With very few exceptions, Morrison's female characters are fiercely independent and subvert the traditionally assigned roles of dutiful wife, mother, and daughter. Of this category, Sula and Eva are the most prominent. Nel, who is raised by her mother to accept without question the passive roles of wife, mother, and daughter, comes to recognize the power of womanhood by the novel's end, although it remains unclear just what she will do with this newfound knowledge.
Sula and Nel come to realize at an early age that because they are neither white nor male, most freedoms and triumphs will be denied them throughout their lives. When Sula returns to the Bottom after having experienced life in many large cities across the country, she notes how dismal the lives of the black women in the community are; she sees "how the years had dusted their bronze with ash," and that "Those [women] with husbands had folded themselves into starched coffins, their sides bursting other people's skinned dreams and bony regrets." Sula's feminist spirit makes her refuse to settle for a woman's traditional lot of marriage and child raising. The Bottom's women hate her because she is the antithesis of their own dreadful lives of resignation. Economically, the women are unable to leave the Bottom, but those who do — like Sula — are likely to return to the black community, for from it they gain the little power afforded them in a racist society.
Sula is the most determined, carefree woman of all the novel's female characters. Her attraction to Ajax originates from her need to have someone more free-wheeling and independent than she. Ajax seems to be the warrior his name suggests, especially when he brings her the bottles of milk. Sula excitedly believes that he must have "done something dangerous to get them," which she greatly appreciates. However, her sole attempt at domesticity sounds the death knell of the relationship. Detecting the scent of the nest, Ajax realizes that Sula is becoming the antithesis of the free-spirited, independent woman whom he was initially attracted to.
