Struggling with a History of Capitalism in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby
Sean Campbell
"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships."
W. E. B. DuBois
The United States of America wears a veil. It is a veil that clouds our vision like a fog. The veil that hangs over our faces is not opaque but rather translucent, impairing our vision of the society we live in. It is not as though we cannot see the foul excrement that we call progress. Our eyes are not blind to our soils being polluted, nor are we blind to the man in rags rummaging through trash bins for dinner. The growing disparity between peoples in the name of the dollar is not shielded from our vision. We are made aware of these facts through the media and our own experiences. However, our senses are numb to the hungry cries of children in the streets; we turn our noses away from the rotting decay in our rivers, and we turn our eyes from the corporations that enslave foreign markets so that Americans can continue to horde material goods. Our senses are numb because the veil of capitalism enshrouds America.
Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison is aware of this veil. She is aware of its roots and its progress. Spreading like a plague from Jamestown to San Francisco, Birmingham to Loraine, capitalism pumps from the heart of America throughout every vein and artery. Capitalism is just as much a part of America as democracy, the Bill of Rights, and our constitution. America leans on capitalism and calls it "The American Dream." Morrison has witnessed capitalism in America and she has lived it. Within the context of her fourth novel, Tar Baby, I will discuss the evolution of capitalism in America; the class distinctions, seen through her characters, that arise out of this system; and the impact it has had upon African Americans as individuals and a community.
By looking at Morrison’s work in such a way, my analysis slants towards a Marxist critical approach, a fitting method for Morrison’s work. She says that "it seems to me that the best art is political and you ought to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time" (qtd. in Norton Anthology of African American Literature). Morrison reflects this ideology within the context of Tar Baby by putting into question the economic system that America has prospered under. Morrison writes in a way that reflects the historical ramifications of capitalism. Within Tar Baby Morrison pulls back the layers of scar tissue that encompass America’s social classes. These scars are the result of a capitalistic society.
Marxist critics fiercely support the importance of historically contextualizing a work; it is the backbone of their theory. Marxist critic Terry Eagleton writes: "Marxist criticism analyses literature in terms of the historical conditions which produce it; and it needs, similarly, to be aware of its own historical conditions" (vi). What I have come to see as the most important historical event is the evolution and expansion of capitalism throughout the United States of America, and specifically its influence upon the African American individual and collective community.
The founders of Marxist criticism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, wrote in The German Ideology: "Economics provides the ‘base’ or ‘infrastructure’ of society, but from that base emerges a ‘superstructure’ consisting of law, politics, philosophy, religion, and art" (qtd. in Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Frankenstein 288). The economic infrastructure of capitalism provides the basis for Tar Baby. It is from this capitalistic base that Morrison creates characters who represent classes and defy classes; it is from this base that Morrison criticizes the system of capitalism and its horrible effects upon Africans.
When European explorers set foot on what they considered uncharted soil more than three hundred years ago, they imagined opportunity and freedom, adventure and wealth. However, what they created on this soil was a capitalistic machine that wiped out anyone or anything in the way, and they called it progress. The soil was not something to be treasured, it was something to rape; Native Americans were not people to share the land with, but people standing in the way of a destiny instilled by God himself. Capitalism lies at the core of our history like some mutant nutrient, sucking our resources dry and leaving our people with a shadow of an identity in the name of the dollar.
Shortly after these European explorers set foot on what was to become U. S. soil, communities began to evolve, springing up slowly but eventually erupting like a field of dandelions. The need for labor coincided with the evolution of communities. Initially those who held these positions were the same individuals who were creating the societies; however, the toil soon fell into the hands of indentured servants. "Thousands of people—vagrants and ne’er-do-wells or honest farmers and craftsmen—were pulled from the villages and back roads of England, and later from the German Rhineland, by the promise of a new life" (Johnson & Smith 35). Africans, too, crossed the Atlantic as indentured servants; however, the opportunity for freedom after a period of indentured years soon evaporated into an eternal existence as slave.
