Sula

Sula is one of the best-known contemporary novels to deal with the complexities of intimate, platonic friendships between women. Sula, like these other novels, examines the ways in which the expectations of gender, race, social class, and setting impact women’s lives.

Nel becomes friends with Sula as an act of defiance. It is her first and last attempt to forge her own identity and to preempt her mother Helene’s efforts to mold her destiny. Both only children, Nel and Sula become surrogate sisters. As with many intimate friendships, their bond is sealed by their mutual retention of a secret: the accidental killing of Chicken Little. The accident reveals more clearly for the reader the ways in which the girls complement one another. Nel is preternaturally calm after the act and reassures Sula, who “collapsed in tears” (62). Though Nel maintains that she has not done anything wrong, thus exonerating herself from guilt, her unwillingness to allow Sula to feel guilt or grief over Chicken Little—let alone confess what happened—undermines her later pretense of self-righteousness.

It is Nel’s marriage to Nel that breaks the seemingly inviolable bond between them—a fact that is indicated by Sula fading into the distance while Nel holds