Love: A Novel

Christine Cosey is Bill Cosey’s granddaughter and the daughter of Billy Boy and May. Like Heed, her life is shaped by traumatic childhood events: Cosey’s marriage to Heed and Christine’s subsequent exile to boarding school. If Heed envisions herself as Cosey’s special, chosen bride, Christine sees herself as a victim of her family: Cosey, May, and especially Heed. She thinks, “[w]ho had to leave her bedroom, her playhouse, the sea? The only innocent one in the place, that’s who” (132). Christine’s idea of herself as a victim means that she has spent much of life drifting and letting others control events: “[S]he’d been simply an engine adjusting to whatever gear the driver chose” (99). During the course of the novel, she decides that she needs to take control of her own life and make choices for herself.

Christine is light-skinned, beautiful, and somewhat vain. She compares herself in her prime to other female characters to reassure herself that she is more beautiful. An older woman compliments her in a waiting room, saying, “you used to be so cute. Your skin, your pretty hair. […] You don’t mind me saying that, do you?” (92). Christine responds that she doesn’t mind because “[u]gly women know everything about beauty. They have to” (92). When she dates Fruit, an activist, she is shamed for her lighter skin and tries to minimize her beauty. Later in life, she returns to her enjoyment of her looks. Just as Morrison suggests that racism and classism beget more discrimination, she also suggests that misogyny forces women into misogynistic behaviors with each other.

Christine wants to differentiate herself from Heed and thinks of Heed as a selfish, greedy social climber, but she never recognizes their similarities. Both women vie to see themselves as the “sweet Cosey child” of the will (78), both of them feel entitled to wealth and status, and both are incredibly tenacious. When she reconciles with Heed at the end of the novel, she realizes that Heed is the true loving relationship of which Cosey robbed her, emphasizing The Greater Pleasure of Platonic Love than Romantic Love. She has spent most of her life in a series of bad romantic relationships, ranging from a cheating husband to being the mistress of a rich doctor. Though she briefly enjoyed happiness in these pairings, the real and lasting passion of her life is her hatred of Heed. Ironically, this hatred is borne out of what was initially a deep and selfless love. At the end of the novel, Christine’s love for Heed resurfaces. She rushes to Heed’s side and stays with her when Heed falls through the attic, and this bodily vulnerability and tenderness allows the two of them to reconcile.

Bill Cosey is a character whose absence from the novel informs the entire narrative. He is the owner of Cosey’s Resort, the grandfather of Christine, and the husband of Heed. Each of the book’s chapters are named after a different role he plays in the lives of other characters (husband, benefactor, etc.) and Morrison only portrays him through the eyes of other characters since he never narrates a section of his own. Cosey’s characterization varies depending on which character is speaking of him. Vida especially has a positive view of him and remembers him as a man whose “pleasure was in pleasing” (32). Heed also speaks highly of him, remembering him as her defender and protector. In the community, he has a reputation for being open-handed and fun. However, other characters remember his less positive side. L. attributes his fun-loving persona to his father’s legacy of informing to the police and as an attempt to undo years of misery. Sandler remembers that Bill enjoyed being adored by locals but did not sell land to them or let them attend events at the hotel, underpinning the theme of Social Class and the Black American Experience since Bill subjugates those with less power as a response to the limitations of his power in a racist society.

Cosey has a variety of romantic and sexual relationships in the novel. He claims that he loved his first wife, Julia, but she did not enjoy sex and so he turned to extramarital affairs. As an older man, he marries Heed Johnson, his granddaughter’s best friend, who is 11 years old. He tries to justify this by saying that she will give him children, but it is clear that he is sexually attracted to her youth and also aroused by his ability to maintain power in the relationship. He tells Sandler that the only woman he loves is Celestial, a local sex worker. However, Sandler is not sure if Cosey’s feelings for her are love or ownership. Bill hence represents a dangerous version of masculinity—to which characters such as Romen aspire—that depends on power wrought by misogyny and violence.

L., real name Love, is the only narrator in the novel who speaks in the first person. Although she died in 1975, she transcends the boundaries of time and space and observes the characters in the present day. Her ghostly presence bookends the novel, and she offers a nuanced and measured understanding of the other characters in contrast to the unreliable narration of Heed, Christine, and Vida. She grew up as a poor girl in Up Beach and came to work for the Cosey family after Julia Cosey died even though L. was only 14 at the time. The success of the hotel is closely tied to the strength of her cooking. Ironically, it is this cooking that kills Bill Cosey, since she poisons him in an attempt to save the women of the family.

