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Function or Frill:
The Quilt as Storyteller in Toni Morrison's Beloved.
by JANICE BARNES DANIEL
WITH THE RISE of various theories of feminist criticism and the
accompanying interest in feminist narratives, many metaphors pertaining
to the craft of sewing--a pastime traditionally associated with
women--have gained attention as embodying common images of pen and
needle. Theoretical writing of the feminist critic abounds with images
of "text and textile, thread and theme, weaver and web" (Showalter,
224). One conspicuous trope that has become useful is the patchwork
quilt. Because of its frequent appearance in fiction by women and about
women, it falls naturally into the domain of the rhetoric of feminine
gender. Elaine Showalter, in fact, identifies its as "one of the most
central images in this new feminist lexicon" (225).
In the fiction of American women for several centuries, the quilt has
indeed provided a convenient metaphor not only for feminist criticism
but also for providing opportunities in understanding structure,
character, theme, and other standard elements of fiction. A re-reading
of twentieth-century novelist, Toni Morrison, however, reveals a role
of the quilt that has not yet been explored--its use as a narrative
device, as an important part of the storyteller's technique. As she
utilizes the quilt in the process of telling her story, it becomes an
integral part of the fiction, functioning as an intrinsic component of
narrative and plot and not as a conventional metaphor.
First, it will be helpful to take a brief look at various roles the
quilt has played in literary criticism. Certainly, its credibility as a
vehicle for interpretation has been established by assorted critical
approaches to women's fiction. Showalter's use of this trope, for
example, is to draw analogies between the development of piecing and
the writing of female experience, and her approach is to
examine--through history, genre, and theme--the traditions, forms, and
meanings of women's writing in America. On the other hand, Cheryl B.
Torsney sees the traditional quilt as a modern image, a "critical
quilt" (180-81) pieced together to include all the differing theories
of present feminist criticism and, as such, offers a collective
alternative to traditional analyses. James M. Mellard provides yet
another useful application of the quilt as a image for all literary
canon, forming a "ground" (478) of unity on which the squares represent
a diversity of individual pieces. These interpretations, of course,
place the craft of quiltmaking into the broad contexts of literature in
general and of women's fiction in particular. Endeavoring to narrow our
focus toward the ways that specific traditional roles of the quilt play
out in the fiction of individual writers--both women and men--we do not
have far to look. In Dorothy Canfield Fisher's story, "The Bedquilt,"
the tale of Aunt Mehetabel's quilt becomes a symbol, for example, as it
represents a parable of the women writer's creativity (Showalter, 241).
The quilt gains thematic status in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
as it reinforces comfort in the solidarity of community juxtaposed
against isolation of the individual (Caselli, 86). And, as a technique
for character development, Alice Walker in The Color Purple
demonstrates the power of quiltmaking as Celie validates herself,
transforming her life from fragment into a self-constructed whole
(Elsley, 80). These isolated examples serve to demonstrate the same
idea that a more thorough list would lead us to conclude--the quilt
provides metaphors that are useful when examining fiction after it has
become a whole piece, after the story has been told.
Rather than limit the image of the quilt to these restrictive
capacities, however, we can give it a more significant role--as a
storytelling device--and we will see that Toni Morrison in Beloved has
incorporated it into the process of relating her story to the reader.
If we explore the possibility of the quilt as an integral part of the
process of moving a story from teller to receiver, it is necessary to
recognize its duality not only as a useful metaphor but also as a
vehicle for narrative. The quilt becomes an entity that provides
additional perspectives on plot development, marking important stages.
Consequently, its image then becomes inherently essential to the
advancement of story and not simply a readily available metaphor or a
realistic surface detail.
The
quilt is especially useful in this novel, for it provides a consistent
line of movement, or grounding, for Morrison's shifting narrative
perspectives of voice and time. Within the pages of Morrison's story,
all the major characters become narrators, "storytellers" who recount
the events of Beloved's death and resurrection from the various
viewpoints of their individual perspectives and through shifting points
in time. The quilt, therefore, provides a gounding, a narrative backing
which arranges the story within the borders of an Aristotelian
beginning, middle, and end. Regardless of Morrison's use of shifting
narrative voices, her use of the patchwork quilt clearly designates
these three stages of plot: the phase before Beloved's arrival, the
time period of her visible presence within 124, and the stage after her
expulsion.
