Females and Flowers

"Beloved was shining and Paul D didn't like it. Women did what strawberry plants did before they shot out their thin vines: the quality of the green changed. Then the vine threads came, then the buds. By the time the white petals died and the mint-colored berry poked out, the leaf shine was gilded tight and waxy. That's how Beloved looked--gilded and shining. Paul D took to having Sethe on walking, so that later, when he went down the white stairs where she made bread under Beloved's gaze, his head was clear." (76)

This paragraph starts the seventh chapter by comparing women to flowers. Cliche. But, as shown in my previous post, Morrison enjoys taking advantage of cliche's to shock the reader out of their assumptions. Typically, when women are compared to flowers, it is to emphasize their delicacy, or or propose that their beauty blooms in adulthood (or snidely claim it fades just as fast). Morrison, however, kills the flower in favor of the fruit. She skips any description of a flower's beauty, going straight from bud to "the time the white petals died." Instead, she focuses on the shine of the leaves when the plant is laden with fruit. Though poems wax eloquent about women's beauty, beauty by itself is no use. Paul D focuses on the appearance of the leaves not because leaves are inherently beautiful like a flower, but because they gain beauty because of what they represent: the fruit hiding hiding behind the foliage--the sexual maturity contained within Beloved's body. When Morrison mocks the cliche of women as flowers with her own interpretation, she says that though a women may be apotheosized as a an object of great beauty, those who worship them as such only do so in an attempt to separate themselves from the base urges that are what actually rule their wonder.

Obliquely, this passage also comments on the conception of women and their role in society. Nobody plants strawberries for their flowers; they are delicate and beautiful, but all they matter for the gardener is that they indicate the coming of juicy, delicious fruit that you can actually eat. By comparing women to strawberry plants, Morrison could be indicating that she believes people raise girls into women for the concrete goal of having someone who can have sex and conceive.

Later in the passage, Paul D's movement through the house is a symbol. In this line, he is descending, commonly and allusion to Hell or a hero's difficult trials. Yet Morrison makes sure to include the descriptor "white" when referencing the stairs he walks down, invoking images of purity or innocence which are not usually associated with a dark challenge the hero must face and conquer. His trial is, atypically, travelling into Beloved's pure domain and not tainting it with impure actions. In order to do so, he requires a "clear" mind, purified of unclean urges by sating them with sex with Sethe.

Inappropriate sexual desire is something that plagues Paul D and must be continually overcome because he never actually defeats it: he never shows that he has the straight will to resist the temptation of Beloved, but instead staves off the need to flat out face the issue by reducing his sexual appetite copulating with Sethe. This is a setup for the future scene where he is seduced by Beloved and can't find the willpower to resist.

Integral to this problem facing Paul D is how he views sexual desires. He doesn't hold the mindset that a person is entirely responsible for controlling how they express their urges or he would be able to resist completely the first time he was tempted by Beloved. Instead, he turns to swapping out the object of his sexual desire with someone more appropriate so he doesn't have to shut down the feelings. This belief can be argued to create a more rape-friendly society or mindset because it creates arguments like "she shouldn't have been wearing such revealing clothing if she didn't want to risk anything," where the onus is on the women to change their appearance instead of the men to control their reaction to sexual desire. Paul D isn't one of those people; by having sex with Sethe so he can be "clear"-minded around Beloved, he is obviously taking actions to control his reaction to sexual desire. But his inability to face desire head-on and deny it action is what allows his illicit liaisons with Beloved and is what is interesting about his relationship to sex.