October 28, 2016 - 16:51
Suzan-Lori Parks takes on many controversial issues in her novel Getting Mother’s Body: abortion, race, socioeconomic status, homosexuality, and countless other topics are explored throughout the work. One of these important matters is that of female subordination. Two of the main characters in the novel, Billy Beede and her Aunt June, find their lives dictated by men, and share a common struggle to regain control of their respective paths. In Getting Mother’s Body, June’s arranged marriage and Billy’s unplanned pregnancy highlight the issue of women being subordinated and controlled by men. Billy spends the duration of the novel actively separating herself from Aunt June and her fate as a woman whose future is decided entirely by men, but eventually she circles back and chooses to fall into the same trap as June, giving in to the patriarchy. June is forced into subordination by the men in her lives, while Billy ultimately chooses it, after resisting it for a long while.
When June is introduced, readers are bound to respect her for her strength, kindness, eloquence, and talent as a mediator. What is uncovered later in the novel is the fact that when June was seventeen, her father permanently removed her from family without her consent. While on the way to California with her family, they passed a preacher, whom they did not know, performing a sermon in a river. June’s father “picked [her] up and carried [her] into the water on his shoulder,” and she was taken into the hands of Preacher Teddy Beede (132). As she remembers be “carried me to the shore and sat me down…Young Preacher Beede walked back into the water to talk with my father and, after a minute of talking, they shook hands. Father turned and walked away, across the river, back to the family. Them on one back and me another…all getting in the truck and driving on” (133). The two made a deal in the river; Teddy would take in June so her family would not have to be burdened by her anymore. In this way, June’s father took it upon himself to dictate her future on her behalf; she was left, what she thought was for dead, with no goodbyes or sentiment at all. He abandoned her, deciding what would be best for her without her input, something no family member should ever willingly do to a loved one.
When Teddy comes into June’s life, and the two get married, all June asked Teddy was to go to California. He promised to follow through and take her to see her family, but she never saw them again. On top of this, Aunt June, a woman with only one leg, does not get her leg back. She remembers in one of her narrations, “I wanted to go to California. We didn’t. And I still ain’t got my leg back” (133). Teddy, initially, only aids in June’s spiral away from normality, as he never brings her back to her family; instead, he uses his money to buy a church, and when it falls through, the two run a gas station for a white family. Because of this, in the beginning, June “swam against the Beedes” and demanded to go to northern California, but Teddy “wasn’t interested in no California. He was the husband, after all” (172). While June tried to get her life back after her father took it away from her, as she was the woman in the marriage, she was left powerless, “too far downstream” in female subordination “to just get out” (172). Despite her efforts, the circumstances forced her into subordination for the rest of her marriage. Not only is June separated from her family, but she is forced into failure after failure by Teddy’s poor choices. It frustrates her, as she, by no choice of her own, was dragged down by the Beedes, although she has no Beede blood running through her veins. As she laments, “Here I am, with my Flowers’ blood still in me, in deep with these Beedes. Instead of being lifted up over the Brazos River and carried across to the young and good-talking traveling preacher and being enveloped in promises of better things and being nestled in the bosom of the folks he had listening to his every word, I feel like I done fell into the river of Beedes and got swept along” (172). June was thrown into this family, and out of her own, without a choice, and eventually settles in to a life dependent on, and dictated by, the men who have wronged her.
The central character in Getting Mother’s Body, Billy, is introduced as a spunky, independent teenager. When she finds out that the man who impregnated her already has a wife and children - although she is betrayed in a horrible way – she takes matters into own hands. Rather than give up and accept her fate as a single mother, she spends the rest of the novel determined to scrape up enough money to abort the child. She goes off on her own to recover this money, constantly justifying the act to herself and to others. The novel is heavy with statements such as “I ain’t having this baby,” (131) “I don’t owe [Snipes],” (132) “I made my mind up and I ain’t changing it,” (132) and “It ain’t gonna be at all” (160). She makes it clear that, no matter how far she has to go to get it done, she can and she will get rid of the baby. Billy is so confident in her own abilities, optimistic about the future, and empowered to fix things herself that, while she is hurt and left out in the cold by a man she trusted, she decides to change her fate. For this reason, readers are to admire Billy, a young, motherless African-American woman living in the South in the 1960’s, who never loses hope. This changes suddenly, though, near the end of the novel.
As the story wraps up, Billy announces that she ends up happily with Laz, a man who has obviously liked her throughout the novel, but who she has consistently rejected. This decision shows a complete change of mindset in Billy; once independent and determined to create her own future for herself now is married, having had Snipes’ baby. When Billy and Laz get married, she reflects that she “could feel the baby inside [her]. [She] hadn’t never really thought of a name for it, but riding home [she] felt like [she] could. Not pick out a name though, just let one come to [her] without thinking. Like it had a name already, and if it had a name already then it already was. And if it already was then it was always gonna be” (257). Billy ultimately makes the decision to keep the baby and marry Laz, although she made it clear throughout the novel that those were two things she did not want to do. Even though Billy now has the means to get an abortion, she decides to keep the baby because she now has a husband to help her, and this is a major indication that she has changed in a major way and eventually gives in to the subordination by men since she first got pregnant.
Billy spends the entire novel separating herself from her Aunt June, being extremely careful not to fall into the same trap June falls into with her father and Teddy, asserting to her aunt that she does not want the baby, although June offers to raise it and tells her that “having children is a blessing” (131). Billy completely and openly rejects this view. Yet, at the end, she chooses this downfall for herself. Aunt June, who raised Billy, is clearly a warning to her that she should resist being subordinated as she was, and for most of the novel, Billy seems to follow this path, only deciding to give in to the patriarchal idea of female subordination at the close of the novel. Laz gives Billy a father figure for her child and fulfils Billy’s need for love and support. When Laz gets her a wedding band, she comments that she thinks that it “was nicer than diamonds,” showing the extent Billy ultimately craves the security marriage would give her, rather than all independence could offer her (256). Billy seems to get a happy ending because of Laz, but, in reality, she is choosing to ignore the example her poor, subordinated Aunt June gave her regarding being controlled by men. She also goes against her own values in the end, undoing all the work she had done to gain control over her life, by giving in to pressure and stereotypical female roles and marrying the classic ‘nice guy,’ Laz. This is parallel to Aunt June’s feeling of being too far downstream to get out of this subordination, although Billy actively chooses the situation for herself, and June simply was forced into it.
Men play a dominant role in both Billy and June’s lives, and this is an innate part of their experiences throughout their lives, and, ultimately, in their marriages. This raises a complex and difficult question of who has the right to make decisions on another’s behalf, and to what extent those in historically oppressed groups, especially women, have a say over their lives. The irony of this is, in the Bible’s story of Adam and Eve, Eve emerges as a woman who breaks out of the male-dominant sphere by rebelling against the rules set by God and becoming the first human being who had knowledge. While Eve broke out of subordination at the very beginning of time, both June and Billy, living in the oppressive society of the South in the 1960s, fell in. Over fifty years after this novel was set, women’s rights are still highly disputed throughout the world, through the issues of abortion, mode of dress, rape, and female genital mutilation. Women are publicly shamed for deciding what to do with their bodies, whether it be through dress, sexual activity, or physical alterations to their form. This novel serves as a warning for its female readers against falling into the trap of female subordination, as did June and Billy, although they did have opportunities to escape.