Love: A Novel

“Something better. Like a story that shows how brazen women can take a good man down. I can hum to that.”

L. opens the novel by recounting stories that the people of Up Beach told to frighten each other and to make people fall in line and obey social rules. However, she decides that a story about “brazen women” would be “better.” Many people outside the Cosey household believe that he was a “good man” who was taken down by the women in his life. However, L.’s recounting of the story reveals the darkness in Cosey and the complexity of the women involved, emphasizing her role as the quasi Greek chorus of the novel.

“She selected a silver tureen with a fitted glass bowl, sighing at the stubborn tarnish in the crevices of the C’s on its cover. Like all the carved letters in the house, the double C’s went beyond ornate to illegible. Even on the handle of the spoon in her apron pocket, the initials, once hooked together for life, were hardly a trace. It was tiny, a coffee spoon, but Christine ate every meal she could with it just to hold close the child it was given to, and hold also the pictures it summoned.”

The linked C initials that Bill Cosey used as his crest are significant since they are open to interpretation by different characters, just as Cosey’s will (and intentions) are open to interpretation. In this passage, Christine cherishes the silver coffee spoon because she associates it with a time when she was cherished, before Cosey married Heed. To her, the C’s represent her initials: Christine Cosey. The monogram and the spoon emphasize her importance in Cosey’s life and that the hotel is her rightful inheritance.

“Standing there, one to the right, one to the left of Bill Cosey’s casket, their faces, as different as honey from soot, looked identical. Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy’s.”

Vida remembers the fighting that characterized the Cosey family’s behavior after Bill’s death. Though Heed and Christine are physically different in terms of skin tone (“honey from soot”), they are alike in their shared hatred. The difference in skin tone also points to the presence of colorism in the Black community. Ironically, it is this shared enmity which binds them together for most of their lives and becomes the defining relationship for each of them.

“Cosey’s Resort was more than a playground; it was a school and a haven where people debated death in the cities, murder in Mississippi, and what they planned to do about it other than grieve and stare at their children. Then the music started, convincing them they could manage it all and last.”

This passage highlights the important role that Cosey’s hotel served for the Black community during the Jim Crow years. Both “school” and “haven,” it is a place where people can strategize about how to survive but is also a shelter from the racism of the outside world. The music represents idealism and the will to survive, and the hotel offers patrons a chance to imagine a different future for themselves.

“Then home: a familiar place that, when you left, kept changing behind your back. The creamy oil painting you carried in your head turned into house paint. Vibrant, magical neighbors became misty outlines of themselves. The house nailed down in your dreams and nightmares comes undone, not sparkling but shabby, yet even more desirable because what had happened to it had happened to you. The house had not shrunk; you had. The windows were not askew—you were. Which is to say it was more yours than ever.”

Christine’s homecoming after many years away contrasts the idealistic and romantic past with the prosaic present: Childhood memories offer a “creamy oil painting” and “vibrant, magical neighbors” whereas the reality is mere “house paint” and the neighbors are “misty outlines.” However, Christine still finds her home desirable even though it’s stripped of some of the romanticism. She finds a kinship in her own process of aging because she and the house have both suffered the wear and tear of life.

“The one time she had been in a killing frame of mind with a hammer instead of a switchblade in her hand, they treated her like a white woman. During four previous arrests—for incendiary acts, inciting mayhem, obstructing traffic, and resisting arrest—she had nothing lethal in her hand and was treated like sewage.”

Christine’s experience with the police after she destroys her former lover’s car is relatively positive. She is treated gently, “like a white woman.” She reflects on this irony, given that the other times she’s been arrested she was treated like “sewage” though she was not committing crimes and was not dangerous. This passage reflects the fraught relationship between police officers and Black Americans and the racial double standard that Christine and others face.

“She hadn’t escaped from anything. Maple Valley, Cosey’s Hotel, Manila’s whorehouse—all three floated in sexual tension and resentment; all three insisted on confinement; in all three status was money. And all were organized around the pressing needs of men.”

Throughout the novel, May and other characters in the Cosey household try to enforce a strict hierarchy of class and respectability, insisting that they are better than other members of the Black community due to their wealth. This underscores the theme of Social Class and the Black American Experience. Christine’s encounter with Manila and the sex workers reveals to her that there is a commonality between the brothel, the boarding school, and the household in which she grew up: They are all institutions that confine women, put prize money over anything else, and are centered around men—women are secondary citizens and their needs are peripheral. The connection between marriage and sex work is also underscored in Heed’s relationship with Cosey.

“So Billy Boy chose May, who, as anybody could see, would neither disrupt nor rival the bond between father and son. Mr. Cosey was alarmed at first, not being privy to his son’s selection, but was made easy when the bride was not only impressed with the hotel but also showed signs of understanding what superior men require. If I was a servant in that place, May was its slave. Her whole life was making sure those Cosey men had what they wanted.”

