"Paradise" (1998): Overview and Links
Paradise is based in a fictional all-Black town called Ruby, Oklahoma. In her Preface to the novel, Morrison remarked on the point of historical inspiration for the story. As with Beloved, it started with her exposure to the deep archives of African American history she encountered when working on The Black Book:
In addition to helping to ground Morrison's historical interests in the novel, this account from Morrison also gives hints about some of her thematic preoccupations in the text. How to consider the status of African American settlers in the west, on territory that was taken from Native American communities, often in the very recent past? Also, to what extent did the selective, sometimes exclusionary ethos of the Black settlers in the Oklahoma territory lend itself to forms of patterns of social isolationi? Was this ethos (encapsulated in the line quoted above: "Come Prepared Or Not At All") a factor in the decline of these settlements? Can you really build a lasting Utopian community predicated on the exclusion of anyone who might have a different way of living -- including non-conforming women -- or a different skin complexion from yourself?“It was inevitable, therefore, that when I edited The Black Book, a complex record of African American life that I solicited from collectors, the earliest newspapers would fascinate me, especially the “colored” ones. There, in photographs and print so much African American history— sad, ironic, resistant, tragic, proud, and triumphant— was on display. [...] I learned there were some fifty black newspapers produced in the Southwest following Emancipation and the violent displacement of Native Americans from Oklahoma Territory. The opportunity to establish black towns was as feverish as the rush for whites to occupy the land. The “colored” newspapers encouraged the rush and promised a kind of paradise to the newcomers: land, their own government, safety— there were even sustained movements to establish their own state.
“One theme in particular in those papers intrigued me. Prominent in their headlines and articles was a clear admonition: Come Prepared or Not at All.” (Toni Morrison, Preface to "Paradise")
All-Black Settlements in Oklahoma
One of the key historical themes of Paradise is the history of segregated Black settlements in Oklahoma. Some early all-Black towns were settled by Freedmen, people of African descent who had been enslaved by the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Chicasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole). After the Civil War, newly freed African Americans created their own settlements, often adjacent to land where they had formerly been enslaved.
Another block of African American settlers began to migrate to Oklahoma after 1889, when the U.S. government encouraged migration to the territory in part as a way of weakening the power of indigenous communities there. This is roughly the story of the fictional community described in Morrison's novel, which came to the Oklahoma territory as a group of nine families, and settled the town of Haven in 1890.
More on the history of Black settlers in Oklahoma can be found here.
Religion and Paradise
In Paradise, Morrison engaged in the most sustained discussion of Christian theology to be found in any of her published fiction. Between the fictional Reverend Pulliam and Reverend Misner, she sets up two competing visions of Black Protestant Christianity, one more strict and unforgiving, the other more flexible and modern. She also pays a fair amount of attention to Roman Catholicism through the conceit of the Convent, a large house on the outskirts of Ruby that was for a time a Catholic Convent.
That said, in the 'present' moment of the novel, the Convent is no longer an ordained Catholic community, though one Catholic nun, Consolata still lives there. It is, instead, a type of haven for non-conforming and troubled women, including Gigi, Pallas, and Seneca. For the women of Ruby, it also serves as a refuge during times of crisis, and many of the women of the town find their way there, either during unplanned pregnancies or other personal crises. The difference in theological orientation between the all-Protestant town of Ruby and the nominally Catholic Convent is a point of tension that runs throughout the novel.
In her Preface, Morrison also cites John Milton's Paradise Lost as a point of inspiration for her novel:
In subsequent comments on representations of the Judeo-Christian Heaven in literature (especially in Paradise Lost and in Dante), Morrison points out that writers have often, perhaps unconsciously, had a penchant for "giving the Devil the best tunes." As she puts it, "Other than outwitting evil, waging war against the unworthy, there seems to be nothing for the inhabitants of paradise to do. An open, borderless, come-one-come-all paradise, without dread, minus a nemesis is no paradise at all." This emphasis on the 'other' to Paradise also appears in her novel, again in the form of the Convent outside of Ruby, which the male inhabitants come to view as an existential threat.Historically, the images of paradise in poetry and prose were intended to be grand but accessible, beyond the routine but imaginatively graspable, seductive as though remembered. Milton speaks of “goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit, Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue . . . with gay enameled colours mixed . . . ; of Native perfumes.” Of “that sapphire fount the crisped brooks, Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold . . .” of “nectar visiting each plant, and fed flowers worthy of Paradise . . . [...] “Flowers of all hue and without thorn the rose.” “Caves of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape and gently creeps Luxuriant . . .”
