Sula Hannah Character Analysis

Hannah takes Eva’s boisterous nature as callousness, as she is not a strong individual or mother figure like Eva. Hannah unlike Eva is a dispassionate mother. Hannah hasn’t faced squalid demeaning conditions faced by Eva, as Eva takes care of her and Sula. Sula her daughter, has no true love for Hannah. This creates a conflict between her and Sula, and this distances them forever and Hannah does not try to correct Sula’s indifferences, as a responsible mother. Moreover, there is no great attachment between Hannah and Sula. When Hannah is dying on account of accidental fire, Eva comes to her rescue, but Sula watches her mother burn in fire indifferently. Eva sees “Sula standing on the back porch just looking” (78) at Hannah burn in utmost

After having undergone, similar challenging and demanding circumstances, Hannah, and Sula understand the tripartite subjection under which black women are forced to live. After becoming a mother, Hannah understands the nuances of motherhood, while Sula does not dare to take the route to motherhood. Eva is a free black mother, who embraces autonomy, sexuality and motherhood with equal aplomb, pride and fondness. Motherhood to her is a site of resistance, resilience, happiness, empowerment, emancipation and the greatest reason to live. Eva plays the roles of live giver, nurturer, protector, dictator, and a compassionate destroyer to the fullest, unparalleled by any other woman character in the novel. She exists as an intriguing, unconventional, yet assertive mother figure in a free maternal space, loving and caring for Hannah, Plum, Sula and many other motherless

The absence of protection and support may be pointing to the historical experience of African Americans: the historical experience of African Americans have had some effects on how women, men, and children express tenderness, affection, protection, and support to each other. This novel illustrates how important the role of mother is. Helene is in some sense trying to protect her daughter named Nel Wright, she is thought to be a good, quite and an obedient girl by her mother but the ways in which she does so are not encouraging the development of Nel’s self-worth. Although being a mother is everything Helene has wished for, her relationship with her daughter is complicated. Part of problem might be the fact that Helene herself struggled in her relationship with her own mother since she has been ashamed of her mother’s occupation as a prostitute. Helene feels that her family is flawed. Helene finally escapes her Creole family, which she views as shameful, in her marriage to Willey Wright who brings her to the town Medallion. The Wright family enjoys living their life following the town’s standards and Helene stands in complete opposition to her mother when she becomes highly conservative and religious. When Helene’s daughter is born, it is “more comfort and purpose than she (Helene) had ever hoped to find in this life” (18). Wiley is