LITR 5731: Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Sample Student Midterm, Fall 2007

Jennifer Rieck

30 September 2007

Ruth:  She’s “Alone in this World, and a Fucked up World it is too”

Unlike the Ruth of The Bible’s Old Testament who was loved and who functioned as a participatory member of her tribe of people, the character Ruth in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon is alone in the world, with no tribe of her own, no people to call her own, no village men and women to instill in her and instruct her in the ways of living and loving.  Growing up without a mother, a female role model, Ruth’s growth as a person and as a woman is stunted.  Without her mother, her identity formation is incomplete and misguided, taking on an obsessive, consuming and engulfing quality.  Her oppressive relationship with her husband prevents her further from forming her identity, and thus leaving her with no voice of her own and the inability to make her own choices in life.  In this way she becomes an object.  Through examples provided by Frederick Douglass in his Narrative, and Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, we see how Ruth’s life so closely parallels the life of a slave, a thing, a piece of property, an object.

To begin with, Ruth is treated as an object by her whole family beginning with her father, Dr. Foster, but especially by her husband, Macon Dead.  Macon creates Ruth’s status as object through both physical and emotional abuse, and alienation.  It is evident from the beginning of the novel that she is completely under her husband’s control and daily subjected to his will.  She is treated as a thing and not a person.  He maintains his power over her by several methods, in much the same way that slave owners and drivers kept power over their slaves.  Frederick Douglass in his Narrative explains some of the various ways he witnessed slaves being kept under control.  One such way was through emotional abuse and terrorism.  He writes that a slave “can seldom do anything to please” his master or mistress, and that they are frequently given the lash for the slightest misdeed (341).   He continues on that slaves “never knew when they were safe from punishment.  They were frequently whipped when least deserving” (351).   Harriet Jacobs reinforces these statements in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  She describes the many situations where dominance is lorded over slaves, all done in attempts to keep the power status quo.  For instance, Jacob’s master tries to bully her when he remarks “Do you know that I have a right to do as I like with you, - that I can kill you, if I please?” (484). Later she is physically attacked by her owner, but told that she “was wholly to blame for it” (485).  Slaves, as modeled in these two slave narratives, were treated as nonhumans, as ani
mals, as objects to be completely controlled, scared, and manipulated.  Their humanity and dignity was stolen from them, and left them incomplete and empty.  Just like in the slaves stories mentioned above, Ruth is treated in an inhumane and undignified manner.  No matter what she says or does, nothing is ever good enough for Macon, and he makes sure she suffers emotionally for it just like slave masters did.  For example, Ruth works hard to have dinner ready for her husband when he returns home from work each day.  She prepares the meals for him, sits down to eat with him and tries to make conversation.  But instead of participating in it, Macon hurls insults at her, criticizing her cooking and conversation.  So, Macon uses verbal and emotional abuse as one way of maintaining control of her and keeping her status of object.  Like a slave master, another method Macon uses to exert control over Ruth is physical abuse.  When he tires of Ruth’s conversation, he punches her in the face thus silencing her into submission.  This is akin to what Douglas describes regarding a slave that was once silenced in his presence.  The slave was fitted with a metal bit that was placed in his mouth to prevent him from speaking.  We also see Ruth’s subservience to Macon when, during a conversation he and Milkman were having in the kitchen, Macon orders Ruth upstairs, much like a child would be told, but certainly not another adult, not an equal, but a thing, an object.  Ruth obeys his command immediately and without hesitation or resistance.  And a third way in which Macon treats Ruth as an object is by keeping her alienated from her immediate family, her extended family, and the people of her community.  Macon clearly disapproves of the relationship between Ruth and her father, and the best way to put an end to that familial connection, he believed, was to bring an end to Dr. Foster’s life.  Ruth thinks that Mason killed her father by throwing away his medicine.  As Ruth explains, her father was the only person who ever truly cared for and loved her.  Her mother was dead, and so played no role in Ruth’s life.  So growing up with only one parent makes her especially close to her father.  But Macon is overly suspicious and quite jealous of their relationship.  Because of this, his narrations concerning their relationship are unreliable.  He describes how, after seeing Ruth lying next to her father in his death bed with her father’s fingers in her mouth, he comes to despise her.  In addition to that, Macon holds a grudge against the two of them resulting from the time he asked Ruth to help him secure a loan from her father, but was refused by both.  The fact that Ruth did not rescue Macon adds to his hatred of her.  As a consequence of this, he endeavors to break their familial bond, inflict pain on them because he too felt pain.  To accomplish this end, he discards of Dr. Foster’s much-needed medication.  This begins the first step toward alienating Ruth.  He seeks to separate her from her only loving relationship thereby ensuring her loneliness and lack of love.  In this emotional state, Ruth becomes easier to control, easier to be a thing, easier to be an object rather than a thinking, feeling human being.   

