The Plight of Women: Love and Loss

In Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, the plight of women is illustrated though the relationships of Pilate and Ruth. Most women have an innate almost obligatory need to give love and protect those with whom they are emotionally connected. Women also have the need to not only give these feelings but also to receive them. They need to be needed and loved in order to feel fulfilled. In the case of Ruth and Pilate, this cycle of loving and being loved is broken. Ruth represents the side of women that craves love, tenderness, intimacy, and attention. Pilate represents the facet of women that is the strong protector. However, with both women the more that they try to fulfill their needs the more these needs go insatitiated.
Ruth craves attention and care from the men in her life. Growing up with her father providing her with her fulfillment of the love that she needed, she feels a void in her life that Macon will not fill. Grappling to satisfy her desires for tenderness and intimacy through the conception of a son, once again she is held close, touched, needed by Macon. Still her needs are not fulfilled. The more she tries to build these loving relationships, the more they are destroyed. A husband should have filled the void in her life where her father had once been, and Milkman could have filled the deepening void that both the previos men in her life had left. The more she attempts to create love the more it is destroyed.
Pilate want to protect what she loves. Unlike Ruth, Pilate is not craving the love and attention but rather she wants to give to those that "belong" to her. She protects Hagar and Reba, yet, again the more she tries the more she fails. Reba gets hurt and taken advantage of by others and Hagar, whom she has spoiled and given everything, pushes her away.
The plight of women trying to be everyones everything is illustrated. The more that women try to plan and make things right, the more they inevitably fail. Just as mother love their babies fully and unconditionally, but the child grows up and away from them, those who women try to love and protect the most or seek love from the most are often those that, in the end can not satisfy, their needs.

Caddy: An Erased Stain

#8. By the end of the novel, Mrs. Compson has forbidden the mention of Caddy’s name. What is significant about the fact that Caddy does not have her own chapter (and that she is nameless by the end of the novel)?

Although Caddy does not have a chapter of her own in which to convey her portion of the deterioration of the Compson family, she is present in all the other stories. In the eyes of her brothers, Caddy seems to be the root of evil so to speak. In each brothers’ telling of the story some wrong has been inflicted on their lives from something Caddy has done. In actuality, the brothers’ own insecurities and ignorance allow Caddy’s actions to affect them more than they in fact do. Each chapter told by a brother illustrates in what way Caddy has tormented their existence. Caddy does not need a chapter to tell how she tormented her own existence and can not tell how she ruins her brothers, for really it was not her that ruined them but themselves. Also, the chapters in The Sound and the Fury help to characterize each the person telling the story. Because Caddy becomes the central theme in each chapter, she is indirectly characterized by each brother. Each one offers one more piece to the puzzle that is Caddy to the extent that she becomes the character best described and known. She is not in need of a single chapter to characterize her for she has been characterized throughout the novel.
By forbidding Caddy’s name to be mentioned, Mrs. Compson is hoping to erase Caddy from the family history. Because she has been such a shame and disappointment as well as causing the family so much grief, Mrs. Compson hopes to forget that she ever existed. Also, Caddy is nameless by the end because she has in many ways disappeared. The ties to which she was connected to family have been severed. Her mother has disowned her, she has broken Benjy’s heart, Quentin has killed himself, Jason despises her, and Miss Quentin, Caddy’s last connection to her family has fled. Every person who holds some key to Caddy’s past or future has detached themselves from her in some way, so in a way the memory that she was alive is dead, therefore she is gone, nameless.

It Don't Mean a Thing if it ain't got that Swing

In The Sound and the Fury, the swing underneath the tree seems to be a metaphor for the actual acts that take place in it. Cady has her rendevouss in that swing, and so does her daughter Miss Quentin. Both engage in acts of promiscuity in the swing. Caddy, and perhaps Miss Quentin, seem to be looking for an outlet of freedom or independece, yet their actions harbor just the opposite. By engaing in acts with these men, they have attached themselves, as well as they now have a need for the man for validation of some sort. They feel thay are being independant by making their own choice on the matter, yet they are only furthering thier dependence on others.
The girls' actions are like the swing. A swing moves back and forth, and may go higher and higher, but it never really goes anywhere at all. For a brief moment on a swing, one can feel as if they are soaring to the heights of elation, but the swing always comes to a stop. That flying feeling is fleeting. When the swing stops, you are in the same place you started, you have gone no where, and all you are left with is the memory.
Caddy and Miss Quentin, looking for an ecscape in the arms of men, feel as if they just might be rescued from the miserable morals of Southern society on the swing, but they are not. Just as the swing, moves but makes no progression, Caddy and Miss Quentin want to get away, but their actions only extend their roots further into the society from which they were trying to escape. They are stuck, feeling as though they are moving toward their goal, but never going anywhere.