question concerning “the necessity to
develop a specific black feminist model of critical inquiry”: “I think there is more danger
in it than fruit, because any model of criticism or evaluation that excludes males from it is
as hampered as any model of criticism of Black literature that excludes women from it.”
Her views on the limitedness of a feminist reading of Song of Solomon are perhaps
more openly expressed in her comments on Hagar’s debilitating problems and premature
death, despite being raised under the guardianship of a wise mentor like her grandmother
Pilate. Morrison (ibid.) says of Hagar: “The difficulty that Hagar has is how far removed
she is from the experience of her ancestor. Pilate had a dozen years of close, nurturing
relationships with two males—her father and her brother. And that intimacy and support
was in her and made her fierce and loving because she had that experience. Her daughter
Reba had less of that and related to men in a very shallow way. Her daughter [Hagar]
had even less of an association with men as a child, so that the progression is really a
diminishing of their abilities because of the absence of men in a nourishing way in their
lives. Pilate is the apogee of all that: of the best of that which is female and the best of
that which is male, and that balance is disturbed if it is not nurtured . . . the disability we
must be on guard against for the future—the female who reproduces the female who
reproduces the female.” Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to the three generations
of daughters in the novel.
The life of Corinthians, Milkman’s sister, apparently appears to be far better than
Hagar’s but actually it is not so. Corinthians Dead and her sister Magdalene were daughters
of a wealthy property owner Macon Dead II and the elegant Ruth Foster, granddaughters
of the powerful and worshipped Dr. Foster, who had been the second man in the city to
have a two-horse carriage. However, the popularity of their family is of little help for
Corinthians and her sister who are constantly mistreated by their father: “The disappointment
he (Macon Dead II) felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their
buttery complexions and choking the lilt out of what should have been girlish voices.
Under the frozen heat of his glance they tripped over doorsills and dropped the salt cellar
into the yolks of their poached eggs. The way he mangled their grace, wit, and self-
esteem was the single excitement of their days” (30).
Corinthians cannot turn to her mother for support or enlightenment because Ruth
Foster Dead is herself helpless, abandoned, and shocked by the death of her father and
the scorn of her husband. In their own eyes, Macon Dead II and Ruth Dead have done

The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 37

their best for their daughters, for they have been sent to the finest colleges and have
traveled abroad. The result is, however, that the two are overqualified for roles as wives
of rising black professional men, and the white world will offer them no jobs except as
domestics. Finding no other job suitable, for years, they spend their time making artificial
roses in order to sell them to a local departmental store. Finally, Corinthians rebels and
secretly becomes the maid of the town’s “lady author.” This is the first step taken by
Corinthians to assert herself and step away from her father’s shadow. The value of this
effort, however, is dimmed by the lies and repression she must practice to sustain her
new life.
Her most important test comes when she meets and falls in love with Henry Porter,
who does yard work for a living. The pair date like teenagers, but Porter is never ready to
meet the Deads. Corinthians herself dreads her father’s reaction and is afraid of coming
out in the open with her relationship: “Corinthians knew she was ashamed of him, that she
would have to add him to the other secret, the nature of her work, that he could never set
foot in her house. And she hated him a lot for the shame she felt. . . . But those swift
feelings of contempt never lasted long enough for her to refuse those . . . sessions where
she was the sole object of someone’s hunger and satisfaction” (320). Despite her good
education, cultural exposure, and refinement, her role as an amanuensis constrains her
self-expressions and blocks her social channels. She has to hide from her mother the
truth about her job. She must hide her talents too: she dare not reveal to her boss that she
speaks fluent French. She must hide her love affair with a yardman who works for her
father. With these constraints, one sees that race, class, and her social conceptions of
literacy negate her ability to cultivate a life of her own.
Eventually, Porter forces Corinthians to make a choice between him and her father.
He tells her that she must defy her father or give up her lover. When Corinthians, who
perhaps was not so much in love with Porter as with the idea of “escape,” makes her
choice, she does so by subjugating and humiliating herself completely. She runs away
from her house in a desperate attempt to cling to Porter surrendering herself to him
completely, he being the only person who could take her away from her family of the
living dead: “Corinthians ran toward [her lover’s car], faster than she had ever run in
her life, faster than she’d cut across the grass on Honore Island when she was five and
the whole family went there for a holiday. Faster even than the time she flew down the
stairs having seen for the first time what the disease had done to her grandfather. . . .
Nothing except what her body needed to do to hang on, to never let go. Even if he
drove off at one hundred miles an hour, she would hang on” (324). By embracing a life
with Porter, Corinthians rejects her father’s false pretentions of being a part of the
“white” society. She is also unaware of the fact that Porter is a member of a secret
group called “Seven Days,” which functions in order to avenge the atrocities done on
the blacks by the whites. To live with Porter, she must subjugate herself utterly. For the
careful reader, this compromise calls into serious question the ultimate worth of
Corinthians’ choice.

