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Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies

Geography and the

Political Imaginary
in the Novels of
Toni Morrison

Herman Beavers
Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies

Series Editor
Robert T. Tally Jr.
Texas State University
San Marcos
TX, USA
Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies is a new book series focusing
on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. The spatial
turn in the humanities and social sciences has occasioned an explosion
of innovative, multidisciplinary scholarship in recent years, and geocriti-
cism, broadly conceived, has been among the more promising develop-
ments in spatially oriented literary studies. Whether focused on literary
geography, cartography, geopoetics, or the spatial humanities more gen-
erally, geocritical approaches enable readers to reflect upon the represen-
tation of space and place, both in imaginary universes and in those zones
where fiction meets reality. Titles in the series include both monographs
and collections of essays devoted to literary criticism, theory, and history,
often in association with other arts and sciences. Drawing on diverse
critical and theoretical traditions, books in the Geocriticism and Spatial
Literary Studies series disclose, analyze, and explore the significance of
space, place, and mapping in literature and in the world.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15002
 Herman Beavers

Geography and the

Political Imaginary
in the Novels of Toni
Morrison
Herman Beavers
Department of English
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-65998-5 ISBN 978-3-319-65999-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65999-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951534

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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 For Lisa, Michael, and Corinne
My sky, my moon, and my stars

For Rudolph and James

Double-conscious brothers in the Veil
 Series Editor’s Preface

The spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences has occasioned
an explosion of innovative, multidisciplinary scholarship. Spatially
­oriented literary studies, whether operating under the banner of literary
­geography, literary cartography, geophilosophy, geopoetics, geocriticism,
or the spatial humanities more generally, have helped to reframe or to
transform contemporary criticism by focusing attention, in various ways,
on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. Reflecting
upon the representation of space and place, whether in the real world, in
imaginary universes, or in those hybrid zones where fiction meets real-
ity, scholars, and critics working in spatial literary studies are helping to
reorient literary criticism, history, and theory. Geocriticism and Spatial
Literary Studies is a book series presenting new research in this burgeon-
ing field of inquiry.
In exploring such matters as the representation of place in l­iterary
works, the relations between literature and geography, the ­ historical
transformation of literary and cartographic practices, and the role of
space in critical theory, among many others, geocriticism and spatial lit-
erary studies have also developed interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary
methods and practices, frequently making productive connections to
­
architecture, art history, geography, history, philosophy, politics, social
theory, and urban studies, to name but a few. Spatial criticism is not
­limited to the spaces of the so-called real world, and it sometimes calls
into question any too facile distinction between real and imaginary places,

vii
viii    Series Editor’s Preface

as it frequently investigates what Edward Soja has referred to as the

“real-and-imagined” places we experience in literature as in life. Indeed,
although a great deal of important research has been devoted to the lit-
erary representation of certain identifiable and well-known places (e.g.,
Dickens’s London, Baudelaire’s Paris, or Joyce’s Dublin), spatial critics
have also explored the otherworldly spaces of literature, such as those to
be found in myth, fantasy, science fiction, video games, and cyberspace.
Similarly, such criticism is interested in the r­ elationship between s­ patiality
and such different media or genres as film or t­elevision, music, comics,
computer programs, and other forms that may supplement, compete
with, and potentially problematize literary representation. Titles in the
Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies series include both monographs
and collections of essays devoted to literary criticism, theory, and his-
tory, often in association with other arts and sciences. Drawing on diverse
critical and theoretical traditions, books in the series reveal, analyze, and
explore the significance of space, place, and mapping in literature and in
the world.
The concepts, practices, or theories implied by the title of this series
are to be understood expansively. Although geocriticism and spatial liter-
ary studies represent a relatively new area of critical and scholarly inves-
tigation, the historical roots of spatial criticism extend well beyond the
recent past, informing present and future work. Thanks to a growing crit-
ical awareness of spatiality, innovative research into the literary geography
of real and imaginary places has helped to shape historical and cultural
studies in ancient, medieval, early modern, and modernist literature,
while a discourse of spatiality undergirds much of what is still understood
as the postmodern condition. The suppression of distance by modern
technology, transportation, and telecommunications has only enhanced
the sense of place, and of displacement, in the age of globalization.
Spatial criticism examines literary representations not only of places them-
selves, but of the experience of place and of displacement, while explor-
ing the interrelations between lived experience and a more abstract or
unrepresentable spatial network that subtly or directly shapes it. In sum,
the work being done in geocriticism and spatial literary studies, broadly
conceived, is diverse and far reaching. Each volume in this series takes
seriously the mutually impressive effects of space or place and artistic rep-
resentation, particularly as these effects manifest themselves in works of
literature. By bringing the spatial and geographical concerns to bear on
 Series Editor’s Preface    ix

