Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon
Constructions of Masculinity in the Narrative
The nobel-proze winning author's third novel explores the relationship between gender and race in the title character's search for his cultural heritage.
By primarily focalising Song of Solomon through its male protagonist, Toni Morrison offers her own interpretation of the black male narrative. Amongst the modern setting and Milkman’s complex racial history, Morrison explores the definition of masculinity in relation to economic responsibility, familial relationships, cultural heritage and the American context.
Milkman's character development
The journey and character development of Milkman Dead within the novel superficially conform to the odyssey genre in literature as he sets out on a tangible “quest” for his monetary inheritance, although he actually discovers a cultural heritage. Morrison, however, does not follow this classical structure directly, describing the novel in Harold Bloom’s companion as her “own giggle (in African-American terms) at the proto-myth of the journey to manhood.” Even though she retains the third-person style of this genre, the novel avoids its impersonality through the intimate and oral qualities of the narrative, allowing Milkman to be a human, rather than formulaic, hero.
The divide between north and south
The symbolic geography which Milkman covers plays an important role in Morrison’s construction of masculinity. The North of the USA remains a problematic space despite its increased opportunities and supposed freedom, which in Song of Solomon results in materialism and a compulsion to acquire perhaps ultimately resultant from its context in slavery.
Milkman’s father, trapped in this commercialism that negates his heritage, sets an example of manhood that Milkman himself interprets as self-definition. At the beginning of the novel, he is seduced by the “f***ing” (page 64) and money of false adulthood in the city which contrasts sharply with the characters he encounters with his family’s past.
In Shalimar, the locals even perceive his version of masculinity as an overt threat to their own; “he was telling them they weren’t men...that thin shoes and suits with vests…were the measure” (page 266). He is subsequently forced to forgo these trappings, literally by exchanging his clothes and figuratively in the knife-fight, the hunt and his unselfish attentions to Sweet. With the realisation that “all he had started out with on his journey was gone,” he can finally contemplate a definition of masculinity beyond the possessions which seem important in the North, because “out [t]here” in he South, “all a man had was what he was born with, or had learned to use” (page 277).
The value of black masculinity
Morrison believes men have “a definite need to exercise dominion over place and people” (cited in Bloom’s Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon) and thus, in both North and South, the male dilemma is inseparable from the larger implications of the culture of power and money. But, despite this basic need to ‘provide,’ pervasive racial oppression leaves black men as a possessive labour-force.
In Song of Solomon,the saw-mill owner’s offer of sweets and money to Guitar as compensation for Mr. Baines’ death demonstrates that he equates these things with the value of the man’s life.
Masculinity seems ultimately bound up with a mythic need for autonomy captured by Robert Smith’s announcement that he will “fly away on my own wings” (page 3). However, Morrison compromises the idealism promised by this gesture through Smith’s association with the “Seven Days” movement and the modern militaristic violence they represent.
Black militantism
Guitar may find empowerment in his comparative assumption of this role, presenting himself as a quasi-patriarchal figure who rejects his “slave status” (page 160) and that of the entire black community but his willingness to compromise his friend’s life reveals the moral impossibility of his situation. Using his role in the “Seven Days” to negotiate his public and political space as a black man, he mocks the regular values and activities of Southside and sees them as questioning own definition of masculinity based in violence.
Morrison describes maleness as “inherent” but, through the contrasting character of Guitar, she gives depth to the conceptions of manhood in Song of Solomon. As the childhood friends grow spectacularly apart, their differing opinions and paths prevent the relationship between gender and race from becoming limited or monotonic. These constructions of masculinity are complicated by the characters’ contact with the conflicting values of other individuals and socially constructed ideals.
Neither America’s North, which tends to over-idealise superficiality and possessions and create violence, nor the backward South which remains compromised by the oppression of closed communities and the enduring memory of slavery, can produce a satisfactory male identity. Milkman’s greater understanding and maturity is achieved not through the physical hardships and journey which he undergoes but his ability to place his individual experiences within the larger context of a black communal heritage which has been formed by the roles and values of others. Milkman is only able to perceive an identity for himself once he understands all the options which are available.
References:
Harold Bloom, ed. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999, pp. 195-208.
Morrison, Toni, 1977. Song of Solomon. London: Vintage.