The words of Morrison's
text, after all, begin and end inside 124, the gray and white house of
Bluestone Road, where the reader is soon aware of a quilt in one of its
rooms and where the quilt remains--an inert object which, in spite of
its stasis, is capable of suggesting the forward movement of plot into
various significant stages of the narrative. In the beginning, the
quilt covers Baby Suggs as she lies dying on her sickbed:
The walls of the room were slate-colored, the floor earth-brown, the wooden
dresser the color of itself, curtains white, and the dominating feature,
the quilt over an iron cot, was made up of scraps of blue serge, black,
brown and gray wool--the full range of the dark and the muted that thrift
and modesty allowed. (38)
It is this covering that blankets her "until her big old heart quit"
and she "pulled up the quilt" (104) over herself. By this time, her
matriarchal position in the household has been supplanted by the
presence of another energy, and Baby Suggs succumbs to it, but not
without continuing with what is important to her at the
time--"pondering color" (4). She requests that objects with color be
shown to her, and Sethe readily obliges, realizing that the dying woman
is starved for color that is lacking from her drab surroundings except
for "two orange squares in a quilt that made the absence shout" (38).
Beloved does not manifest herself visibly until after Baby Suggs's
death; thus, the quilt provides the narrative perspective that relates
to the reader the importance of this first stage in the story: Beloved
is not yet tangibly present but, even in her "absence," she makes the
environment "shout" with the turmoil of her antics. When Beloved makes
her "appearance," Baby Suggs will not be there to ponder the colors of
her surroundings, but the quilt is the vehicle which moves the
narrative into this stage in which the surviving females must "ponder"
their predicament as Beloved disrupts their lives. Again, the quilt
becomes Morrison's narrative marker to designate the significant time
period of Beloved's sojurn with them in House 124. When Sethe goes to
Baby Suggs's keeping room to talk-think, she notices the drab old quilt
with its splashes of color: "In that sober field, two patches of orange
looked wild--like life in the raw" (38). Indeed, life in the household
does become raw and harsh because of Beloved's troubling presence; her
disruption is a "wild" disturbance juxtaposes against Seth and Denver's
"sober" existence.
A crucial part
of this phase of the narrative is Denver's movement from her ignorance
of Beloved's past to her comprehension of her intentions for their
future. Emphasizing this idea for the reader is, again, the presence of
the quilt.
It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness
of the quilt. Denver was pleased because it kept her patient awake longer.
She seemed totally taken with those faded scraps of orange, even made the
effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them. An effort that quickly
exhausted her, so Denver rearranged the quilt so its cheeriest part was in
the sick girl's sight line. (54)
The quilt with its small amount of color signals a large portion of
Morrison's narrative by marking the genesis of Denver's potential to
understand this strange new arrival. Her progress toward this
understanding is identified with plot movement, for her constant
interaction with Beloved throughout the story meshes her subsequent
knowledge with actions and events of the story line. In the last pages
of the story, the quilt again makes its appearance when Paul D. finds
Sethe lying on Baby Suggs's bed "lying under a quilt of merry colors"
(271). Remaining until the end, the old covering has been patched but
still continues in its significance as a narrative device. Marking the
departure of Beloved and the arrival of Paul D., it designates the
phase of Sethe's healing. She knows the answer to her own unspoken
question: "And if he bathes her in sections, will the parts hold?"
(272). And as Paul D. "examines the quilt patched in carnival colors"
(272), he remembers Sixo's words about the Thirty-Mile woman: "She is a
friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them
and give them back to me in all the right order" (272-73). Like the
patched covering, both Sethe and Paul D. will become mended--fragmented
remnants being pieced together, or held together, into whole selves.