The beginnings of slavery, and the years following mark one of the ugliest examples of the effects of capitalism. The allure of wealth was maddening. Slavery and its evil repercussions swept across the land of the free with frightening speed. For those who possessed slaves, life was one of economic prosperity; "comfort" was synonymous with "life." "Many people had grown comfortable and accustomed to slaves providing a carefree way of life," write Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith. However, the situation was far from the same for those who provided the comfort. "Inside glorious mansions and plantation homes, the inherent grandeur was dependent upon the enslavement of humans who worked without even a flickering dream of freedom" (204). The American dream was not color blind, but color conscience. Those who were pulling vigorously on the bootstraps were not pulling themselves up, but rather their greedy masters.
Torn from the womb of their communities, these Africans were shipped across the sea bound in chains. The smell of feces and urine hung in the air, mingling with the odor of decaying flesh. Mothers watched their sons slowly rot while they listened to their daughters cry, and fathers hoped that death would take their whole families because the reward for survival on these slave ships was the auction block. Here families were separated with the possibility of reuniting virtually nonexistent. The message was clear: Welcome to the privileged free and the not so brave. Welcome to slavery.
The scar of slavery is crude, lacking a story of heroism it is permanent. The images of slavery cause physical revolt:
It was not uncommon to see a man’s, woman’s, or child’s back crisscrossed with raw scars, not uncommon to see Africans hobble about with missing feet, to see a ragged stump where a hand should be. It was not uncommon to see their eyes swollen shut, their heads bound in rusty iron contraptions, their bones broken. It was not uncommon to hear that someone alive was now dead. (Johnson & Smith 48)
The scars emblazoned on the backs of slaves have cut deeper than their own flesh. The scars have crossed geographical borders, bled cultures dry, and imprinted themselves on generations of African Americans. The imprint slavery has sliced into history books and families has left an ever-present question lingering in the air with the stench of death: Why? The answer lies at the heart of capitalism. Money.
The allure of the dollar, the material wealth, the comfort, the power that accompanies the competitive nature of capitalism is the cause of this scar. And those individuals who have profited from slavery are white males.
Although Morrison’s Tar Baby is not a tale about the brutalities of slavery, as is Beloved, it is a tale that calls into question capitalism and the ramifications it has had upon African Americans. The picture Morrison paints of capitalism is not one of beauty, but it is colorful. Her picture is crimson, colored with the blood of those who have been discarded and destroyed under the guise of progress. Visually, Valerian Street exemplifies the zealous pursuit of wealth and dominance by white males.
The system of capitalism seethes with an underlying class system, and if we are to look at the class systems within Tar Baby, we must look at Valerian Street as the king, the corporate tycoon, the head of house, and the slave master. Everyone within his household makes up a microcosm of the class barriers that have existed in America for centuries. Philip Page notes this when he writes:
The Street household resembles a stereotypical antebellum plantation, with its aristocratic and bigoted patriarch, its neurotic white lady, its house servants caught between class superiority over the field hands and their subservience to the whites, and its field hands who surreptitiously fight their ineffectual battles against the prevailing system. (112)
Valerian is a wealthy man by any standards and a symbol of American capitalism, writes Doreatha Mbalia. "Indeed, he is a typical capitalist who has made his fortune by exploiting the labor of the African masses and by stealing their land" (69). If we take this one step further and analyze how Valerian came about his wealth, Morrison’s claims that "all art should be political" has even greater meaning.
Valerian has accumulated his wealth in the candy business. The roots of this business are in Caribbean soil where the main ingredients of candy—sugar and cocoa—are produced. Historically, those who labored in these fields have been slaves performing backbreaking labor so that white men can realize "The American Dream." Valerian has ascended the social ranks within this system to its pinnacle. Like the Puritan ideal of years past, he has erected his house on the hill, and he has done so by having other pull on his bootstraps. "Laborers from Haiti were hired to clear Isle des Chevaliers of its rain forest, ‘already two thousand years old,’ destroying animals, flowers and a river. Civilization marched onto the island in the guise of rich businessmen needing a tropical retreat from long northern winters" (Coser 107). Valerian is the example of rich businessmen searching for a hiatus from northern winters.
