Sula

Sula is the novel’s eponymous character. She is the best friend of Nel Greene (née Wright), the daughter of Hannah Peace, and the granddaughter of Eva Peace. Her father was “a laughing man named Rekus who died” when Sula was three. Sula is born in 1910 and raised in Medallion. She attends Garfield Primary School, where she meets Nel Wright. Unlike Nel, she leaves to attend college in Nashville (probably Fisk University), then travels and lives in various major cities around the country before returning home to claim the Peace property from Eva. Sula grows up in a large, boisterous house where Eva keeps many boarders. Seeing Hannah sleep with men regularly and easily gives Sula an early understanding about sex being “pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable” (43).

Sula is “a heavy brown” color with “large quiet eyes” (52). Her most distinctive characteristic is a birthmark that stretched from the middle of her eyelid and toward her eyebrow. Some think it looks like a rose. Shadrack takes it for a tadpole. It grows darker over the years.

Sula can be described as a free spirit. Her comfort with herself, lack of concern for others’ opinions, and the ease with which she moves around the world contrasts with Nel’s sense of needing to fulfill the expectations of her roles as a daughter, wife, mother, and a Black woman.