The Power of an Outsider

This passage from early in the book details the character Paul D, focusing on the way he interacts with women, and it is split into two parts; it starts by describing him and his effect on women and follows by saying what they confide in him about.

"Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make a woman cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women saw him and wanted to weep--to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and mad them sad; that secretly they longed to die--to be quit of it--that sleep was more precious to them than any walking day. Young girls sidled up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitation were that had followed them straight from their dreams."(20)

The first sentence is a shock factor: the convivial Paul D up to this point didn't seem like someone who would "make a woman cry". But while typically that phrase means a man physically hurting a woman and the woman crying in pain and fright, the context Morrison gives changes it into a different scene. The women aren't the sort to cry at physical pain but do so as a confession of their emotional pain, and the man is the passive character instead of the women.

This takes the stereotypical image of the scene we expect--the man with hand raised to strike the weeping woman--and juxtaposes it against the man a mellow listener and the woman with the initiative. In the expected scene, the women is clearly a victim because she is crying and a man is the cause. In Morrison's version, the crying woman also evokes the knowledge that she is a victim, but the man who made her cry is clearly not the bully who caused her the hurt. By putting the hurt in the past but making the crying a secret confession that only happens in the present, Morrison disconnects action and response and reveals that women can be hurt victims even if they are not crying at that moment--and you may never notice because they can be other things while still being a victim; it doesn't have to define them.

Moving past the revelation of the first sentence, the first section as a whole draws your attention to the fact that Paul D has an uncommon power, "something blessed in his manner", and that it changes the typical dynamic between men and women to allow more openness between them. Strong women and wise women are specifically mentioned as people who come to him and tell him things; these are people whose very identity relies on keeping a strong mask, having no flaws or keeping secrets "for the greater good" and not for emotional happiness. They tell him "things they only told each other", things that they are so tight-lipped about that they only trust it to people who they know will have the same viewpoint and come to the same judgement as themselves: essentially, they only trust themself. And yet they trust him. Why? I propose this is the power of an outsider. As long as he's friendly enough they don't think he'll betray them out of spite, the more different from the women he is, the more likely they are to trust him with their secrets. This is because by being different, he is less likely to judge them if they tell him about what hurts them or weighs on their mind. Everyone is afraid that what they find painful will be dismissed by others as nothing, and they will be judged weak. These women can't afford to have that judgement. But because he's a drifter and not entrenched in the life and roles they are, he's not in a position to judge them. A key part of that is the fact that he's male; in this time, men and women were completely different, going by the common sentiment that women are a mystery expressed by men and the simple explanation "men" given by women. By being a man, there is an extra barrier set up between him and the confident that prevents him from comparing their pain to his, and thus they feel safe enough to trust he won't try to invalidate their pain.

<4/13/15 Edit: I changed the order of the coloring so more of the text is in the easy-to-read purple.>