Valerian’s employees (slaves) have more than put the shoe horn in his boot, so the task is easier, though. They have found the material to make his boots. They have stitched the material to make the boots, and they have put his foul feet in the boots. Valerian in turn has walked on the people who have made him what he is, kicking them while they are vulnerable, dirtying their work and squashing them out.
Morrison’s creation of Valerian as the prototypical American capitalist does not end with the manner in which he has acquired his wealth. He reeks with the odor of capitalism and its foul aftertaste. He has created a home that has desecrated the natural world, much in the same way as those colonists of years past did, believing it was their destiny from God. He, like they, has trampled the ground and slashed the trees in order to construct a house that will remind him of his childhood. He has called upon the labor of others to erect his plantation-like home, complete with servant quarters and servants. According to Philip Page, the house that Valerian has constructed "is the symbol of Valerian’s hegemony over nature, blacks, and females, and its ill effects suggest the damage inflicted by that system" (110-11). The actual physical structure of L’ Arbe de la Croix represents the base structure of capitalism, the infrastructure. Within the physical structure are the individuals who make up the superstructure, the complexities of capitalism.
What sometimes hides the selfishness of capitalism is an untruth. Long have Americans shouted that America is a land of equality. However, this is simply untrue for a number of reasons.
Most pertinent here is the development of social classes that arise out of capitalism. Harold M. Hodges writes:
Most (Americans) are at least vaguely conscious of the truth that however loudly we proclaim the ideal of equality, we are a stratified people: that ours is in fact a multi-layered society, a hierarchical society in which whole classes of people are quite commonly accorded low, middling, or high social esteem, power, and material wealth. (x)
The myth of ascending the ranks of American society through a Puritan ethic of work and no play is simply a myth. Though some have prospered under this ideology, the reality for the majority is that class is something you are born into. This has been especially true for African Americans. Within the text of Tar Baby class is a prevalent theme, characters fill a range of socio-economic positions from the filthy rich aristocrat to the dirt-poor laborer.
Within the Street home Margaret is one of many subordinate figures to Valerian. Margaret is a shadow of a person. She is not a strong, independent woman. Instead she is an extremely dependent woman who relies upon her physical beauty to accomplish anything. She married young and she married into money. Her ascent upward within the capitalistic social ranks can be seen in Morrison’s description of her traversing stairs. "She was on the two concrete steps of the trailer; the six wooden steps of the hand-built house; the thirty-seven steps at the stadium when she was crowned; and a million wide steps in the house of Valerian Street" (57). Margaret’s beauty allowed her to stand at the top of the stadium and her beauty also allowed her "to fall in love with and marry a man who had a house bigger than her elementary school" (57). For Margaret, her marriage to Valerian is luck colored in gold, and she is a young, beautiful, ignorant woman whom Valerian can parade around and control.
The social hierarchy within Tar Baby extends beyond the relationship between Valerian and Margaret. Below the "neurotic white lady" is Valerian’s servants, or more aptly his slaves. Sydney and Ondine have worked for Valerian for some thirty years when Morrison introduces the reader to them. In that time they have become dependent upon Valerian for the very air they breathe. Like the house slaves of yesteryear they have developed a sense of superiority to the lesser field slaves. In so doing they have come to associate with their master’s racist ways rather than identifying with their own people. As Sydney speaks to Son his deep seeded capitalistic inspired superiority complex shows its ugly face: "I know you, but you don’t know me. I am a Phil-a-delphia Negro mentioned in the book of the very same name. My people owned drugstores and taught school while yours were still cutting their faces open so as to be able to tell one of you from the other" (163). Sydney’s words cut to the bone with racism. He has chosen to identify with his oppressors rather than the oppressed. Mbalia asks the question "all Africans must ask themselves: Do I identify with my oppressor or my people?" (68). Obviously Sydney and Ondine, too, have identified with their oppressor and what Mbalia calls Africans’ greatest enemy "capitalism/imperialism."
