Toni Morrison's Paradise

Toni Morrison's Paradise. What is it about? Women treated poorly by men and by other women, but not as poorly by other women as by men? Is it about the notion of paradise itself and what we as humans do, what we go through to try to come as close to paradise as possible? Is it about the things that get in our way as we attempt to create, to wrest paradise from the grasp of our imaginations? Is it about the vast divides between men and women, between Black and White, between light and dark, good and evil? It is about all of the above.

Which was Paradise? Was it Ruby, or Haven before it? Was it the "Convent?" We are set up to think that Paradise is the town of Ruby, or at least Ruby was created by a group of proud, strong Black people, men really, to be a Paradise. They were people whose parents had risen from the fetters of slavery to become prominent in their society. But it was a society that could not abide the rise of such people, a society in which slavery may have been abolished but where racism thrived. In such a society, these proud Black people were diminished; their attempts to rise rejected.

The leaders of this group of people, men who were leaders of their community, led their families to the promise land, as their fathers had guided them by the vision of one of the most prominent of their elders. Like their father before them, the twin leaders of this group attempted to carve Paradise from the harsh ground of rural Oklahoma. It seemed that they had succeeded. Apart from all other humanity, except for the rare visitor, they thrived, interacting with other communities only to trade goods. They were self-sufficient...for the most part.

And then there was the convent. The convent, originally a school for girls, eventually became a haven for lost women who had suffered at the hands of men, who were not protected by their mothers, themselves sufferers at the hands of men. These were women who stumbled upon the convent accidentally, fortuitously, and they came with burdens on their backs, carrying their pain and trouble tightly wrapped in transparent packages.

These women were very different in temperament and character. They weren't all compatible when they arrived and even as they tried to coexist. Yet Connie, a strong, mystical woman of Latin origins, a rescued orphan herself, served as the glue to hold the motley group together. The timid, the bold, the scandalous, the steadfast, the caring, the carefree, the open and the closed, all coexisted at the convent. They were cared for, they were respected, they were free to be. How could they, who arrived at the convent even by accident, leave such a place where they had felt no such freedom before? For those weary, and wary of being prey, even the pull of family and loved ones could only remove them from the convent temporarily.

The women at the convent interacted with the town of Ruby much like those of Ruby interacted with the world at large. They ventured into Ruby when needed, but they were not a part of the town, were not accepted by the townspeople much the way that the townspeople had not been accepted by others along their journey to find a home. A few of the townsfolk had reason to make the journey to the convent; generally women, but two men as well.

The women of the town who had short extended stays a few days or weeks at the town, arrived there like the women who lived their, carrying their pain and troubles in translucent containers. Other women dropped by ostensibly to buy the various things that the women, primarily Connie, produced at the convent. But one wonders if they got more than they purchased. It seems as though they felt something at the convent that they could not find in Ruby or elsewhere.

The two men that were frequent visitors also seemed to find something that they could not find in Ruby. They found women of a sort that could not be found in Ruby or any other town they knew. Was it the freedom of these women? Was it the desperate passion that could only be encountered in those so pained and unbound? Strange as it may seem, it was through and because of these men that the women of the town developed bonds with the women of the convent. The wife of one of the men who found another part of himself with Connie became friends with Connie despite the betrayal. The pregnant girlfriend/victim of the nephew of one the town's leaders was accepted as freely as any at the convent.

The story is spun so that the apparently tightly knitted fabric of Ruby begins to unravel and the speculation is that the convent has something to do with the unraveling. The arrival of a young pastor at one of the three churches is also intimated as a potential catalyst for the change in the town. The arrival of Gigi, a sexually free, provocative new arrival to the convent by way of the town on a bus that never comes to the town is proposed as another possible influence in the town's degeneration.

The pastor appears to help the youth of the town find their voices. He does not abide by the unwritten rules that have cemented the bricks of the town's culture for so many years. Those in power resent the pastor's influence, they chafe at the changes that his arrival has brought about in their youth and the perceived threat to their power stirs the fear and malevolence that must always accompany power.

At the convent, Gigi's arrival stirs up some malevolence of its own, but somehow the convent manages to thrive despite the antipathy between Mavis and Gigi. There are peacemakers among the women who help buffer the animosity between the two. And then, perhaps the freedom to be that all of the women encounter at the convent is enough to allow these women and their obvious dislike for each other to exist under the same roof, despite frequent altercations. Power and control is not much of an issue at the convent. Whatever power and control Connie wields is loose, understood, and in the best interests of the freedom of all.

In Ruby, the anxiety and fear rises. The town leaders, primarily the twins, feel their grasp of power dwindling. Things are happening in the town that should not be happening in the Paradise that they created. Something, someone must be to blame. Despite the feelings about the minister, one must move carefully when a man of God is at issue. The people, the men, of Ruby are believers as were their parents, and their parents. But of course there is the convent. The evil women are there, the women who have no respect for decency, who are apparently nonbelievers. These women care little or naught for the right ways of being. They don't need men. They do things that violate the rules that men have created. They use men for their own amusement when they choose and spit them back from whence they came when they are no longer amusing. Or, as with the case of Connie and Deek, such women can literally suck the blood from a man, destroying him and his family...and in this case, a town with them.

The men, as some did in Vietnam, march on the convent to rid the town of the cancer that the women of the convent represent. They attack at dawn in the military way. It is a holy crusade of sorts. At least that is the way it is framed: Good against Evil. Isn't that the way massacres are always framed? An old woman who discovers the plan to attack the women try to alert other townspeople, tries to arrest the plan. She is initially rebuffed. After all she is an old woman who is pretty useless despite her years of service to the town. By the time she finds some who will listen to her, it is too late.

The women give a good account of themselves despite being overmatched in numbers and weapons, but they are vanquished. We read about Connie being killed and the others, it is suggested, are gunned down in flight. Yet, when those who are to remove the bodies, the evidence of the loathsome act, arrive at the convent, no bodies are to be found. We are not sure what happens to the women. Have they really been killed? Did some supernatural force whisk them away after death, before death? We aren't sure because the loved ones of the women encounter them after the incident and we aren't sure whether they are encountering spirits or the women in the flesh.

The town lives on despite the indelible stain of the massacre. There are changes, new rifts in the community as a result, but not enough to destroy the Ruby as Haven was destroyed. The townspeople are creative with the truth about events of the massacre. In their minds they make the event something that they can live with. The convent, however, is no more. The building stands, but the community of women is destroyed.

So which was Paradise? Was it the town of Ruby or the convent? Was it the town that was being strangled in the iron fists of secluded power? Was it the convent where women were able to find some measure of peace and freedom? Was the message of the story that there can be no paradise here on Earth? Or perhaps there were several messages within the story. The ultimate irony: those who sought paradise, worked so hard to create it, became much like those they despised and feared, and destroyed others who sought to and had created their own form of paradise.