Ironically, the ending stage of Morrison's story is actually indicative
of another beginning, a movement toward Paul D.'s suggestion for "some
kind of tomorrow" (273). This cyclical movement actually gives
coherence to the fragmented story provided by various narrators. Many
critics see a flaw in endings such as this in Morrison's fiction--a
lack of closure. Catherine Rainwater, for example, sees a need for
"narrative mooring" and explains:
In Morrison's novels some type of circular narrative pattern attempts but
conspicuously fails to enclose a "completed" story. The "idea" of closure
is kept "alive" as an ideal, but the origins and endings of the various
strands of the stories remain elusive.... The characters, together with
their stories, evade closure. (101)
However, with the use of the quilt as a narrative indicator, Morrison
achieves a special kind of mooring or grounding that provides both
clarity and narrative closure for the fragments of perspectives
supplied by various "storytellers." The quilt becomes, then, a part of
the process of storytelling. Certainly, the art of storytelling cannot
be ignored as an important aspect in any analysis of this novel. First,
Morrison as author has a story to relate to her reader. Within her
story, her main character has a hunger for hearing Denver's account of
the "story" of the past as the two of them rest on the cot: "And the
more fine points she [Denver] made, the more detail she provided, the
more Beloved liked it" (78). We inevitably determine a motif of
storytelling within Morrison's story, and the quilt is again present as
Denver spins her version of the story: "The dark quilt with two orange
patches was there with them because Beloved wanted it near her when she
slept" (78). At the end, as Paul D. contemplates the quilt which covers
Sethe, he "wants to put his story next to hers" (275), not only
reinforcing the story motif but also implying its continuity in the
future.
Further enhancing the
storytelling theme is the fact that, in order to relate her story,
Morrison uses the voices of every major character in the text,
signifying that this story needs many perspectives in its telling, many
other "storytellers." Andew Levy makes this observation:
But if no individual can tell the story, Morrison appears to suggest, then
perhaps the story is meant to be told multivocally, as a fluid amalgamation
of many individual perspectives--the community of narrative voices, for
instance, that constitutes Beloved itself. (115)
The quilt, then, in its role a signifier of specific stages of plot,
becomes part of this community of narrative voices in rendering an
intelligible story. If Morrison's discontinuous sequences would
threaten to confuse her reader, she helps prevent this possible dilemma
by projecting the quilt into her narrative. "If one cannot tell a
single diachronic story ... then one must tell many stories that, held
together synchronically in the reader's mind, might consequently
illuminate one another" (Rainwater, 106), and the quilt's role is to
hold together in the reader's mind a continuous, fluid story that might
otherwise be further disjointed or fragmented. Just as a quilt's
backing holds its many squares in their places to form a discernible
patter, Morrison's quilt provides coherence for her story's design. One
may understandably question whether a story is in the quilt or whether
a quilt is in the story; consequently, understanding each will shed
light on the other. Many quilters would quickly affirm the idea that
their efforts in piecing together remnants into a whole represent not
only a finished product, but also a gathering together of memories of
past events and people. Scraps of cloth from dresses, pants, work and
play clothes, curtains, night clothes, uniforms, and other vestiges of
daily existence represent their life experiences, and writers often
become the voice to validate the story in the quilt. "My whole life is
in the quilt. / All my joys, and all my sorrows / stitched into those
little pieces./ ... / I tremble sometimes / when I remember / what that
quilt knows" (Joyce, 13). Often, the pattern itself contains a story of
a life and its meaning: "When Mama had collected enough patches of
color for creation ... she tried her hand at quilting the metaphors
they had touched: the Gate Latch, the Anvil, and the Chum Dasher. These
handrubbed subjects would render a rough grace, like the buckshot
artistry of wild mustard bloom or the splintered symmetry of a new rail
fence" (Ball, 46-47). The stories in the quilts do not always
romanticize the lives of their makers:
They could tell a tale of days and months of mindless, thankless tedium,
cooking food and a depressing sameness, washing and sewing and mending
clothes that were forever being worn out or outgrown, frustrating days and
sleepless nights with a whining child ill or dying of some disease that
could have been cured by one shot of penicillin. (Gutcheon, 13-14)
Quilts--factual or fictitious--clearly have the capacity to encapsulate
stories within the fabrics and designs of their squares. More
frequently, however, quilts appear in fiction as elements within the
narratives--the quilt is in the story. Writers desiring to select
realistic details reflecting colonial settlement, the pioneer movement,
turn-of-the-century life, Depression years, or current country living
have included the quilt as a staple. Within the contexts of various
stories, quilts are carefully packed into covered wagons to make the
long journey with every family, they are given to young brides as part
of trousseaus, they are used for birth blankets and death shrouds, they
are meticulously folded over the counterpanes of spinster aunts, and
they are fought over as birthrights by siblings. In these capacities,
the quilt is only one of many elements that give any story its
authenticity involving time and place setting; therefore, its presence
could be considered superficial, and its absence would not necessarily
lessen the impact of the fiction.