their scholarship, books in the Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies

series seek to make possible different ways of seeing literary and cultural
texts, to pose novel questions for criticism and theory, and to offer alter-
native approaches to literary and cultural studies. In short, the series aims
to open up new spaces for critical inquiry.

San Marcos, USA Robert T. Tally Jr.

 Acknowledgements

Scholarly monographs are notoriously entangled with indebtedness.

Whether it be the scholarship we use to formulate a thesis and substan-
tiate an argument or the personal and professional affiliations we draw
upon to guide us past intellectual and emotional obstacles of all sorts, no
scholarly undertaking can succeed without recognizing one’s limitations
and turning to those able to render aid. I thereby wish to ­acknowledge
the various forms of support that have made this project possible. I
would first like to thank Dr. Rebecca Bushnell, the former Dean of the
University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, Associate Dean
for the Humanities, Jeffrey Kallberg, and Dr. Suvir Kaul, past Chair
of the Department of English, for supporting my application for a
Dean’s Leave that allowed me to have a year-long sabbatical during the
2009–2010 academic year. I also want to thank Dr. Valerie Swain Cade
McColloum, Vice Provost for University Life, for providing me with a
research funding to bring this project to completion. Thanks go, as well
to Dr. Noliwe Rooks and Dr. Eddie S. Glaude at the Center for (now,
the Department of) African American Studies at Princeton University for
arranging appointments for me on two different occasions as a Visiting
Fellow in African American Studies during the 2009–10 and 2016–17
academic years.
Sincerest thanks go to April Miller in the Access Office in Princeton’s
Firestone Library for providing me with scholarly privileges in the main
collection as well as the Toni Morrison Papers, which are held in Special
Collections in the Firestone Library. I would also like to thank the

xi
xii    Acknowledgements

Toni Morrison Society, in particular Dr. Carolyn Denard, the President

of the Society’s Advisory Board, and current and former Board mem-
bers Dr. Adrienne Seward, Marc Connor, Maryemma Graham, and
Marilyn Sanders Mobley for their work in organizing the numerous
biennial conferences where I first developed the ideas constituting the
foundation for this book as well as welcoming me into an international
community of Toni Morrison scholars. I was honored by the Society’s
invitation to deliver the inaugural Toni Morrison Society Lecture at my
alma mater, Oberlin College, in 2014. I’m equally grateful to Adrienne
Seward, Justine Tally, Maryemma Graham, Andree-Anne Kekeh Dika,
Janis A.Mayes, and Lucille Fultz for inviting me to submit essays in
their respective edited volumes that provided the skeletal framework for
this book. I would also like to thank audiences at Ohio and Villanova
Universities and of the Society for the Study of Narrative, as well as the
American Literature Study Group in the Penn English Department for
the opportunity to present sections of the manuscript. In each of these
instances, the feedback I received was indispensable. I would like to
extend special thanks to Brigitte Shull, who read a draft of the manu-
script and suggested that I submit it to the Geocritical Studies and
Spatial Criticism series at Palgrave Macmillan, edited by Robert Tally.
Thanks as well to my Palgrave editors, Ryan Jenkins, Allie Bachicchio,
and Emily Janakiriam for their diligence and patience. And I’m grate-
ful for the careful and nuanced comments from the peer reviewer that
helped me to bring this project into its final form.
My colleagues in the Departments of Africana Studies and English
provided stimulating conversation and camaraderie: Barbara Savage,
Mary Frances Berry, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, Tukufu Zuberi, Heather
Williams, Anthea Butler, Michael Hanchard, Eve Troutt-Powell, Grace
Sanders Johnson, John Jackson, Dorothy Roberts, and Tim Rommen
have each been tremendous sources of intellectual acuity and good will.
Among my English Department colleagues, none are more dear to
me than Salamishah Tillet, Alan Filreis, Nancy Bentley, Toni Bowers,
and Josephine Park. Michael Gamer, Paul Hendrickson, Lorene Cary,
Heather Love, J.C. Cloutier, Paul Saint-Amour, David Wallace, Marybeth
Gasman, Vivian Gadsden, and Zack Lesser have each been steadfast col-
leagues who have modeled a brand of integrity, open-mindedness, and
scholarly rigor that makes me optimistic about the future of literary and
cultural studies and reassure me that scholars working in different peri-
ods and subfields can not only coexist, but engage in mutual gestures
 Acknowledgements    xiii

