Song Of Solomon Character Analysis Essay

A Desire for Beauty: an analysis of Hagar and Ruth in Song of Solomon

The societal standard of beauty and love have always been linked with the Caucasian woman. In the 1977 coming of age novel: Song of Solomon, written by Toni Morrison. Morrison uses her characters: Hagar and Ruth to voice her criticism of the societal standards and norms of beauty and love all while further analyzing its effect on African American Women. Morrison’s use of the character Hagar sheds light exemplifies the African American women feels that she needs to meet and even exceed the white-washed standard of beauty in order to achieve the love that she feels she deserves, with her obsession of societal beauty as a means of getting Milkman back Hagar is the poster girl

Toni Morrison’s use of her character Hagar emphasizes this point and furthermore exemplifies how this culture of identity can effect a romantic relationship. We observe this as Hagar becomes obsessed with the idea of meeting the standards of beauty in order to get milkman back because she has seen him with a woman who is of a lighter complexion who better fits the standard than Hagar herself does, “That had been shoulders of a girl whose silky copper-colored hair cascaded over the sleeve of his coat.” (Morrison 127).The lighter complexion of the woman fits better with the culturally accepted idea of beauty and feeds into the debate of light skin vs dark skin girls which ultimately ties back to the white-washed culture because lighter skin women are thought to be more attractive because their skin is closer to that of a white woman’s’ this can be seen in the diction that Morrison choices with the use of descriptive words such as silky and copper-haired, adjectives that normally describe the Caucasian woman. To coincide with idea of Caucasian attributes being beautiful Morrison also criticizes consumer beauty. We examine this As Hagar tries to achieve the physical beauty of the cultural standard it appears that the only products to available are those marketed for white women, "Morrison’s implied comparison between the attributes of popularized, white consumer beauty and the O.K

Morrison places emphasis on Ruth’s upbringing in order to convey her idea. Ruth was born into an upper class setting and from a young age had the things that some of the white girls had and it made her feel good as well as beautiful because she had the dresses and all of the beautiful European materialistic things that they had. Ruth spent her childhood in an environment that was more Europeanized than that of her racial community with no one there that was like her making her feel that she is, “little; I mean small, and I’m small because I was pressed small. I lived in a great big house that pressed me into a small package. I had no friends, only schoolmates who wanted to touch my dress and my white silk stockings"(124),Ruth’s childhood consisted of her receiving compliments on the materialist things which she perceived as making her beautiful and therefor making her feel as though she is the clothes and not a naturally gorgeous African American woman and has in turn internalized the compliments on her items as her beauty and now feels that the only thing that makes her beautiful are her clothes For Ruth the white stockings and all the European clothes have consumed Ruth, but much like Hagar; Morrison uses Ruth to emphasis and