24 pages • 48 minutes read
Toni MorrisonSweetness
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dark Skin Color
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and emotional abuse.
The motif of dark skin color is central to the story. Sweetness is ashamed of her daughter’s dark skin color and goes to great lengths to distance herself from her daughter, even insisting that her daughter call her “Sweetness” that instead of “Mother” or “Mama.” The motif of dark skin color highlights the societal and cultural biases that exist toward people with darker skin. The mother’s experiences with discrimination and prejudice due to her race shape her perception of herself and her daughter. She believes that her daughter’s dark skin color will limit her opportunities in life and is ashamed of the way people look at her when they see her with her daughter.
By the end of the novel, dark skin color takes on different connotations that correlate with Lula Ann’s character development. Sweetness finds her “striking” because she starts “using [her skin color] to her advantage in beautiful white clothes” (Paragraph 10). This indirectly illustrates the way Lula Ann has started to unlearn biases towards people with darker skin, and Morrison presents dark skin as something “beautiful.”
Denial
The motif of denial is woven throughout “Sweetness,” revealing the lengths to which the main character, Sweetness, will go to deny her daughter’s skin color. Sweetness repeatedly strives to distance herself from her daughter in order to preserve her own sense of superiority based on her lighter skin. Her tone is also one of denial throughout the story, as she denies her culpability in the hurt that she causes Lula Ann.
This motif of denial supports the larger theme of Colorism and White-Passing. Sweetness’s denial of her daughter’s color reflects her own internalized racism and self-hatred. The motif also highlights the lengths to which some individuals will go to distance themselves from Blackness, whether by “passing” or disowning their child, and the impact this can have on the next generation.
Touch
The motif of touch plays a crucial role in conveying ideas about racism and motherhood. Throughout the story, the act (or lack) of touch symbolizes the power dynamics between white and Black individuals and the pain caused by rejection and abandonment. From the start, Sweetness and her husband Louis desperately try to distance themselves from their daughter’s Blackness, refusing to touch or nurse her. Internalized racism physically separates their family and inhibits intimate tactility.
Morrison uses touch to highlight the double standard of racism. The white family for which Sweetness’s mother works demands intimate services from her, such as scrubbing their backs in the bath, but they refuse to touch the same Bible as her. This juxtaposition underscores the absurdity and cruelty of racism, which allows white individuals to exploit and use Black individuals for their own purposes while denying them dignity and respect.
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