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First-Year Seminars Fourth Essay
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University:
Amherst College -
Course:
FYS 104 | Books on the Brain Academic year:
2010
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Views:
477
Pages:
10
Author:
River Whitaker
FYS 16: Fourth Essay (Dec. 5, 2010)
Two: Property
124
>How does 124 function as a character to limit and, perhaps ultimately, enable freedom?
This topic posed the challenge of (1) actually showing 124 as a character, not just as a setting for
the haunting and all the other business that goes on, and (2) addressing the “so what?” question.
There follow two complete essays with strengths on both counts, and an excerpt from a third
essay that looks at individual rooms (the shed and the keeping room) as well as all of 124. For a
good compilation of the passages where Morrison directly personifies 124, see Essay #1, ¶3 & ¶4.
Essay #1
124: ‚As though a house was a little thing‛
For freed slaves, nothing is sweeter than the transition from being owned to owning—
however, sometimes ‚the things you own end up owning you‛How do Ella’s and Stamp’s ways of compensating for personal loss reflect their
respective positions as woman and man or, alternatively, complicate assumptions about
gender?
The gender issues in this topic proved particularly challenging in the need to show how Stamp
and Ella are – or fancy themselves as – gender atypical, but remain nonetheless gendered. The
following essay uses the private/communal distinction to get leverage on this difficulty.
Essay #4
Rejecting an Identity to Save an Identity
Stamp and Ella remove themselves from the involvement in the private sphere of social
relations in order to save themselves from further pain inflicted from loss of someone close to
them. In different ways, they renounce or sacrifice their personal ties and invest them into the
community. This course of action they choose demands a creation of new identities for the
characters that do not fit into normal masculine and feminine spheres. While initially the means
they use to help may complicate or undermine their former gender identities, we see how this
combination instead forges a new identity that challenges preconceived notions of gender. Ella
and Stamp incorporate both of these aspects into their actions involving the aid of others.
We see some of Stamp Paid’s actions strongly reaffirm his place within the male identity.
Because this essay deals with generalizations made about gender, the image of the aloof male,
looking out for only himself, serves as an accurate representation of Stamp. This is accurate
when we view his renaming after he gives up his wife (218). Stamp stares into the face of his
oppressors and accepts the fact that he is better off alone. He does not and cannot take on the
burden of love and stands to fight by himself as man against the world. We see many instances
of stubborn refusal to open up in Morrison’s men. Paul D fights to hold onto his identity during
his many journeys. He says while settled in one place “Anything could stir him and he tried not
to love it” (316). Stamp also runs away from connections with people. He explains “whatever
(my) obligations were, that act paid them off” (218). He turns his back toward these obligations
that could stir him and remains his own man. However, this same lone wolf or “I am my own
hard nosed man” mentality undermines Stamp’s status as a man with a male identity. By
withdrawing from society in a way, by internalizing his feelings and avoiding the confrontation
with his own problems, Stamp admits his weakness, the fact that he is vulnerable. This debtless
attitude parallels Baby Suggs at the end of her life. Stamp makes the comparison himself when
FYS 16: Fourth Essay (Dec. 5, 2010)
8 he says, “(This tiredness) must be what Baby Suggs felt when she lay down and thought about
color for the rest of her life” (208). She reaches a certain point in her life and gives in, retreats to
her obsession with color. Stamp is no different in this regard when he shuts himself out of the
world of other people around him, admitting the outside forces of slavery have beaten him.
When we view Stamp in this way, we see a weakness in his lack of confrontation. He is no Nat
Turner set to destroy his oppressors. He is no Paul D either. Notice the contrast in Paul D’s
actions when he enters 124 and physically removes the ghost from the house for a time and says
“You want to fight, come on!” (22). This stands out as a moment when a man battles adversity
head on. Contrast this to Stamp’s interaction with 124 and the supernatural happenings. He hears
the odd voices, and plagued by guilt and unable to know how to respond to Sethe, he cannot even
knock at the door (203). Stamp’s retreat from owing anyone and his independence as a man do
not simply reaffirm his status as a man but show how he becomes something else, something
more feminine in his submissive nature. For much of this story, we see male characters a male
identity as someone in charge while female characters often relent to the forces around them.
Stamp’s typically uncharacteristic action in this example illustrates the blurring of his standard
male identity.
Ella, similar to Stamp Paid does not have personal ties to others. After she leaves the
ownership of “the lowest yet”, we see how her owners took part of her female identity from her.