of nurturing I am also delighted to welcome my new colleagues, Margo

Crawford and Dagmawi Woubshet, both of whom have joined us from
Cornell this past Fall. And thanks go as well to Andy Binns, Beth A.
Winkelstein, William Gipson, Charles Howard, Brian Peterson, Valerie
DeCruz, Harriet Joseph, Ira Harkavy, Carol Muller, Peter Conn, Rogers
Smith, Alan Lee, and Janice Curington, whose steadfast presence as col-
laborators and sustainers underscore the importance of creating learning
communities committed to inclusiveness and social justice.
I need to acknowledge those individuals whose lights have shone
brightest and longest as they illuminate my tiny corner of the universe:
Douglas A. Banks, Johnny T. Jones, Robert Doward Williamson, Bryan
Huddleston, Frank Flonnoy, Lester L. Barclay, George O. Barnwell,
Daphne Brooks, Valerie Smith, Sandra and Basil Pacquet, Kristin
Brinkley, Millicent E. Brown, Lisa B. Thompson, Rafia Zafar, Angelyn
Mitchell, Tanji Gilliam, Mary Helen Washington, Danille Taylor, David
Ikard, Mark Sanders, John Edgar Tidwell, Robert G. O’Meally, Frances
Smith Foster, Richard Yarborough, Vincent Peterson, Carolyn Beard
Whitlow, Crystal J. Lucky, Anthony Foy, Adrienne Dale Davis, Farah
Jasmine Griffin, Dwight D. Andrews, Robert B. Stepto, Kimberly
Wallace Sanders, Vera Kutzinski, Pamela Robinson, Elaine Freedgood,
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Elizabeth Alexander, Karen Mapp, Paula
Krebs, Lillie Edwards, Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper, Regina Wilson,
Mencer Donahue Edwards, David A. Thomas, Bill Lowe, Cheryl A.
Wall, Kali Tal, Meta DuEwa Jones, Adrian C. Hernandez, Peter Schmidt,
Chuck James, Rafael Perez-Torres, Peter Vaughan, Kenneth Shropshire,
Andre Hughlett Bugg, Clemmie Harris, Allen Green, Maghan Kieta,
Ayo Fapohunda, Robin B. Means-Coleman, Nell Painter, Gloria
Watkins, Guthrie Ramsey, James Braxton Peterson, Kerry Haynie, John
Lowe, and Tim Powell have provided me with safe harbor in the harsh-
est of storms and model daily what it means to live a real and hon-
est life. Though Nellie McKay, Joseph Skerrett, Gay Wilentz, Oni
Faida Lampley, Jim Miller, Rudolph P. Byrd, James Richardson, Todd
Middleton, Clyde Woods, Sylvia Wilson, Terry Adkins, Claudia Tate, and
Vincent Woodard had all transitioned by the time this project came to
fruition, the lives they led and what they stood for continues to edify and
inspire me.
It is also necessary to send thanks to two people who took time
away from their own work to read an early draft of this manuscript at a
moment when, overcome with despair, I frantically reached out in need
xiv    Acknowledgements