That beatific, luxurious expanse we recognize in the twenty- first century as bounded real estate owned by the wealthy and envied by the have- nots, or as gorgeous parks visited by tourists. Milton’s Paradise is quite available these days, if not in fact certainly as ordinary, unexceptionable desire. (Toni Morrison, "Preface" to "Paradise")
Race and Gender in Paradise
An important theme in Paradise is the tension between two intentionally segregated communities -- the all-Black town of Ruby and the all-female house called the Convent. Ruby's founders intended it to be inhabited entirely by dark-skinned people of African descent, understood as 'pure-blooded' (described in the novel as "eight-rock," a word derived from coal mining terminology -- the "eight-rock" level being the deepest level of the mine). The women of the Convent are racially indeterminate, a strategy Morrison indicated was intentional:
Morrison's strategy of painting important characters in her book -- including Connie, Gigi, Pallas, and Seneca -- but then intentionally omitting information that might indicate their racial identities, including skin complexion and other phenotypical markers, is one of the features of Paradise that makes it so unique. (Morrison also employed the strategy in her short story, "Recitatif," with two women protagonists whose racial identities were intentionally omitted.)“The black town of Ruby is all about its own race— preserving it, developing myths of origin, and maintaining its purity. In the Convent race is indeterminate— all racial codes are eliminated, deliberately withheld. For some readers this was disturbing and some admitted to being preoccupied with finding out which character was the “white girl”; others wondered initially and then abandoned the question; some ignored the confusion by reading them all as black. The perceptive ones read them as fully realized individuals— whatever their race.” (Morrison, Preface to "Paradise")
Members of the town of Ruby do at times invoke the racial identities of inhabitants of the Convent, including in the famous opening paragraph of the novel ("They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time."). At other times, the women are described as "mixed up," and there is at least some indication that some of the women understood as "the rest" in the opening lines of the novel might have mixed ancestry. Despite the strong social barriers in place between Ruby and the Convent, the men of Ruby do at times have romantic relationships with women in the Convent, including Deacon Morgan's affair with Connie, and K.D.'s relationship with Gigi.
While the borders of Ruby are patrolled and the status of newcomers is carefully monitored by its all-male leadership, it seems that any woman who needs to can stay in the Convent for any length of time. The Convent, in other words, is a loose and ad hoc community while Ruby is a strictly hierarchical and patriarchal one.
The Structure of Paradise / Key Characters
Paradise is structured as a series of nine chapters named after a female character in the story, including five chapters named after women of the Convent, and four chapters named after women of the town of Ruby. In several chapters in the middle of the novel, the characters for whom the chapters are named also contain the stories of the townspeople, including several of the men of Ruby.
The five characters of the Convent we learn about are: Consolata (Connie), Mavis, Pallas (sometimes referred to as "Divine"), Gigi ("Grace"), and Seneca. The four women of Ruby are Ruby, Patricia (the town record-keeper), Lone (the town midwife), and Save-Marie (a child who passes away; her chapter is the novel's epilogue).
Connie has lived her entire life as a Catholic nun after having been abducted by Sister Mary Magna in Brazil. She does have an extended romantic relationship with one of the prominent men of Ruby, Deacon Morgan, that ends when she appears to transgress the boundaries Deacon had set for the relationship.
Mavis had been married, and had four children in New Jersey. Her marriage was a rocky and unfulfilling one, and her husband Frank had been quite controlling. Under circumstances that are a little murky, Mavis left her two youngest children in an enclosed car, where they died. Mavis subsequently left her family behind, stealing her husband's Cadillac and driving it until she ran out of gas and money in Oklahoma.
Gigi appeared to be a free spirit and wanderer, who found her way to Ruby and the Convent after a series of relationships with men, and after a somewhat mysterious quest to find a rock formation in the southwestern desert apparently showing human-like figures engaged in sex. While Gigi does not come to the Convent following a traumatic or abusive experience, there are hints that she has been involved with countercultural movements and traces of violence in her past. In the novel, we learn she has had a longstanding sexual relationship with K.D., a young man descended from one of the founding families of Ruby.
The most notable aspect of Seneca's backstory is the way she had been abandoned as a child by her care-giver Jean, whom she understood as her older sister but who in actuality may have been a teenaged mother. Later, Seneca had a relationship with a man, Eddie, who ended up in prison after apparently striking and killing a child with his car, and a somewhat mysterious experience as a sex-worker for a wealthy woman named Norma.
Pallas, a sixteen year old, is described as having originated in a well-off family in Los Angeles. She runs away with a sculptor named Carlos, and the two join her mother Divine (DeeDee) in Mexico. There her lover begins to have a sexual relationship with her mother, leaving Pallas feeling betrayed and lost. She subsequently had a traumatic experience where she had been hunted by men, and was forced to submerge herself in a swamp to avoid capture. When she first arrives at the Convent, she can barely speak.