The author describes Elisa’s feeling as, “Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work…” (p. 633). Once the tinker had left, Elisa’s mental stimulation and self-fulfillment had left with him too. It is clear that she is unsatisfied with the relationship she has with her husband. Before the headed out for dinner, Elisa started to dress nicer and look for feminine.
Not pretty clothes when she would be too old to wear them.” When John refuses to stay home or to heed her requests, she busies herself by painting, baking and by thinking about how things might get better. She hopes for company and thinks about how much she had enjoyed dancing with Steven. Ann’s way of dealing with her internal unhappiness, is to try and change her external environment. She says to herself, “Fill up the stove and open the oven door…Then I’ll feel brighter. It’s the cold that depresses.” Ann also explains that by painting the house, trying to do something positive, she will pass the time that is painfully quiet and lonely.
His sisters, First Corinthians and Lena, whom author Toni Morrison keeps in the background of the novel’s main events, are suddenly transformed into deep, complex characters. The two sisters, who have spent their lives in Dr. Foster’s parlor making fake roses, refuse to be aristocratic sweatshop workers any longer. The fact Corinthians works as a maid even though she has acquired a college degree does not make her feel inferior but rather it liberates her socially. Furthermore, the fact that she finds true love outside of her upper class social status shows that Morrison is making an attack on class consciousness. Lena’s revolt comes out during her confrontation with Milkman.
Mademoiselle sees this potential in Edna but knows that Edna must first grow into an independent woman and seek the freedom on her own. Edna’s passion for art is shattered because of her duties as a mother and wife. Leonce doesn’t even know her infatuation with art and even if he did, she is still expected to care for the children and him. Edna “awakens” by discovering her passion and her lack of commitment. She wants the freedom to paint and Mademoiselle gives her that hope to possibly one day feel free by doing what she loves.
Den, Barbara’s awkward and shy ex-lover, reappears in her life and provides a route to wealth for Barbara (in her own eyes). Her dogged determination and persistence to better herself sees Den as a way of paying for a deportment diploma to assist her with gaining employment at the swanky new hotel being built in town. Due to the negative circumstances her character is placed in, it has resulted in her deserting her mentally challenged daughter, Verge. Economic rationalism seemed to have only negative implications on Barbara’s life as she constantly struggles with relationships and self worth. Whilst focusing on the central metaphor – ‘diving for pearls’ it is made clear that for Barbara, pearls are not represented through spiritual wealth, rather economic wealth.
The True State of Happiness Janie is a dreamer, her grandmother Nancy says, she lives her life trying to reach the horizon-- Janie’s very dear dreams. The society’s principles of how a woman should act, and its strict limits, prevent Janie from reaching the horizon; that one day seemed to be so close. The first two unfortunate marriages separate Janie from her dreams by limiting her strictly and blending her into the melting pot of society. Everyone in the pot is forced to follow the mass of others, thus living their lives without finding their individuality and discovering their life purpose and path. Janie’s first two husbands, Logan and Jody, never allow Janie to reach the desirable horizon.
It is in her garden that Elisa lights up with thought of possibly, just a little more from life. Just like the chrysanthemums Elisa blossoms, while she interacts with the Tinker, a wandering salesman. As he the Tinker Tries to get Elisa to give him some work, sharpening scissors or mending some pots, “her eyes hardened with resistance”(689). “Oh, no, she said quickly” (689). “Nothing like that” (689).
Her husband is gone from the house more often, to take care of the patients with serious conditions, leaving her with Jennie, his sister. She feels alone and her imagination makes up these apparitions in the wallpaper to keep her amused. She starts seeing a woman creeping in the wallpaper. The woman scares her and she wants to move into a different room to escape her phantom presence. Her imagining this woman is representing the narrator subconsciously realizing that she might me going crazy and that fact scares her and she wants to escape the empty room that leaves her to her
While living with her abusive father who she chooses to only call T. Ray, Lily feels that she is lacking certain femininity in her life. She battles with her hair which was “constantly going off in eleven different directions” (Kidd 3) and when she woke up with a rose-petal stain on her panties she was “so proud of that flower and didn’t have a soul to show it to except Rosaleen”(13). Rosaleen is Lily’s housekeeper and one of her only friends. Lily’s curiosities about her mother lead her to the attic where she finds some of her mother’s belongings. Lily keeps everything she finds of her mother’s in a small tin buried in the orchards outside her house.
“They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together- had sex, sure- and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding.” Hearing this I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved.” (p. 2735) Although the narrator believes that he is describing the relationship he imagines existed between the blind man and his wife the reader knows that the description more accurately describes the relationship between the narrator and his wife.