Magdalen Feminist Ideas In The Song Of Solomon

In Toni Morrison’s novel The Song of Solomon she emphasizes many current and upcoming feminist ideas throughout the story. Magdalene called Lena Dead embodies second wave feminist and postfeminist ideas by fitting into certain stereotypes while being a secretly strong side character as well.
“Magdalene called Lena” is first portrayed in the dramatic first chapter when Robert Smith, a “North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock” (19) on Wednesday, February 18, 1931. Her mother “dropped her covered peck basket, spilling red velvet rose petals” (21) upon Robert Smith’s leap to his death. “The wind blew them about, up, down, and into small mounds of snow.” Morrison describes as she creates a scene of chaos with a man dead, a women singing, and people bustling to help the daughter of the notorious doctor.

From when she was a little girl and thought of money and hard work instead of her mother in labor to when she finally yelled at Milkman like she wanted to for years. In between she goes through about thirty years of abuse from her father and brother and supporting her mother through the ups and downs. She is strong but submissive. She is human. She does not have to be the embodiment of emotional and physical strength like Pilate. She does not have to be the embodiment of intellectual strength like First Corinthians. She does not have to be the embodiment of no strength like her mother. She’s human, and therefore she represents some undeniable stereotypes such as love as an ideal; but she changes the ideal; instead of loving a man, she loves her mother with all she has and stays, in a house she likely hates, to protect her. She embodies femininity at some point and strength at others—something feminists have been trying to prove for centuries go hand in hand—she’s an oxymoron in the eyes of most