May is chosen by Billy Boy because she will not have her own ideas or alter the tone of their home life. She quickly ensures that her life revolves around the whims of the “superior men” in her family, primarily her father-in-law. This dynamic foreshadows the abusive relationships that Heed and Christine will also have with Cosey.

“Still, you had to admire May. She was the one who arranged everything, saw to the linen, paid the bills, controlled the help. The two of us were like the back of a clock. Mr. Cosey was its face telling you the time was now.”

Though the hotel is named after Cosey and the residents of the town credit him with bringing prosperity to them, the truth of the matter is that the women in the household run the operation. May and L. are the “back of a clock,” the hidden and uncredited machinery that keeps everything running smoothly. Cosey is the “face” and receives the glory though he does not do the work. This makes a wider comment on the unequal division of labor between men and women in a sexist society.

“When Sandler asked him about her, Cosey said, ‘You can live with anything if you have what you can’t live without.’ Clearly she was it, and in the photograph from which his portrait was painted, Sandler knew Cosey was looking at her. Hanging once in back of Vida’s desk, then above Heed Cosey’s bed, the face had a look he would recognize anywhere. One that Romen was acquiring: first ownership.”

This quotation reflects Sandler’s ideas about Cosey’s portrait. While many of the female characters in the book see Cosey’s expression as loving or romantic, as Cosey’s foil and the novel’s positive representation of masculinity, Sandler associates it with ownership and possession. He believes that Cosey is thinking about Celestial and prizes her as a possession, rather than as someone he loves.

“Only in the evening was she alone, for a few hours while he visited friends, tended to business. None of which Heed minded, because she had coloring books, picture magazines, paper dolls to cut out and clothe.”

On their honeymoon, Cosey and Heed go shopping, frequent restaurants, and engage in sex. This quotation emphasizes the jarring age gap between them and the manipulative and destructive nature of their relationship. Heed is happy to play with dolls and coloring books because she is still a child and should not be married to an older man. She herself is like a paper doll that Cosey has “cut out” of her family and clothed for his whims.

“‘Of course he did. But that wasn’t pity. It was, it was…’ She couldn’t say it, and after 1947, she never heard him say it either. Not to her, anyway, and she listened for twenty-four years. The screams that shot from her mouth when he died were in recognition that she would never hear the word again.”

Though the concept of love is central to the novel, Morrison does not state the word in this passage. Its absence emphasizes the absence of love in Heed’s life, both in her marriage and in her other relationships. Even years later, she can’t call it love, implicitly recognizing that her marriage to Cosey was not loving but predatory.

“Twelve. My grandfather married her when she was eleven. We were best friends. One day we built castles on the beach; next day he sat her in his lap. One day we were playing house under a quilt; next day she slept in his bed. One day we played jacks; the next she was fucking my grandfather.’ Christine surveyed her diamonds, waved her fingers like a hula dancer. ‘One day this house was mine; next day she owned it.’”

Christine’s stark description of Heed and Cosey’s marriage emphasizes the crassness of their relationship through the word “fucking.” However, Christine tells the story in a way that blames Heed, emphasizing her motives (owning the house) and giving her agency in the narrative. While she plays up the shock value of the story, she fails to recognize that Heed, at 11, had no agency in what happened to her.

“So who had to go? Who had to leave her bedroom, her playhouse, the sea? The only innocent one in the place, that’s who. Even when she returned, a sixteen-year-old, poised and ready to take her place in the family, they threw her away, because by then Heed had become grown-up-nasty. Mean enough to set her on fire.”

Christine is disturbed and traumatized by Heed’s place in her grandfather’s life and views it as a betrayal. However, she fails to recognize that Heed herself is a victim, instead calling herself the “only innocent one in the place.” The adults around her, including May, encourage this view and it furthers the rift between the two of them. Her bitter tone, conveyed through words such as “nasty,” “mean,” and “that’s who,” emphasizes the fact that her hurt clouds her judgement.

“Dead the question of what was best for the race, because Heed answered it for them. She was the throwback they both had fought. Neither won, but they agreed on the target, so I guess that’s why May smiled into that lovely dawn.”

The theme of Social Class and the Black American Experience runs throughout the novel. Though May, Heed, and Christine are all exploited in some way by Cosey, they turn on each other rather than him. Christine and May argue about the future of Black Americans and the Civil Rights movement, but Heed provides a target for their anger, and they unite against her as a “throwback”—a symbol of a past they want to leave behind.

“Don’t worry about whether backing off means you a wimp. It can save your life. You not helpless, Romen. Don’t ever think that. Sometimes it takes more guts to quit than to keep on.”