Their sexual violations of her lead Ella to stop loving other people. She turns inward as Stamp
does for a while, and like Stamp she exchanges her commitment to the private life and channels
her efforts into the community. In much of her exchange with Stamp Paid about Paul D, we do
not see Ella as a typically caring or motherly type of woman. She knows Paul D is without a
home but does not feel the need to extend her home to him (220-221). Contrast this woman with
other female figures. We see how Sethe is defined by motherhood when she expresses her
extreme anguish from the violation of the schoolteacher’s nephews occurs because they took her
ability to be a mother, a provider for her child, away from her (20). When we look beyond
motherhood as a marker for female identity, we see women as typically social beings, beings
generally found more connected to a sense of community than their male counterparts. For
example Baby Suggs is tied to family and community, so much that when she is void of these
connections, she does not recognize herself as separate from those around her: “Fact was she
knew more about them than she knew about herself” (165). She finally breaks down because of
all the community she had around her is lost.
On the surface, we see very little of this desire to be part of a group or a need to be
needed in Ella. Even when she makes the journey with the thirty other women, we see her as
noticeably separate from the group. We see the divide between Ella and the women in the
following dialogue from page 302:
“Shall we pray?” asked the women.
“Uh-huh,” said Ella.
Ella is separate from the collective voice of the other women. And this is what she wants.
Morrison writes of Ella, “Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had…” (301).
She does not want to be loved and does not love because of its hampering effects and its ability
to cause much suffering. She instead chooses to be free to do her own thinking and perform her
FYS 16: Fourth Essay (Dec. 5, 2010)
9 own life this way because the forces that influences the other women, emotions and the sense of
connectedness, “clouded things and prevented action” (301). This direct approach mirrors the
previously mentioned image of Paul D smashing the ghost out of the possessed house.
So it would appear that Ella does not fulfill the role of a woman based on her separation
from the community and refusal to love. We believe this because Ella chooses to believe this, but
her actions are not so definitive in clouding her female identity. She may be an angry and solitary
woman, but she is not void of compassion and sympathy. She is the woman who convinces the
other that intervention is in order at 124. She hides her compassion for the Sethe and Denver
behind an objective sense of justice, and she explains her practical reasoning and says, “she
didn’t mind a little communication between the two worlds, but this was an invasion” (302). By
acting so directly to solve a problem, Ella thus extends her abilities to another and actually
displays a motherly or nurturing attitude toward the family at 124. Separate from conventional
womanhood, Ella creates her own female identity by incorporating aspects of more masculine
agenda with latent feelings of understanding that are found in both men and women. Stamp Paid
similarly redefines what it is to perform a male role by at times acting out of the male context.
Stamp Paid also extends himself to others seeking help. He directly gets involved in the
freedom of others by helping pay off debts or helping people escape entirely from their masters
(218). We see these actions as openly male in nature, straightforward and practical, much like
Ella’s dealing with the exorcism is, but it is important to notice the difference in what Stamp
Paid does. He gets directly involved with the lives of others, but through secrecy and indirection.
He acts in a fatherly way, trying to protect Paul D from the truth like he would keep things from
a child (181-183). We see here how he directly takes the initiative to put the well-being of
another at the forefront when acting, but he does so by hiding information from Paul D. Even
when he does decide to tell Paul about Sethe, he does not do so himself but must use the
newspaper clipping because he does not have the ability to say it himself. After this
confrontation, Paul D encounters Sethe frankly tells her “You got two feet Sethe, not four” (194).
He does not subtly suggest what she did was wrong through other means as Stamp does, but
derides her, telling her that what she did confirms every notion white people have about blacks at
the time. But the question then becomes: was Stamp’s way of handling this better than Paul D’s?
Stamp still withholds information from Paul D, and the man falls apart. Through this
uncharacteristically mild or passive, stereotypically female, attempt, Stamp directly makes the
best out of horrible truth for Paul D.
Stamp Paid and Ella experience tremendous hardship that tears away their respective,
traditional gender roles. And so they embrace this loss by turning their backs on their loss, and
what it meant, and in a sense turn from that personal interaction and become organizers whose
goal is to help the people around them. On their own, it appears that their suffering renders them
gender neutral, without an identity to relate to. Their actions in both in dealing with their own
selves and in creating a chance for the freedom of others forge new identities that are not tied
down to one specific set of standards. Stamp Paid and Ella disregard gender expectations, and by
doing so, incorporate new attributes and values into their identities.
FYS 16: Fourth Essay (Dec. 5, 2010)
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