of their assistance. Without the benefit of their intense attention and the
confidence that attention engendered, this book would never have got-
ten past the conceptual stage. For that, I want to express my deepest
gratitude to Dr. Deborah Barnes and Dr. Theodore Mason, who looked
past the obvious flaws in my initial conception and helped my ideas to
come into flower. They are the embodiment of a quality of friendship
that values truth-telling and encouragement over dissembling and dis-
couragement.
And to this number, I would add my beloved colleague, Thadious
Davis. During our time as colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania,
she has been my mentor, sounding board, collaborator, co-consipirator,
role model, and guardian angel all in one. It was Thadious who insisted
that the best way to launch a project was to begin by writing one’s unru-
liest thoughts out longhand on a legal pad and then proceed to boil it
down to a single paragraph. This latest piece of advice was part of our
extended history dating back to my time as a graduate student. To say
that she has been with me every step of the way doesn’t come close to
expressing the magnitude of her influence and support in my life and
career. She embodies the very best aspects of the academic profession
and does so with such incredible grace and dedication that I feel that
even in the wake of the most devastating failure, opportunity is at hand.
Many thanks to the students in my graduate seminar on the works
of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison (most notably, Anusha Alles,
Aundeah Kearney, Julius Fleming, and Omari Weekes) and the vari-
ous students in classes that featured Morrison’s work for helping
me to hone my thinking on Morrison’s novels (with a special shout
out to Michael King!). Over the years, I’ve been blessed with won-
derful research assistants: Janet Chow, Kassidi Jones, Nikki Spigner,
Leslie Collins Overton, Yolande Tomlinson, Maya Martin Bugg,
Marcia Henry, Courtney Patterson, Ann Desrosiers, and Rachelle
Skerritt, who combined labor with devotion and good humor. Thanks
go as well to my Alpha Baptist Church family, especially our pas-
tor the Reverend Doctor Danny Scotton, for “laying hands” on the
manuscript, reminding me that “It’s not your clock!,” and point-
ing me to Isaiah 55:11 (words that should accompany any attempt at
writing or speaking. And of course, a special and extended shout-
out to my family: My mother, Gloria Beavers Strickland, and my
sisters, Daryl Edwards, Dibri Beavers, and Dionna Beavers, who
have circled me with an abundance of love, laughter, and patience.
 Acknowledgements    xv

My wife, the Honorable Lisa James-Beavers, and my children Michael

and Corinne, have loved me without reservation and kept me grounded,
while reminding me that writing is important because putting good into
the world far outstrips seeking the rewards it brings.
Gratitude for all the assistance notwithstanding, responsibility for the
mistakes and shortcomings of this book rests with me, and me alone.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

Part I North

2 Held in the Thrall: Morrison’s Southern Men

and the Arrested Motion of Tight Space 25

3 From Zero to Nowhere: Tight Space and the Topophilia

of Violence 57

4 The Housing of Hurt: The Optic of Tight Space in Jazz 89

Part II South

5 A Measure of Last Resort: Limerence

and the Geometrical Shape of Community in Love 129

6 A Pox on All Your Houses: Susceptibility, Immunity,

and the Dilemma of Allegory in A Mercy 163

xvii
xviii    Contents

7 The Most Absurd Garments Space-Time Can Imagine:

Home’s Precarious Counter-Topography 193

Bibliography
233

Author Index 245

Subject Index 249

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Early in Toni Morrison’s Paradise, one of the Fleetwood twins takes a

moment to reflect upon life in the all-black town of Ruby and how its
inhabitants feel “free and protected.”1 He thinks about how a

sleeping woman could always rise from her bed, wrap her shawl around
her shoulders and sit on the steps in the moonlight. And if she felt like
it she could walk out the yard and on down the road. No lamp and no
fear. A hiss-crackle from the side of the road would never scare her because
whatever it was made the sound, it wasn’t something creeping up on her.
Nothing for ninety miles around thought she was prey. (9)

It is hard not to find this passage compelling. What black person living in
the U.S. wouldn’t want to experience this kind of geographical security
in their place of residence? However, when viewed in the context of the
plot, we find that the passage is meant to be ironic, especially since the
thought occurs in the midst of murderous violence wrought by a group
of men from Ruby, who have taken it upon themselves to hunt down
and kill the nine women living at the Convent located a few miles out-
side of the town. Understood in this context, the passage carries an air of
menace, control. A woman living in Ruby might not consider herself to
be “prey,” but such a feeling is contingent upon whether she recognizes
that her sense of well-being is underwritten by the violence sanctioned
by a select few among its residents.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

