Sweetness

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse.

Morrison presents Sweetness as a complex and deeply flawed individual. Sweetness struggles with her own internalized colorism and self-hatred, which ultimately leads to the neglect and emotional abuse of her daughter. Sweetness is portrayed as a deeply unhappy and bitter person, whose disdain for her daughter’s dark skin color is rooted in a deep-seated fear of how society will perceive and treat her.

Sweetness’s life is portrayed as precarious because of racism, sexism, and socio-economic disparity. Morrison conveys this through the money that Sweetness receives from various people in her life with whom she has antagonistic relationships. Midway through the story, she begins to receive welfare from the state, administered by clerks who are “mean as spit” (Paragraph 7). These clerks represent the state that is constructed on white supremacist and patriarchal values and is not designed to give Sweetness real “relief”. Shortly after, she receives money from Louis, which provides a brief respite but highlights her gendered oppression in contrast with a man who can support himself and choose whether or not to support his wife and child. At the end of the story, she receives money from Lula Ann which enables her to stay in a “small, homey, cheaper” nursing home (Paragraph 12).