In addition to keeping Ruth away from her father, Macon also tries to alienate her from her own son.  During one of their Sunday outings to Honore’, the family crowds into the Packard with Milkman sandwiched between his parents in the front seat (32).  His childish stature prevents him from taking in the passing scenery, but is “not allowed to sit on his mother’s lap during the drive – not because she wouldn’t have it, but because his father objected to it” (32).  Soon after, Milkman is in need of a restroom break, but is too young to handle the situation on his own (35).  Ruth’s, just like any mother’s first response, is to help her child when needed, but Macon prevents this natural reaction from occurring and instead dictates that one of his daughters should tend to the deed.  Because of Macon’s hatred for Ruth and nefarious suspicions of her relationship with the child, he attempts to destroy their bond and sever their relationship forever.  It is evident from this encounter that Macon endeavored, beginning in Milkman’s early childhood, to build a wall of separation between mother and child.  All of Ruth’s love and aspirations were devoted to and surrounded her son, but Macon nevertheless undertook the task of blunting their relationship.  He desired to take the last best thing in the world that was hers, the object of her strongest affections, and leave her alone in the world, alienated from all other living souls.  Macon, as a father, stole his son’s relationship with his mother, just as he believed that Ruth’s father stole his relationship with his wife.  This egregious act of despotism confirms Macon’s status as the authority figure, the dominant force in the power structure of their family, while concretizing Ruth’s status as object – a thing to be controlled and manipulated with no will of her own.  Ironically, though Ruth adores her son, the feelings are not mutual.  When Milkman reaches maturity, he realizes that he has always viewed his mother as “too insubstantial” and had never “thought of his mother as a person, a separate individual” (75).  To him as well, Ruth is an object unworthy of love and respect, and becomes completely alienated from her family.

Kimberly Pritchard argues in her mid-term paper for the spring 2006 offering of this course, that Ruth and her father were involved in an incestuous relationship, and that she sought solace in “her oddly incestuous memories of her deceased father.”  This statement highlights exactly the notion that Ruth is voiceless in this novel.  It is unclear as to whether or not an affair between the two actually occurs.  The only evidence for this accusation comes in the form of hearsay.  The reader believes it is true, but only because Macon says so.  Ruth’s life is told through Macon’s voice and not her own.  I believe that Macon is an unreliable source for this information because of his hatred for the pair relating to the loan he asked for but did not receive.  Macon sees what he wants to see when it comes to Ruth; he wants to punish her for what he considers to a betrayal regarding the loan.  And finally, he wishes to smear her name in front of Milkman to further separate the mother and son, ensuring again that Ruth is alienated, and to justify his physical abuse of Ruth.  Ruth is never even given the chance to defend herself against these accusations.  Her life is not even her own to narrate for herself.  She has no choice and no voice in life, all pointing to the fact that Ruth is an object, a thing, a nonhuman, an unperson. 