H. Beavers, Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels
of Toni Morrison, Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65999-2_1
2 H. Beavers

I selected this passage from Paradise because it provides a useful dem-

onstration of the overarching power of place. More specifically, it indicates
the importance of what geographers have come to describe as place-
­making. Reading Paradise, we come to understand that the town of Ruby
is sustained by an assertion of will. As far as the men attacking the Convent
are concerned, residing in Ruby is akin to living “in paradise.” But as we
will discover, occupying paradise always has its costs; place-making happens
inside history and is always fraught with politics. Paradise acquires greater
legibility with regard to place-making if we view it through the disciplinary
lens of geography, which situates place as a fundamental aspect of its prac-
tice.2 Marco Antonsich, for example, discusses place in terms of an expand-
ing notion of scale (ranging from the local to the continental). He argues
that “place identity” is the product of “experiences, feelings, attitudes, and
values, which are not only unconscious, but also conscious” (122).3 And as
Kevin R. Cox observes, any discussion of the politics of place must reflect
territorial politics. “It is about including and excluding,” he writes, “estab-
lishing and defending boundaries, and laying claims to particular spaces
and to inclusion in them on equal terms” (12). According to Cox, cities
are not just a concentration of large numbers of bodies, structures, and sys-
tems, but also a system of “nodes that gather, flow, and juxtapose diversity,
as places of overlapping—but not necessarily locally connected—relational
networks, as perforated entities with connections that stretch far back in
time and space,” leading to “spatial formations of continuously changing
composition” (34).4
Here, it is important to juxtapose the definitions of place from male
geographers cited above with the work of feminist geographers. It is not
my intent to insinuate feminist geographers are necessarily at odds with
established definitions of place, but thinking about Toni Morrison’s nov-
els in relation to the practices that underwrite acts of place-­making, it
becomes important to understand how feminist approaches to ­geography
feminist geographers complicate the disciplinary assertion that “places
are contested, fluid, and uncertain,” in which we find “multiple and
changing boundaries, constituted and maintained by social relations
of power and exclusion” (Massey, qtd. in McDowell, p. 4). As Linda
McDowell argues in her book Place and Gender, the work of geogra-
phers like Neil Smith aptly describes place-making as a process that
“implies the production of [geographical] scale in so far as places are
made different from each other” (4). Like Smith, McDowell believes
that it is “geographical scale that defines the boundaries and bounds
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

the identities around which control is exerted and contested” (4). But
geography’s attention to notions of locality are equally important and
thus McDowell acknowledges the work of Doreen Massey, who argues,
“localities are produced by the intersection of global and local pro-
cesses—social relations that operate at a range of spatial scales” (4). And
as Mona Domosh and Joni Seager point out, moving through space
involves overcoming what they call the “friction of distance.” “Insisting
that individual forms of mobility differ as one moves along the socio-
economic continuum,” Domosh and Seager propose that attention to
the concept of mobility needs to assume the body to be a logical start-
ing point (110). They argue further, “Social norms, and the spaces
constructed to hold those norms, shape what we think a body can and
cannot do…In all societies there is an intertwined reciprocity between
space, bodies, and the social construction of both—neither ‘space’ nor
‘bodies’ exist independently of a social imprint” (112).
Feminist geographers’ attempts to problematize the concept of place,
is incomplete without also figuring in the importance of mapping as a
function of place-making. In her book, Shuttles Rocking in the Loom,
Jennifer Terry relates how mapping constitutes a form of spatial politics
which in turn evokes the political imaginary of the European colonial-
project because of

Its loaded associations with colonial incursions, codification, and control;

its rendition of geography as experienced from a particular vantage point,
whether it claims otherwise or not; and more straightforwardly, its spatial
emphasis. (1)5