Sandler gives Romen advice about dating Junior and life in general, warning him that he should trust his instincts and not be afraid to leave. He insists that everyone has agency and can make their own choices. This connects to Romen’s coming-of-age arc in which he learns to make decisions based on his conscience and not by imagining what other think of him.

“A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don’t matter. You find one, stay.”

Sandler advises his grandson, Romen, to look for a good woman. Reflecting the novel’s theme of The Greater Pleasure of Platonic Love than Romantic Love, he believes that this goodness can extend to familial relationships or friendships rather than just romance.

“Your eyes are smiling in your picture but your mouth looks hungry. You married an eleven-year-old girl. I ran away when I was eleven. They brought me back, then put me in Correctional. I had a G.I. Joe but they took it. If you’d known me then, nobody would have messed with me. You’d have taken care of me because you understand me and everything and won’t let anybody get me.”

Junior longs for protection, acceptance, and love. She is abused by her family members and the adults at her school, but she imagines a hero who will protect her. When she encounters Cosey’s portrait, she conflates him with the stolen G.I. Joe doll and the man from her dreams, believing that he is the man for whom she was looking. Rather than being alarmed by Cosey’s marriage to Heed, she imagines herself in Heed’s place and believes this relationship would have been protective and romantic. Her daydream reflects her own trauma and The Corruption of Innocence.

“The limp hand waves while the other one’s fingers press the car window. Will it break? Will her fingers crack the glass, cutting the skin and spilling blood down the side of the door? They might, because she is pressing so hard. Her eyes are large, but she is grinning too. Does she want to go? Is she afraid to go? Neither one understands. Why can’t she go too? Why is he taking one to a honeymoon and leaving the other? They will come back, won’t they? But when? She looks so alone in that big car, but she is smiling—or trying to. There ought to be blood.”

When Cosey takes Heed on their honeymoon, she and Christine gaze at each other through the glass of the car window. Though there is no overt violence, Christine imagines blood running down the window, recognizing that there is a kind of violence being done to both of them. They are both young girls and have previously shared everything, but Cosey’s abuse of Heed has created a traumatic division between them from which they will not recover.

“‘No. It’s just. Well, it’s like we started out being sold, got free of it, then sold ourselves to the highest bidder.’ ‘Who you mean “we”? Black people? Women? You mean me and you?’”

This conversation between Heed and Christine connects their personal plight to the larger trauma and subjugation of Black people. Though slavery is in the past, descendant systems of domination still fracture the community and create unequal power dynamics, including sexism, racism, and classism. Morrison emphasizes the intersection of racism and sexism when Heed cannot tell whether Christine is talking about Black people or women. Heed and Christine’s enmity and traumatic childhoods are inseparable from this larger cultural context.

“‘We could have been living our lives hand in hand instead of looking for Big Daddy everywhere.’ ‘He was everywhere. And nowhere.’ ‘We make him up?’ ‘He made himself up.’ ‘We must have helped.’ ‘Uh-uh. Only a devil could think him up.’ ‘One did.’ ‘Hey, Celestial.’”

At the end of the novel, Christine and Heed finally grapple with the damage that Cosey has wrought in their lives. He is both the “Big Daddy,” a kind of omniscient father figure, and the “devil.” He is “nowhere” because he has been dead for many years but is still “everywhere” in their enduring trauma. They also acknowledge that they might have contributed to his power by placing him on a pedestal. When one of the women finally has the courage to call him a “devil,” the other cheers her on using their childhood phrase of daring approbation: “Hey, Celestial.”

“It wasn’t the arousals, not altogether unpleasant, that the girls could not talk about. It was the other thing. The thing that made each believe, without knowing why, that this particular shame was different and could not tolerate speech—not even in the language they had invented for secrets. Would the inside dirtiness leak? Now, exhausted, drifting toward a maybe permanent sleep, they don’t speak of the birth of sin. Idagay can’t help them with that.”

This passage describes the birth of shame in Christine and Heed as children, which Morrison links to sexual awakening and to the interference of adults. Though they invented a secret language (Idagay) as children, they are unable to find a way to speak about sex and their sense of shame. This secrecy is linked to the birth of sin, which is not the fault of the girls but of society and adults who teach them to think of themselves as dirty and capable of contaminating others.

“If your name is the subject of First Corinthians, chapter 13, it’s natural to make it your business. You never know who or when it will hit or if it can stay the road. One thing is true—it bears watching, if you can stand to look at it.”

In this passage, L. reveals her name for the first time by referencing the New Testament book of First Corinthians. Chapter 13 is often known as the “love chapter’’ and contains a descriptive list of characteristics of love: selflessness, patience, kindness, etc. This links her character’s preoccupation with love with the title of the novel and to the theme of The Greater Pleasure of Platonic Love than Romantic Love.