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.