But Terry insists that writing in the African Diaspora proffers “a more
diverse set of counter-geographies that speak to the African American
and Caribbean experiences, each somehow affirming or reorienting
in the face of oppression” (1). Through her effort to “counter scholarly
atomization (sic) in terms of nation and language,” Terry ascertains the
extent to which the histories of people of the diaspora must take into
account the forms of displacement, disembodiment, and disenfranchise-
ment synonymous with New World slavery and oppression. However,
she also seeks to understand how writers in the U.S. and other points
across the diaspora seek to reimagine the relationship between acts of
mapping and identity formation. For example, she looks at Morrison’s
Jazz with an eye toward how acts of displacement and eviction inhibit
4 H. Beavers

her characters’ ability to fashion coherent versions of themselves and the

ways they must re-orient themselves to the spatial realities of the North
in order to achieve it (18).
As I see it, the point of contact between the work I do in this study
and Terry’s emerges around the notion of place-making and the crea-
tion of “counter-geographies” involves the act of reimagining how maps
function. Then, the act of place-making has to do with creating an alter-
native poetics of mapmaking. Here, Siobhan McEvoy-Levy’s arguments
regarding issues of place are persuasive, in particular McEvoy-Levy’s
observation that, a place “is more than a physical space, a place is space
plus meaning” (1). Seen in this regard, maps are meaning-laden enter-
prises whose interpretation is influenced by those who control the pro-
duction of spatial meaning. Thus, place-making is

a process with an indefinable end. While places have a material reality,

their meanings evolve over time and not in wholly predictable or control-
lable ways. Places are constantly reinterpreted and reconstituted, and entail
ongoing power struggles and negotiations. Place-making, therefore, has a
potentially intimate connection with the social, cultural, and political pro-
cesses of peacebuilding. (2)

While the violence and discontent to be found in Morrison’s fiction

would make it odd to equate place-making and peacebuilding, her fic-
tion is replete with examples of agential place-making. In Sula, an exam-
ple of place-making is the story of how an act of subterfuge that lets
whites retain the best, most arable land and blacks come to occupy what
is known as the Bottom. Another occurs in Song of Solomon when Mains
Avenue becomes known, first, as Doctor Street and subsequently as Not
Doctor Street, despite its designation on the town’s maps. The house Sula
grows up in is described as “a house of many rooms,” and built to suit the
specifications of Eva Peace “who kept on adding things: more stairways—
there were three sets to the second floor—more rooms, doors and stoops.
There were rooms that had three doors, others that opened out on the
porch only were inaccessible from any other part of the house; others you
could get to only by going through somebody’s bedroom” (30). Eva’s
unruly approach to making a home leads her to take in Tar Baby as a ten-
ant and burn her son, Plum, to prevent him from crawling back into her
womb. Yet another instance can be found in Jazz when a parade of “silent
black women and men marching down Fifth Avenue to advertise their
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

anger over two hundred dead in East St. Louis” constitutes a moment
when place-making, disaffection, and commemoration intersect. Finally,
the two months in which Frank Money’s ailing sister, Cee, is ministered to
by “country women who loved mean” as they gather at Ethel Fordham’s
house to make quilts and where Cee finds herself “[s]urrounded by their
comings and goings, listening to their talk, their songs” and paying “them
the attention she had never given them before” (122).
Thinking of these examples and many others, Geography and the
Political Imaginary in the Fiction of Toni Morrison seeks to determine
whether Morrison’s publication of Beloved in 1987 constitutes a depar-
ture from previously established iterations of place-making. Did the
novel elaborate upon previously established notions of place or does it
serve as a bellwether for what comes after in which the idea of place is
troubled in new ways? Should we read the transition from Tar Baby, with
its setting on a fictional island in the Caribbean in relation to Beloved
with its marked return to the geographically and historically recognizable
location of Cincinnati as an iterative gesture?
For answers, I turn to the closing pages of Beloved in order to
bring these questions into focus. When Paul D hears Sethe claim that
her murdered baby was her “best thing.” Paul D’s thoughts about Sethe
makes him realize he

is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought-iron back; the
delicious mouth still puffy at the corner from Ella’s fist. The mean black
eyes. The wet dress steaming before the fire. Her tenderness about his
neck jewelry—its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving two feet
into the air. How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have
to feel the shame of being collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe
could have left him his manhood like that. He wants to put his story next to
hers. (322, my italics)

