Sula by Toni Morrison is a book that tackles many topics that are still relevant today but one of the reasons why this book is my favorite book of all time is because of the way it approaches gender roles and plays with what true freedom looks like for women. The novel takes place from 1919 to1965, a time when women did not have the same rights that they do today and more strict gender roles were enforced, and while the end of this book takes place 57 years ago many of these topics are still relevant today. The main character Sula is hard to pin down and maybe even a little hard to understand at times but I think that is the point. Sula defies traditional gender norms for her time and even things that are still considered proper today. Sula rejects the traditional role of a woman in her town because she refuses to accept the taboo of sex, racism, and even class definitions that are forced on many people in her community. One example of this that we see in the book is the fact that Sula is a sexually liberated woman. Her actions push back on the long-held belief that men are more sexual than women and are judged less harshly for sleeping with whoever they want to sleep with. She is arguably one of the only truly free characters in the whole book, while at times, her actions may seem selfish or detrimental to other people she’s unapologetically living for herself, something that many other women in the bottom cannot say for themselves. The women in her town do not only hate her because she sleeps with their husbands, they hate her because she is a living breathing reminder of the freedom they could have had and the traps they live in. 

“‘You think I don’t know what your life is like just because I ain’t living it? I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Dying., Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.’ (Morrison 143).

Sula lives her life radically free because she is the only woman in the novel who consistently chooses herself. Being selfish all the time is not great, but women sometimes have to be more selfish than men because the cards that life hands us are not always fair.

In this interview Morrison asnwers the question how do we survive whole in a world where we are all victims of something? Her response gives more insight into how we can view Sula’s behavior in the novel. 

Selena Rodas