As such, the quilt's presence in fiction is appraised as ornamental, a
"frill" that provides aesthetic contributions. In this capacity, it may
well reflect one major historical type of quilts, the ones that were
created for pleasure out of leisure time rather than those that were
created out of necessity. During the many decades before technology
made it economically possible to buy other types of coverings such as
sheets, blankets, and comforters, quilts were a fact of life, not an
option for personal pleasure or domestic decoration. They were
fashioned out of need rather than desire, and their creation
represented toil rather than leisure. Subsequently, when quilts were no
longer indispensable items for household, they became decorative
accessories, not integral features.
On the other hand, Morrison's quilt, used as a narrative device,
represents the role of the quilt of usefulness. Just as the latter was
functional in the lifestyles of families, the literary quilt is a
useful device for Morrison. In Beloved, it becomes an integral feature
of the author's storytelling. It contributes to her story, not as a
surface "frill," but in an essential "function." Its presence is not
that of a "nicety" created out of a desire for realistic detail;
rather, it is one of a "necessity" generated out of a need for
successful storytelling.
If we
want to understand a storyteller's craft, we must look deep into the
text for signs of what the writer wants us to recognize. When we
endeavor to look within the pages of Beloved, we can identify
Morrison's use of the patchwork quilt in its meaningful role as it
works together with other stylistic components in moving the story from
teller to receiver. Unlike Beloved, who remains "disremembered and
unaccounted for" (275), the story of her arrival, her sojourn, and her
departure is a clearer account because of the quilt's presence in the
text. One of the voices at the end emphasizes that "This is not a story
to pass on" (275), but the quilt is one significant voice that Morrison
utilizes in the process of moving through her narrative, of passing on
her story to her reader.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, Bo. "The Quilt." Appalachian Patterns. Atlanta: Independence
Publishers, 1988. 45-57
Caselli, Jaclyn. "John Steinbeck and the American Patchwork Quilt." San
Jose Studies, I:3 (1975), 83-87.
Elsley, Judy. "`Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent':
Fragmentation in the Quilt and The Color Purple." Weber Studies: An
Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal, IX:2 (Spring-Summer 1992), 71-81.
Gutcheon, Beth. The Perfect Patchwork Primer. New York: David McKay
Company, 1973.
Joyce, Jane Wilson. "Rose of Sharon." In Quilt Pieces: The Quilt Poems
and Family Knots. Jane Wilson Joyce and Meredith Sue Willis, eds.
Frankfort, Kentucky: Gnomon, 1991. 13.
Levy, Andrew. "Telling Beloved." Texas Studies in Literature and
Language, XXXIII:1 (Spring 1991), 114-23.
Mellard, James M. "Lists, Stories, and Granny's Quilts: Writing--and
Rewriting--Southern Cultural and Literary History." Mississippi
Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Culture, XLIV: 4 (Fall 1991),
463-80.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987 New York: New American Library (Pengiun),
1988.
Rainwater Catherine. "Worthy Messengers: Narrative Voices in Toni
Morrison's Novels." Texas Studies in Literature and Language, XXXIII:1
(Spring 1991), 96-113.
Showalter,
Elaine. "Piecing and Writing." The Poetics of Gender. Ed Nancy K.
Miller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 222-47.
Torsney, Cheryl B. "The Critical Quilt." Contemporary Literary Theory.
Eds. C. Douglas Atkins and Laura Morrow. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1989. 180-99.
The quilt, we have recently learned, played a role in guiding slaves to
freedom. Toni Morrison's quilt in Beloved, as JANICE BARNES DANIEL
points out, provides a narrative backing for shifting perspectives of
voice and time, giving clarity to the fragmented pieces of Beloved's
story. Currently an Instructor in English at Ashland Community College
in Kentucky, Daniel has taught there and at Morehead State University
classes in American literature, language arts pedagogy, and
composition, including computer-assisted writing and distance learning
via interactive compressed video. Her publications include work on Zora
Neale Hurston, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Harriet Jacobs, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne. She is presently working on a study of Sarah Orne Jewett's
use of framing strategies.
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