Paul D’s decision is indicative of what I am calling horizontal place-

making. His desire to situate his own history alongside Sethe’s is a
radical gesture since it eschews hierarchy in favor of a more paratacti-
cal approach to cohabiting with her, as if one story cannot be consid-
ered without taking heed of the other, as if a grammar of equivalence
has emerged and taken root. Paul D’s realization that he wants to “put
his story next to” Sethe’s, likewise rests on the assumption that she is
her “best thing.” When Paul D tells Sethe, “me and you, we got more
6 H. Beavers

yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow” (320), it is

a gesture that dismantles the implicit connection between memory and
injury in favor of imagination and aspiration by committing to overcom-
ing the friction of distance that has undermined their efforts to cohabit
in a space safe for them both.
I refer to the individual and collective forms of trauma Morrison’s
characters experience as tight space. As I conceptualize it, tight space sig-
nals a character’s spiritual and emotional estrangement from community
and the way it inhibits their ability to sustain a meaningful relationship
to place. Tight space induces strategies that result in vertical forms of
place-making which emphasizes individualism, materialism, violence, and
abjection as key components of their estrangement. Only by eschewing
verticality and opting for horizontal systems of collaboration and recon-
ciliation that lead to more egalitarian and open forms of place-making
can Morrison’s characters loose themselves from the tight space that
immobilizes them.
She dramatizes this struggle by employing the recurring trope of the
two-story house, where the spatial and domestic geographies we find in
Morrison’s fiction are revealed to be sites of narrative contestation,
where the occlusion of history and the wholesale erasure of black sub-
jects can only be countermanded by the establishment of counter-pub-
lics that privilege collaborative forms of narration that penetrate silence
and counteract the effects of tight space. Paul D’s and Sethe’s location
in, and subsequent escape from, tight space means that if “place is space
plus meaning,” the works that follow Beloved instantiate place-making
as a phenomenon that occurs across multiple registers and thus creates
the possibility of political imaginaries in which her protagonists and the
communities they inhabit can thrive. Hence, the eradication of tight
space within the context of the two-story house means that the vertical
arrangement of narrative gives way to a more horizontal circumstance.6
Because the characters often become aware that they are caught in
tight space through the near-exhaustion of personal resources, their only
recourse is to loose themselves from previously held assumptions in order
to reimagine their possibilities. This often means that they must under-
stand how their circumstances are informed by the politics of scale. As
one of geography’s core concepts, scale allows us to identify and then
“negotiate the boundaries between difference and similarity” (82). An
awareness of the challenges of scale empowers individuals and groups
to “delimit inclusion or exclusion in such social constructions as home,
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

class, nation, rural, urban, core, and periphery” (82).7 The recurrence
of tight space in Morrison’s fiction has much to do with her propensity
to represent local circumstances in which power relations are managed
at varying scales of influence. Scarcity in the village may be the by-prod-
uct of surplus in the city. The abuse a man inflicts on his wife may be a
by-product of a decision to close a factory at the company headquarters
hundreds of miles away. A child is orphaned because the men who domi-
nate county politics decide they want her father’s land. A man wearing
a military uniform barely survives the wrath of a mob because the black
warrior is an incongruent metonym for the U.S. body politic.
Our ability to have a meaningful attachment to place has much to
do, then, with the ways scale often pivots on the symbiosis that inheres
between systems of exclusion and systems of evaluation. This study high-
light issues of scale in her novels by considering scale as an outward pro-
gression. Which means that I move outward from how the individual
engenders a sense of place, to the ways place is manifest on a neighbor-
hood scale, to how place signifies on the scale of the town, and finally
to how place reflects social relations on a global scale. Organizing the
discussion in this manner is key to a conceptual mapping of how acts of
place-making figures directly and indirectly into black life. Because place-
making for Morrison’s characters often emerges amidst turmoil, they
often face the difficulty of ascertaining the exact source of the turbulence
that enshrouds them. They are required in turn to cast their figurative
gaze backward to think about trauma which is located within the form of
power relations growing out of systems of scale.
The sites of contestation in which these systems become discernible
requires an understanding of what Guitar, in Song of Solomon, refers to
as “the condition our condition is in,” a “meta-awareness” that invites
us to think beyond acts of exclusion in order to consider the structural
imperatives underwriting a politics of exclusion. Morrison’s characters
often discover that they cannot elucidate what an alternative imaginary
founded on principles of inclusion and equity might look like by them-
selves, hence, they find that horizontal place-making is a collaborative
gesture that hinges on the characters’ realization that interdependence
is a key element. In trying to understand community as the result of
conscious acts of place-making, I seek to investigate the spatial nature
of communal politics and history. How are boundaries established and
policed? What sort of thinking informs how the inhabitants establish
what forms of place-making (vertical or horizontal) they seek to effect?
8 H. Beavers