Ruth’s status as object as exemplified through her voicelessness and choicelessness is further indicated by her lack of an identity.  It is interesting that Ruth is raised by her father alone, and that her mother is taken from her at an early age by death.  This parallels the life of Douglass as well.  He imparts in his Narrative that he too was separated from his mother as an infant, and that, during slavery it was “a common custom …to part children from their mothers at a very early age (340).”  He posits that this practice can only be done “to hinder the development of the child’s affection…and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child (340).”  Though the children Douglass speaks of were practically orphaned, they were “placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor” (340), who provided guidance and structure for their developing minds.  Ruth is not this fortunate.  She grows up without motherly affection, and without a female role model to gently but assuredly educate her on the ways of family life.  Because her mother is dead, she never learns the appropriate boundaries of familial love – where to draw the demarcation line between the love for a father, a husband, or a son.  Due to the fact that Macon keeps Ruth alienated from her sister-in-law Pilate and nieces Reba and Hagar, she is excluded from a tribe of women who could have positively influenced her life.  It could be said that Ruth never even had it as good as slave children did when it came to having a nurturing female relationship.  Ruth needed what Hagar needed, what all women need:

A chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her – and the humor with which to live it (Morrison 307).

If she had had this support system, perhaps Ruth would have cultivated a healthier relationship with her father, husband, and son.  Her love for the men in her life would not have been so needy, so strangulating, desperate and obsessive.  If she could have been taught by her mother or a community of women, like Pilate and Reba, to love herself, she would not have been forced to look to the men of her life to create her identity.

            Another poignant aspect regarding Ruth’s identity stems from the absence of her mother.  Douglass relates how children, especially during slavery, “follow the condition of their mothers” (341).  Ruth has no mother to speak of, and because of this lacks direction in life, lacks a lineage, a history, a tribe.  Slave children received their identities from their mother; they knew their station in life, and through their mothers they learned behaviors properly befitting them.  They knew what to expect or not to expect out of life, they knew their boundaries and limits.  Because Ruth grows up without her mother, she is deficient in these qualities.  She grows up starved for love and attention, and the resulting factor is that her love becomes obsessive, heavy, and stifling.   She even seems to take on her mother’s role in the house by doing motherly chores, caring for her father, and ending each night with a kiss in the lips.  So her relationship with her father becomes a bit unnatural, and her role of daughter is blurred as she is forced to take on her mother’s responsibilities.  In addition to her awkward relationship with her father, relations between her and her son are also strange.  Once again starved for the love of her only parent, her dead father, and the love and affection of a caring husband, she focuses inwardly all her emotions on her son, while outwardly she breastfeeds him letting her love flow through him.  But the breastfeeding is not the problem; instead it is that she nourishes him to what would seem to most as an inappropriate age.   

            The poem “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes personifies Ruth’s story.  All her hopes for love and attention go unanswered by the men of her life.  Her dreams “dried up like a raisin in the sun” and left her hungry and empty.  The weight of her unrequited love proved a heavy burden for Ruth, or as Hughes would have asserted, it “just sags like a heavy load.”  Hughes also asks the question if our hopes and dreams can “explode” either into or out of existence.  This is not the case with Ruth.  There are no explosions, no fireworks, no bell that tolls for her.  Instead, like the dried raisin she shrivels away unnoticed, never to be heard of again in the novel.  Clearly Ruth was not a complete person, but not of her own doing.  She was a victim of her circumstances, a ghost that makes itself known from time to time, slipping into and out of existence, a vaporous, almost invisible object.       

Finally, the Ruth of The Bible’s Old Testament is the antithesis of Morrison’s Ruth.  The former was a widow so dedicated to her deceased husband’s family that she vowed wherever they wandered she would follow, that their people would be hers, their tribe would be hers, and their fate would be hers too.  Through her husband she gained an identity, an extended family and a community, but mostly a mother figure who advised her and shaped her, taught her the ways of survival and of life and love.  Morrison’s Ruth is not this lucky.  She’s motherless, fatherless, and for all intents and purposes, husbandless and childless.  She is forbidden by Macon to associate with her extended family, and loses out on a community of women who could have schooled her on many of life’s lessons, provided moral support, and given her a sense of identity.  Unfortunately this Ruth is not a whole person; she has no identity of her own, only that of her father’s then her husband’s, she is treated as an object versus being treated as a real person, has no voice and makes no choices of her own.  She exemplifies perfectly the concept of a double minority – a female who lacks representation and autonomy, as well as a “lemony” brown African American woman who neither fits in with darker skinned blacks or dominant whites.  Ruth stands alone in her fucked up life, alone in her fucked up family and alone in a fucked up world.