Sydney’s identification with his capitalistic oppressor can be seen in the way he separates himself from Gideon and Therese by calling them "Yardman" and "Mary," just as Valerian does. This desire for separation is inherent in a capitalistic culture that separates individuals by class; it is a desire to feel superior to at least one other person. However, both Sydney and Ondine are just one step away from being in the same poverty stricken position as Gideon and Therese. Although they live in the house and identify with their oppressors, they are far from on the same level. Sydney and Ondine live a second hand life, exemplified by their living quarters: "The difference between this room and the rest of the house was marked. Here were second hand furniture, table scarves, tiny pillows, scatter rugs and the smell of humans" (160). Fearful of losing the comfort afforded to them in their second hand life, they accept the humiliation of being adults treated as children, as their surname implies (Mbalia 71).
Ondine, the subservient cook, shares Valerian’s racist and capitalistic ideology, too. She will not have her niece associate with the lower class, does not want her to love the wretched "stinking ignorant swamp nigger," Son (100). Her desire is not out of a maternal love for Jadine; rather, she fears that her niece will fall in love with Son, a "lower class Negro," who will embarrass them.
Although Ondine appears to be the all-loving caregiver of the household, who will work thirty years standing up in order to have her niece study in the best schools, she is selfish. She feels that Jadine is in fact indebted to her, as though providing care for her brother-in-law’s daughter affords her a certain amount of payback. After telling Sydney that Jadine is not a savings account that you can draw interest on, she displays the double-edged sword of hypocrisy. "Then I take another one in my heart, your brother’s baby girl. Another not from my womb, and I stand on my feet for thirty years so she wouldn’t have to. And she couldn’t think of nothing better to do than buy me some shoes I can’t wear, a dress I shouldn’t, and run off with the first pair of pants that steps in the door" (283). Ondine’s words reflect the capitalistic attitude of indebtedness. She expects her niece to repay her maternal kindness in some way that resembles the nature of indentured servants, not a caring aunt.
Standing below Sydney and Ondine on the social ladder are Gideon and Therese. Gideon has witnessed first hand the hypocrisy of social ascent in America, for Africans, where he toiled for twenty years and came back to the Caribbean with a leisure suit, twelve apples, two dollars and the sentiment that "the U. S. is a bad place to die in" (154). His attitude reflects his anti-capitalistic beliefs and his association with his own people. Although Gideon is ashamed of not succeeding in a world that would not accept him, he cannot hold a grudge towards anyone for more than an hour because the thought of "being able to die in those coffee-growing hills rather than in those lonely Stateside places gave him so much happiness" (110).
Therese’s feelings toward the U. S. and its capitalistic system are much more vehement. "Therese said America was where doctors took the stomachs, eyes, umbilical cords, the backs and necks where hair grew, blood, sperm, hearts and fingers of the poor and froze them in plastic packages to be sold later to the rich" (151). In her words, Therese is very aware of the disparity that exists between the rich and poor in a capitalistic society; she is also aware of the atrocities that accompany such a system. Her words, although only an opinion, describe how the poor (Africans in the majority) have been subjugated, oppressed, and mutilated by rich, white capitalists.
It is through Therese that we get Morrison’s most striking and bluntly honest feelings about how capitalism has ravaged the African community. Those who stand at the top of the hierarchy (white males) have been stripping the life away from Africans for generations in order to make money. The manic desire by white males for money has polluted African culture, raped the African race, and irreparably damaged the African community.
To interpret the Street household as an allegory of agro-plantation class structures would be accurate but not complete. Valerian and his shadow-of-a-self wife do resemble the aristocratic slave master and wife; Sydney and Ondine slip easily into the role of house slaves; Therese and Gideon fill out the hierarchical class structure in the fields. However, the allegory does not include Jadine and Son. But to view these two characters from a class conscious perspective is accurate. Mbalia writes that Son and Jadine "symbolically reflect the schism that exists in the African community" (68).
