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.
Themes
Colorism and White-Passing
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and emotional abuse.
Sweetness struggles with accepting and loving her daughter due to her dark skin color. Morrison explores colorism in the story as a symptom of white supremacy and presents Sweetness’s colorism as a result of her internalized racism and fearful desire to protect her daughter. The story begins with Sweetness describing her daughter as “so black she scared me” (Paragraph 1), immediately drawing attention to the relationship between colorism and her fear of anti-Black racism. In Sweetness’s internal dialogue, she describes her daughter as “too black” and “being born with that terrible color” (Paragraph 3), drawing attention to her internalized equation of Blackness and terror.
Some light-skinned Black characters, like Sweetness and her grandmother, were able to pass as white. Her grandmother, who passed as white, refused to accept her Blackness and rejected any contact from her children. Sweetness’s mother is presented as a foil for Sweetness’s grandmother because she decided not to pass and tells Sweetness about “the price she paid for that decision” (Paragraph 1): racial segregation (though with some light-skinned privilege) and demeaning treatment when working for a white family. Morrison’s juxtaposition of Sweetness’s mother and grandmother choosing and refusing to “pass” alludes to the childhood friends, Clare and Irene, in Nella Larsen’s Passing, who similarly diverge in their paths and choices. Sweetness reflects on passing as a necessity for her grandmother, reinforcing the story’s suggestion that Sweetness’s colorism stems from her desire for her daughter to live without oppression. The story portrays passing as a survival strategy for Black people in a racist society and links it to internalized racial biases that are passed down from generation to generation.
This theme highlights how internalized racism can affect one’s relationships and opportunities. The intergenerational trauma and the perpetuation of colorism are deeply ingrained in society which leads to Sweetness failing to love and accept her own daughter fully. Morrison uses the motif of dark skin color to emphasize the damaging effects of societal hierarchies. The story points towards the need for introspection and active resistance against racism and colorism.
The Complexities of Mother-Daughter Relationships
Sweetness, a light-skinned African American woman, feels a deep sense of shame and rejection toward her daughter, Lula Ann, who is born with dark skin. The mother-daughter relationship depicted in the story is complex and fraught with tension, as Sweetness struggles to accept and love her daughter. Sweetness’s character is central to the theme of the mother-daughter relationship. Her feelings of disgust toward her daughter stem from the internalized colorism that she has been conditioned to accept by society. As a result, she feels ashamed of her daughter’s dark skin, which she sees as a reflection of herself and her own “failings.” She even goes so far as to refer to her own daughter as a “pickaninny,” revealing the depth of her internalized racism.
The tension between Sweetness and Lula Ann is palpable throughout the story, and the lack of physical touch between them further underscores this. Sweetness resents her daughter’s dark skin and seems unable to love her unconditionally. This is reflected in her decision to refer to herself as “Sweetness” rather than “Mother” or “Mama,” which distances her emotionally from Lula Ann. She also chooses to bottle-feed Lula Ann rather than nurse her, eschewing the potential for a bonding experience. The mother-daughter relationships in “Sweetness” highlight the devastating effects of colorism and the ways in which it can destroy relationships and perpetuate self-hatred. The lack of physical touch between Sweetness and Lula Ann and the disconnect between Sweetness’s mother and grandmother emphasizes the emotional distance between mother and daughter in the story.
The complications surrounding this type of relationship in the story also arise from Sweetness’s feeling that she is protecting Lula Ann. Morrison therefore also portrays Sweetness sacrificing a potentially intimate relationship because she “know[s] the world” better than her child (Paragraph 8). This reflects Sweetness witnessing her mother paying the “price” for being Black because she defied her own mother by not attempting to “pass,” too. Both Sweetness and her grandmother are portrayed as fearful mothers who do not want their children to experience racist abuse, yet they enact emotional abuse in the process. This lack of intimate mother-daughter relationship underscores the broader societal issues of colorism and racism, showing how they can seep into the most intimate relationships and cause irreparable damage.
Guilt and Responsibility
In “Sweetness,” Toni Morrison explores the theme of guilt and responsibility through the lens of a mother’s internal struggle with the fact that she inflicted pain and shame on her daughter because of her dark skin color. Sweetness experiences deep shame and guilt over this. As a result, she is unable to love and accept her daughter, which leads to a breakdown in their relationship. From the outset of the story, Sweetness is plagued by feelings of guilt and responsibility. From the first sentence, she grapples with whether it was her “fault,” and the story is deliberately ambiguous about whether “it” refers to Lula Ann having dark skin or Sweetness treating her harshly. The story’s central conflict revolves around Sweetness being caught between her desire to protect her daughter from the world’s harsh judgment and her own prejudice against her daughter’s dark skin.
Sweetness is also torn between the guilt of her feelings and the responsibility to care for her daughter. When she contemplates killing her daughter or giving her away to an orphanage, she feels an immense sense of guilt and responsibility: “I know I went crazy for a minute, because—just for a few seconds—I held a blanket over her face and pressed. But I couldn’t do that, no matter how much I wished she hadn’t been born with that terrible color” (Paragraph 3). This near-attempt to kill her daughter exemplifies her flitting between guilt and responsibility throughout the story.
Sweetness’s guilt is directly tied to her race and the societal pressures that come with it which makes her feel responsible and ashamed for her daughter’s dark skin color. However, she insists that “it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not” (Paragraph 7). This statement suggests that she is still struggling with her guilt, but her insistence throughout the story also brings society’s responsibility towards its citizens into question. Morrison uses Sweetness to interrogate the idea that the responsibility of raising a Black child safely in a racist society lies with the individual parent and show that much of the responsibility lies with members of wider society to deconstruct white supremacism. While Sweetness as an individual is responsible for emotional abuse, the story portrays the importance of collective responsibility towards marginalized people.
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