Morrison presents L. as more reliable because she resists strict binaries. L. is scornful of women in the 1990s and their open approach to sexuality and provocative dress; however, she has a great deal of respect for Celestial, who works as a sex worker. She also is amused by Junior’s boldness at the cafe, though she comments repeatedly on her lack of underwear and short skirt. She also refuses to pass judgment on Cosey, insisting that he, like everyone else, is neither good nor bad. This approach is more measured than the other characters who often deify or blame each other. This resistance to binary thinking allows L. to act as a peacemaker, most notably when she stops the Cosey women from fighting over the coffin at the graveside.

Junior Vivian is a young woman from the impoverished community of the Settlement. Her name is a source of shame for her since she comes to realize that it is not a “proper” name. At various points she calls herself Junior Viviane or just June. She is very beautiful with features that portray vulnerability: “She looked to him like a sweet child, fine-boned, gently raised but lost” (13). Her foot was once injured, and she walks with a slight limp. She likes to wear short skirts and frequently foregoes underwear; this causes negative comments from older women such as L. and Vida, though several of the men comment favorably on it.

Junior has ambiguous motivations. She is initially a sweet and innocent child, eager to attend school and to befriend other children. She is abused by her family, runs away from home, and winds up in reform school. There is a pattern in her life of abuse and mistreatment by adults in power. Her uncles hit her with a car and an administrator at school sexually abuses her. After leaving the correctional facility, she is motivated by a desire to find a place where she can feel safe. Initially, she finds this in the Cosey household. However, her primary attraction to the house becomes her belief that Cosey’s ghost is still present and that he is the “Good Man” she has been seeking her whole life. When she learns that Cosey married Heed as a child, she sees this as romantic and wishes that she had been in Heed’s place, emphasizing The Corruption of Innocence that the adults in her life forced upon her.

At the end of the novel, Junior tricks Heed into falling to get rid of her and be alone with Cosey. However, she can’t sense his presence any longer. She turns to Romen for consolation and has an epiphany that she is loved by him and loves him in turn. However, this turn comes too late: When she confesses her crime, he leaves her to go help Christine. Junior’s fate is left up to Christine at the end of the novel and is unresolved. Heed’s ghost counsels Christine to let Junior stay, implying that they might be able to nurture this troubled young woman in a way that they were never nurtured, breaking a cycle of abuse.

Romen is one of the novel’s narrators and the grandson of Vida and Sandler Gibbons. He experiences a coming-of-age arc throughout the novel, growing from a callow teenage boy into a more mature person capable of making moral sacrifices and understanding his role in the world. He is only 14 but Junior assumes that he is older. He lives with his grandparents because his parents are deployed in the military.

At the beginning of the novel, he is insecure and wants to be taken seriously by his peers and by women. His grandfather frequently critiques his behavior, manners, and his preference in music. Desperate for friendship and approval, he falls in with Theo and his group of boys. They play basketball and attend parties together. This relationship is fractured when he rescues Pretty-Fay from a gang rape. Theo and his friends retaliate by beating Romen up. Theo calls Romen a slur and he hears it as a “trumpet blast” heralding his failure. Though Romen took the moral action, he still internalizes their view of him as weak and effeminate for doing so: “Maybe his girlish tears were worse than the reason he shed them” (45). Through Romen, Morrison explores the gendered pressures that contribute to systemic violence.

Junior seduces Romen and they begin a sexual relationship. Romen initially feels empowered by this and decides that he is superior to Theo and the others because he is having sex with a grown woman and not by force. The others sense a change in him, especially the girls at school. However, in a conversation with Sandler, he admits that something in his relationship with Junior makes him uneasy. Sandler counsels him that he is not helpless and can control his life, even if that means walking away.

Ultimately, Romen reaches maturity throughout the novel. When Junior confesses her crime to him, he leaves her side, finally understanding his grandfather’s advice: “He was trying to warn him, make him listen, tell him that the old Romen, the sniveling one who couldn’t help untying shoelaces from an unwilling girl’s wrist, was hipper than the one who couldn’t help flinging a willing girl around an attic” (194). Romen comes to understand that his power lies in making his own choices and is not dependent on his status as a sexual being or subjugating others. 

Sandler Gibbons is one of the novel’s narrators and serves as a foil to Bill Cosey. Cosey befriends him despite their disparate social statuses. They become fishing buddies, and Sandler sees a side to Cosey that others do not. Because of this, he has a less rosy view of the man than his wife, Vida, or some of the other characters. Sandler is a steady man who loves his wife, daughter, and grandson. He does not understand Cosey’s womanizing habits. He is also disgusted by the fishing trips that Cosey takes with local law enforcement and prominent community members, understanding that the temporary racial equality there is a sham. Sandler’s close friendship with Cosey enables him to have a more nuanced view of the man. He understands Cosey’s good qualities but is also repulsed by his marriage to Heed. He defends Heed from Vida’s scorn, understanding that Heed was not a seducer but an innocent victim.