Morrison writes: "Each knew the world as it was meant or ought to be. One had a past, the other a future and each one bore the culture to save the race in his hands. Mama-spoiled black man, will you mature with me? Culture-bearing black woman, whose culture are you bearing?" (269). It is through this questioning that the reader sees Jadine and Son. Neither is directly a member of the plantation class system. Jadine is neither a field slave or house slave like her aunt and uncle; nor is she a member of the ruling class like Valerian. She is not a strong independent African woman like Therese, nor is she a shadow-of-a-self woman like Margaret. She is without an identity and without a culture. Literally, she is an orphan and metaphorically she is an orphan from her culture.
Morrison has created Jadine as a character that cannot be pinned down within the class- centered Street household. Jadine does not live with her aunt and uncle; instead she lives upstairs, on a higher rung of the social ladder. Valerian has paid for her to study in the best schools and in so doing he has wrapped the materialistic blanket, stitched by capitalism, around her. Jadine returns from school with an education in art history; however, her degree has left her ignorant of her own culture and assimilated into Valerian’s. ‘"Picasso is better than an Itumba mask. The fact that he was intrigued by them is proof of his genius, not the mask-maker’s’" (74). Jadine’s lack of appreciation towards African culture is reflected in this statement, as is the indirect control Valerian holds over her. Like the classic slave master, he has instilled an ideology within Jadine that has caused her to reject her own past, her own African culture.
Although Jadine does not fit into a social class within the Street household, she is symbolic of a position within the African community, a position that Mbalia calls "the African petty bourgeois" (71). Jadine is not a part of the ruling class, those of European descent; however, her expensive European education, sealskin coat, and behavior patterns resemble her oppressors’ more than they do those of the African masses. Jadine is caught in between classes and cultures. Philip Page writes: "Jadine is divided between glitzy, white materialism and her maternal and racial instincts, and she can only see the two as mutually exclusive choices" (116). Her decision to lean more towards her oppressors’ lifestyle points out the power of capitalism to strip away an individual’s culture.
Even though Jadine has received a cultural makeover, she still remains aware of her cultural orphanage. Looking on in unabashed amazement and awe at the African woman in yellow, "Jadine gasped; . . . Just a quick snatch of breath before that woman’s woman—that mother/sister/she; that unphotographable beauty" (46). However, when the woman spits while looking at Jadine, she calls her a bitch. What implicates Jadine as a cultural orphan from this incident is her claim that the woman in yellow made her "feel lonely and inauthentic" (48). If Jadine is affected by this incident it is not reflected in her actions. She continues to shun her culture. When Son arrives Jadine is repulsed by his appearance and odor. His hair is "wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put in jail. Uncivilized, reform-school hair. Mau, Mau, Attica, chain-gang hair" (113). Although his hair is merely in dreadlocks, Jadine sees it as uncivilized, wild and out of control. His appearance and, more important, his aura scares her. He is reminiscent of the woman in yellow, a strong, prideful African comfortable in his identity, and not yet processed into the capitalistic machine.
Jadine once again reflects her cultural orphanage in her reaction to the naked African women who bare their breasts to her in her dreams. They are frightening to her because they reflect "a past but definitely no future and finally there was no interest" (259). The past has no importance for Jadine, only a future pasted on the covers of fashion magazines and mingling with European bourgeois matters. Judylyn Ryan says that Jadine "is afraid that whoever this person might be, she will be faced with the same lack of choice, the same economic and sociopolitical stagnation that these ‘swamp women’ face" (611). The system of capitalism instills an ideology that abhors descent within the socio-economic class system. Even though Jadine is cognizant that she is a cultural orphan, she will not recapture her culture because she fears descent. In so doing she exemplifies the selfishness that accompanies capitalism. Jadine is completely absorbed in capitalistic ideals at the expense of being a cultural orphan.
If Jadine is seen as part of the African petty bourgeois, then Son is part of the subject class. He identifies with the African masses as opposed to Jadine, who rejects them. Also if Jadine is a symbol of capitalism and materialism, Son is a symbol of community and naturalism. He is extremely critical of capitalism and its effects upon Africans, exemplified by his thoughts at the Christmas dinner. Son sits and watches Valerian chew ham and is outraged at Valerian’s ease with being able to dismiss Gideon and Therese with a "flutter of his fingers," oblivious to the knowledge that they (Africans) were the ones who had allowed him to grow old in gluttonous comfort.
