Shadow Of Shame

Shadow of Shame

An Interpretation of Toni Morrison's 1920

It is a basic human desire to be proud of our heritage. We'd like to proudly proclaim where we hail from, and who our "people" are. For some, however, heritage is something that must be overcome, rather than celebrated. Such is the case for central characters Helene and Nel in Toni Morrison's 1920, an excerpt from her novel Sula.

Morrison weaves a tale of a mother and daughter who travel south to New Orleans in hopes that they will arrive before Helene's critically ill grandmother, Cecile, passes away. On the long trip south, Nel finds that as the landscape outside the train window changes, the seemingly proud, strong layers that she has viewed as the embodiment of her mother, Helene, are gradually stripped away, like the bark of a dying oak tree. What is left behind is merely a weak inner core. Unfortunately, Helene and Nel arrive too late; Cecile has died. This event leads to Nel unexpectedly meeting her maternal grandmother, and the brief encounter along with what she's witnessed during the trip direct Nel to vow that she will emerge from the shadow of shame cast by her heritage, and eventually become "wonderful". (pg 566)

Nel wasn't the first daughter in the family to feel that she had something to overcome. Helene Sabat, Nel's mother, was born the child of a Creole whore who worked behind the red shutters of Sundown House. She spent her first sixteen years being raised by her grandmother, Cecile, who "Ð'...took Helene away from the soft lights and flowered carpets of the Sundown House and raised her under the dole-some eyes of a multicolored Virgin Mary, counseling her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her mother's wild blood." (pg 560) The upbringing was filled with strict rules and forced religious conventionality in hopes that Helene would rise above her mother's legacy.

In an attempt to escape her mother's brazen life, Helene marries her grandmother's great-nephew and escapes to Medallion, where she becomes a conservative, respectable woman; as respected as a black woman could be in a northern town in 1920. She keeps a perfect house, worships in the most conservative black church in the Bottom, and raises her daughter, Nel. To those in Medallion, Helene is a model citizen. She spends much of her time suffocating her daughter's creativity: "Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground." (pg 561) Despite this, Nel seems to adore her mother.

The story is set during a time when segregation and racism were rampant. It is, therefore, not surprising that when Helene received word that her grandmother was dying; she was reluctant to travel south to New Orleans. She felt, though, that she had overcome her heritage and was therefore armed to make the obligated trip: "Helene thought about the trip South with heavy misgiving but decided that she had the best protection: her manner and her bearing, to which she would add a beautiful dress." (pg 561)

The beautiful new dress that Helene wore as protective armor was not enough to shield her from the cruelty that racism allows to prevail, and Helene was gradually stripped of her protective surface. To begin the trip, Helene is humiliated by the racist, white conductor for mistakenly entering through the "whites only" car. The conductor asks "What you think you doin', gal?" (pg 562) After explaining that it was a mistake, she is further humiliated by the conductor who admonishes "We don't Ð''low no mistakes on this train. Now git your butt on in there." (pg 562) All of the colored people on the train were witnessing this exchange, when, for "no earthly reason, certainly no reason that Nel understood then or later, she smiled." (pg 562) This smile alienates Helene from the other passengers, and is Nel's first indication that her mother may not be all that Nel believed she was.

Nel