38 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016

 According to Bakerman (1981, 563), in the novel Song of Solomon, each of the three
main women characters defines herself in accordance with the desire of the man on
whom she is dependent: Pilate sets out her life according to her father’s advice; Hagar
dies not being able to meet the expectations of Milkman’s desires; and Corinthians
abandons her self-respect to find work that is beneath her and to settle down with a man
who demands that she submit completely.
The success of Milkman’s journey, as Bloom (2009, 23-24) suggests, “depends in
large part on the string of female bodies, figuratively and literally, that he leaves along
his path.” They become sacrifices on the altar of his possibilities. In Song of Solomon, it
is striking that the female characters are consistently made the victims. That victimization
is also reflected in the character of Ruth, whose deviant actions to get pregnant are not
enough to save her future relationship with her husband or her son. In order to give birth
to Milkman, Ruth must forever give up physical relations with Macon. Ruth by seducing
her husband, who had not touched her in thirteen years, with a love potion given her by
Pilate, demeans herself as a woman. Later, she saves her unborn child’s life only through
Pilate’s intervention. However, once Milkman grows up into an adolescent, Ruth relinquishes
most of her motherly responsibilities. In fact, it seems that Ruth’s primary function in the
novel is only to give birth to Milkman, not to establish a serious relationship with him. Yet
according to Bloom (2009, 24), here is a woman who has lived a life of sacrifice, for
Macon’s rejection of her after Milkman’s birth essentially turns her into a nun. She gives
up herself on the altar of her male offspring. Not exactly a pathetic figure, Ruth is
nonetheless a sacrificial one, for her life must fade into the background as Milkman’s
rises to the forefront.
Her emotional sacrifices made for her son are perhaps more serious than those
made for Corinthians and Magdalene, i.e., if made at all. Therefore, the sisters find their
futures compromised to Milkman’s. Their father becomes bored with them when he gets
the opportunity to begin shaping Milkman in his image of entrepreneur. Though Macon
sends Corinthians to college, it is not because of any intrinsic evaluation of her worth on
his part; it is simply what a man of his means can do for his children, even if they were
female. He is unconcerned about his daughters as girls or as women. He continues to
take care of them, as the weaker and more useless sex, but they do not hold his interest,
as they cannot take up the responsibility of continuing the family line.
The effort made by Corinthians to attain freedom and improve her lifestyle also encourages
her sister Lena to speak up, who for the very first time confronts her brother Milkman,
making him aware of his selfishness and insensitivity: “Our girlhood was spent like a found
nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when
you wanted to play, we entertained you. . . . And to this day, you have never asked one of
us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. . . . Where do you get the right to
decide our lives?” (353). Here, Lena voices women’s hidden domestic resentment against
men, berating her brother for his chauvinism and acute lack of sensitivity and concern for
the suppressed lives of his sisters. Her intelligent speech demeans the “masculinity” of her
brother, making it clear that his position of privilege is only due to an accident of gender.

The Politics of Gender in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon 39

 Morrison’s delineation in her novel of feminist concerns is perhaps most clearly evident
in the female voices of dissent that operate in the last chapters of Song of Solomon.
Shalimar females such as Susan Byrd and Sweet are, by and large, remarkably unimpressed
by Solomon and by his transcendent act. Susan Byrd, in fact, openly criticizes him for his
desertion of Ryna and his offspring. The narrative here focuses primarily on the pain felt
by others as a consequence of his desertion.
When Sweet tries to force Milkman to consider the consequences of Jake’s
transcendent act by asking, “Who’d he leave behind?” Milkman still mesmerized by his
status as a descendant of such a magical figure, responds: “Everybody! He left everybody
down on the ground and he sailed on off like a black eagle” (531). Milkman’s desertion of
Hagar is similar to Jake’s abandonment of Ryna. It is only when Milkman is forced to
confront the consequences of his desertion of Hagar that he is capable of showing some
sensitivity to the socially irresponsible nature of his ancestor’s actions, and, further, of his
own (Awkward 1990, 495). By the end of the novel, both Milkman and the reader realize
the magnitude of the deserted female’s pain that results from such male acts of abandonment
and transcendence.
Surprisingly, the novel ends ironically as unlike the belief of one of Morrison’s male
protagonists, Guitar who thinks, “Everybody wants a black man’s life,” by portraying the
death of two women, Hagar and Pilate (363). Guitar deeply sympathizes with the destruction
wrought upon Hagar by Milkman. That he should kill Pilate in his effort to shoot Milkman
makes her the victim of communal, familial, and individual values. Both Pilate and Guitar
are equally committed to a sense of community and human relationships, yet in the novel
they are pitted against each other. It is not surprising that as a woman who dares to live
by her rules, Pilate must die.
In the novels of black women writers, several women claim ownership to a creative
voice which can connect generations. Women’s voices in these novels are like the caring
voices of mothers which can control and advice, yet love and care at the same time.
These voices make certain that the loss and sufferings endured by black women who
pass through the subjugated systems of slavery and racism would not be their ultimate
experience. Instead, their creative and gendered voices that connected one generation to
another were the true markers of the potential of their womanhood. The persistent echoes
of their songs maintain memories that assure the continuity of their cultural traditions
(Holloway 1994, 13). Morrison’s novels too reveal the complex and necessary presence
of women’s voices and song. Here one should consider Milkman’s acknowledgement of
the power he has gained from Pilate’s voice in Song of Solomon.
So powerful is Pilate’s voice that in the early pages of the novel, even the hardhearted
Macon finds himself “surrendering to the sound” of his sister’s song. Like his son, Macon
secretly misses Pilate’s nurturing presence. The legends of his ancestor, their lifeline
creatively wound into a song, draw Macon to his sister’s window. Macon is vulnerable to
her song of memories and succumbs, albeit briefly, to his link with the familial unit of the
three singing women—Pilate, her daughter Reba, and her granddaughter Hagar. Milkman
40 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016
too was habituated to listening to such songs sung by the three women whenever he
visited their home. At the end of the novel, the song appears again in its older, original
version. Here, the same song sung by children reminds Milkman of his own childhood,
and he realizes for the first time how physically close, yet spiritually deaf he has been to
the history that echoes in the music of his community. B

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42 The IUP Journal of English Studies • Vol. XI, No. 4, 2016

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