Son criticizes the manner that Valerian (white capitalists) has accumulated his wealth, through a business whose invention he calls "child’s play." Valerian has profited off of the backs of Africans and he continues to do so, contracting Caribbean natives to construct his plantation palace in the middle of the rainforest and paying his laborers wages "that would outrage Satan himself." Son says Valerian knows Gideon and Therese are thieves because "nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they always did because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people" (203). Son realizes how white Europeans have defecated on, discarded, and destroyed people and peoples in order to get what they want: money and power. In so doing Morrison has created a character in opposition to Valerian, and capitalism.
As Jadine, Sydney, and Ondine turn their noses up away from the poor, exemplifying their primal scent for capitalism, Son feels a sense of community with the poor African class. Although he has not been to Eloe for eight years, he still calls it home. Eloe is home because of the community, the antithesis to the selfish, individualism of capitalism; the antithesis to the petty African bourgeois that Jadine epitomizes. Son refuses to call Gideon "Yardman;" he is moved to dizziness when he sees Alma Estee wearing the wig the color of dried blood because he realizes that she is being jaded by the material image of beauty that capitalism creates, and its subsequent rejection of the African. Mbalia describes Son as being conscious of race but also class. "He sees himself as a member of the exploited class, although he himself is not directly exploited. He understands that if African people in general are exploited, then he too is exploited, that if African people are not free, then he is not free" (77-8). It is this awareness of the importance of community that Morrison is trying to convey through Son. Son transcends classes; he is a man who is not bound to anything, not even a name. However, he is aware of and conscious of his history, shown by his words directed at Jadine:
The truth is that whatever you learned in those colleges that didn’t include me ain’t shit . . . Did they teach you what was in my heart? If they didn’t teach you that, then they didn’t teach you nothing, because until you know about me, you don’t know nothing about yourself. And you don’t know anything, anything at all about your children and anything at all about your mama and your papa. You find out about me, you educated nitwit! (264-65)
It is this awareness and affinity towards the community, the masses that separate Son from the selfish individualism of capitalism. In the eyes of Son, and Morrison too, Africans must resist capitalism’s oppression by being conscious of African history and remaining loyal to the African masses.
Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby has called into question the idea of equality that Americans hold so dear to their hearts they are willing to lie in the face of it. Because behind the mask of equality is the wretched face of capitalism, an economic system that has filtered into the air that Americans breathe deeply into their lungs, the water that Americans drink, the very blood that courses through American citizens. Capitalism is at the core of American life.
However, success within a capitalistic system is exclusive, bound within the vice of racism. African blood has been shed for the prosperity of plantation owners; African families have been torn apart so that white European families may have a better life than their forefathers; African culture has been stripped of custom, tradition, history and reduced to color. Tagged as black, they are asked to forget the brutal history of slavery and oppressive nature of capitalism, while assimilating into the enslaver’s culture. Morrison’s awareness of African oppression and the source of the oppression resonates in beautiful language and vividly striking images.
Within her novel Tar Baby Morrison peels back the layers of American history to dig at the ugly core. Her revelation is that America’s system of capitalism has destroyed the African American individual and community, separating those who identify with the oppressor, those who are kept on the fringes of the ruling class; and those who identify with the African masses and who are kept in the gutters. Her conscious message is that African people must neither isolate themselves, nor reject their culture. Isolation is as restrictive as being bound within a class system that is not accepting.
Works Cited
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Page, Philip. "Everyone was out of Place: Contention and Dissolution in Tar Baby." Dangerous Freedom: Fusion and Fragmentation in Toni Morrison’s Novels. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi 1995, 109-129.
Ryan, Judylyn S. "Contested Visions/Double-Vision in Tar Baby." Modern Fiction Studies 39 (1993): 597-621.
Smith, Johanna M. ed. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: Frankenstein. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
"Toni Morrison." The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Eds. Henry Louis Gates Jr. & Nellie Y. McKay. NY: Norton, 1997.