Additionally, Morrison compares the black men and women in Spring III to society’s gender parameters while also demonstrating the quiet resistance of black women. Black women have to “receive abuse” from their frustrated husbands after having “cleaned up the blood” from the beating they received from whites and “everybody in the world” can “give them orders” (138). The narrator describes how black men act like men, taking out their frustration and humiliation on their wives, beating them. Their wives take this abuse and tend to the house, doing all assortments of tasks, clearly depicting the ‘standard relationship’; the husband works for money, has more strength and power than his wife, and the wife tends to the house. However, Morrison undermines this norm by describing the jobs black women do. …show more content…
Morrison then lists through the variety of jobs black women must do in caring for their families, juxtaposing opposites such as cutting trees and umbilical cords, killing chickens and nurturing flowers, and baking and preparing the dead for burial. Throughout the passage, Morrison enforces the idea of the black woman working extremely hard. The word “plowed” brings to mind images of hours of long, grueling work under the hot Southern sun. Black women ran the houses of white families; they know where everything is, what they need to do, how to do everything. The phrase, and particularly the “and knew it,” implies a power and strength in their running of the house. The list and juxtaposition of tasks serve to demonstrate the variety and the extent of tasks black women must do, all while still receiving abuse from their frustrated husbands. Through this passage, Morrison at the very least suggests, if not outright demonstrates, the black woman, the wife, as the stronger of the two, contrary to the common societal norms set by society and previous