Sandler acts as an example of positive masculinity, reinforcing his function as Cosey’s foil. He is not motivated by sexual conquest but is a loving husband and a man who values his independence. He would rather work in the cannery than be Cosey’s employee, for example. He is frequently exasperated by Romen but also understands the difficulties and dangers of being a teenage boy. He takes his duties seriously and it is his advice, initially disregarded, that motivates Romen to follow his conscience and make the right choices.

Vida Gibbons is one of the novel’s narrators but is a minor and static character. Her role in the novel is to provide context and information about Cosey, Christine, and Heed. She works at a hospital but initially worked for Cosey at the hotel desk. She has a loving marriage with Sandler, though they bicker, and she is worried about her grandson, Romen, and his relationship with Junior. Vida suspects Christine of poisoning Cosey and dislikes all of the Cosey women. She sees Cosey as a good man brought down by bickering women and is angry that they have desecrated his legacy. This presents just one example of internalized misogyny in the novel.

May Cosey is Billy Boy’s wife. She was the daughter of an impoverished minister and Billy Boy marries her in accordance with his father’s wishes. The main relationship in her life is not her husband or daughter but her father-in-law, Cosey. She arranges her life around his whims and works in the hotel like “a slave” according to L. (101). L. cynically remarks that Billy Boy married May because she understood what “superior men” required (101). When Heed and Christine fight after Heed’s wedding to Cosey, May has Christine sent away to boarding school. Thereafter, when Christine calls home, she discourages May from visiting. Their relationship remains fractured because May is incapable of prioritizing her daughter. Christine tells Heed, “[s]he wanted me gone because he did, and she wanted whatever he wanted” (183-84). This emphasizes the fragility of the family unit in the face of systemic oppression. Heed was more forgiving of May. Though May hated Heed and tormented her, Heed cared for her in May’s old age.

May’s great fear is that the hotel and the family will succumb to poverty. To her, Heed represents the dangerous lower class that threaten them. Furthermore, in later life, May turned to hoarding, frequently hiding things around the hotel in an attempt to prepare for disaster. At one point, fearing an uprising, she hides the deed to the hotel in the sand. This habit is seen as distasteful and brings her mockery from other characters, but Christine reflects that it might have been understandable given her precarious position in life. May’s fears around social class are also expressed in her approach to politics. She and Christine fight over the civil rights movement. May supports segregation and fears reprisals from white people as well as from radical groups like the Black Panthers. This underscores the theme of Social Class and the Black American Experience.

Like her lover, Bill Cosey, Celestial is not a viewpoint character in the narrative. In fact, she never speaks dialogue and is only viewed through the perspective of others. She is a sex worker from a family of “sporting women” and is a striking and beautiful woman with a facial scar “from cheek to ear” (187). L. says that none of the “modern tramps could match her style” (66). Despite her beauty and profession, she is not flashy: “she did it in such a quiet, reserved way you would have thought she was a Red Cross nurse” (107). Morrison hence constructs Celestial sympathetically to present other characters’ judgmental or accepting views of a respectable woman who carries out sex work.

Several of the novel’s viewpoint characters experience an epiphany when seeing Celestial. As children, Christine and Heed see her walking on the beach in a red dress and a man greeting her with the phrase, “[h]ey Celestial.” This catchphrase comes to represent praise for any bold, risky, or smart thing the girls say. L. is also struck by Celestial’s boldness. She sees her swimming alone one night in the moonlight and she comes to represent, for L., a woman who is unafraid of Police-heads or public judgment. These characters project themselves onto Celestial, emphasizing her function for indirect characterization.

Billy Boy is the son of Bill Cosey and his first wife, Julia. His mother died when he was 12 and he grew up as his father’s spoiled son. He dies young, leaving behind a wife, May, and a daughter, Christine. His marriage with May is presented as more convenient than romantic, and his father was the most important person in his life. Billy Boy represents yet another character in the novel who sees women as subservient to “superior men” (101).

Dark, real name Danny Cosey, is Bill Cosey’s father. He gets this nickname from his initials, DRC, and from his character. He makes money as a police informant and uses his son to help him watch houses. He is an unhappy man and a miser. L. believes that much of Bill Cosey’s behavior is shaped by an effort to do the opposite of what his father would do.