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This essay reads Toni Morrison’s Sula(1973) as a fictionalized rendering of Sigmund Freud’s observations in "Female Sexuality"(1931/1964); in this novel, Morrison scrutinizes the mother-daughter relationship and its correlation to female sexuality and ultimately offers Sula as a critical survey of African-American motherhood. To this end, Morrison arguably posits three separate sets of mother-daughter relationships and three distinct women whose sexualities are very much the result of this crucial relationship. In so doing, Morrison rewrites the narrative of motherhood in Sula by presenting Sula and Nel as surrogate mothers of one another. The failure and fatality of "real" mother-daughter bonds engender a parallel relationship between Sula and Nel as the two turn to each other for motherly love and nurturance. Subsequently, I submit that Sula and Nel’s relationship should be understood in the context of the erotic underpinnings of mother-child relationships, rather than that of lesbians; reborn to their surrogate mothers, Nel and Sula re-experience Freud’s infantile psychosexual stages, in hopes that their surrogate mothers will better prepare them in their road to integration with society. This relationship, however, also falls short of their expectations in this world of bad black mothers and isolated daughters.


본 논문은 프로이트의 「여성적 성욕성」(“Female Sexuality,” 1931/1964)을 통해 토니 모리슨의 『술라』(Sula, 1973)에 대해 논하고자 한다. 이 소설에서 모리슨은 여성의 섹슈얼리티라는 렌즈를 통해 모녀관계를 들여다보고 있으며 특히 흑인 모성성에 대한 비판적 개관을 제시하고 있다. 모녀관계의 필연적 결과로 섹슈얼리티가 형성된 세 여성을 소개하므로써 『술라』는 “어머니 서사”에 대한 다시 쓰기를 시도한다. 흔히 동성애적 사랑으로 이해되는 두 친구 술라와 넬의 우정을 모녀관계의 맥락으로 접근하여 이 소설의 가장 주축이 되는 술라-넬의 상관관계를 살펴보고, 이 작품에서 제시하는 흑인 모성성에 대해 다루고자 한다.