How are attachments formed or broken, sustained or abandoned? What

this means is that the acts of voice occurring in Morrison’s novels are
contingent on her characters’ ability to understand that the effects of
tight space cannot be overcome without a radical rethinking of how
space is transformed into place.
Thinking about the title of this study, I mean for “Geography”
to function as an interpolation of the phrase “Political Imaginary.”
Wolfgang Iser describes how an imaginary functions by stating that
“imagination manifests itself only as an impact on relationships brought
about by forces external to it, and therefore to a large extent condi-
tioned by them” (180, 637). The imaginary exists, he asserts, “not only
in ideas, dreams and daydreams, but also in memory and to a smaller
degree in perception itself.” According to Cornelius Castoriadis, the
imaginary is distinguished by the fact that it is not indeterminate. Rather,
for him, “the very fabric of social life consists of imaginary significations”
(639). Imaginaries, Castoriadis argues, “are the product of significations
that acquire meaning in a social context in which power is unequally
distributed, where acts of defective decision-making are rationalized
through the use of mystified information” (639).
The issue of power is especially relevant to political imaginaries. As Allan
Tullos relates, a political imaginary consists of the “public shape of power,
representation, and possibility.” Moreover, a political imaginary is an

affective terrain rather than a sovereign polity, a political imaginary con-

figures possibilities and outlines limits, suggests the boundaries of the
legitimate and the outrageous, limns the contours of power. Political imag-
inaries take shape through popular narratives as much as by legislative acts;
in the words and deeds of public figures of speech; through rumor, jokes,
statistics, journalistic ascriptions, blog entries, art, and music. (5)

Tullos observes further that political imaginaries are a by-product of

statistical inference, stereotypes, popular narratives, and mythic figu-
rations. In view of such an observation, a central tenet of this study is
that Morrison’s fictional characters provide the means through which to
illustrate how the quest to fashion a political imaginary informs everyday
behaviors. How do her characters and the communities in which they
reside go about conceptualizing what a prosperous future would look
like? What values cement the community into a viable whole where eve-
ryone’s presence is cherished? What are the negative energies working to
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

tear the community asunder? Are the vertical forces at play in a commu-
nity countered by horizontal forces that result in the discovery of new
ways to define belonging, where the transformation of social relations
leads to a more grounded sense of place?
Here, I reprise Paul D’s insistence that he and Sethe are in “need of
some kind of tomorrow,” as way to underscore how Morrison’s char-
acters driven to direct their gaze forward, toward what is approaching,
rather than always contending with what lies behind them till the past
becomes perpetually present. But achieving a state of mind open to what
is to come requires a break with the past. Iser, Castoriadis, and Tullos
in their respective fashions intimate that the affective nature of political
imaginaries is made legible in the everyday interactions that help us to
ascertain boundaries, limits, and potentialities. The structures of feeling
that flourish in the wake of these learned behaviors and responses are,
once again, meaningful only in the context of our relationships with oth-
ers. Traversing affecting terrain often signals a need to domesticate expe-
rience in the form of habits and preferences. As such, communities can
be understood as sites of interdependencies that are only partially real-
ized, and we thus need to be mindful of how the political imaginary is
reliant on what Tullos refers to as habits of judgment that “sustain the
everyday conventions, patrol the borderlands of expectation, shepherd
the trails of personal satisfaction and disdain,” and “animate the politi-
cal in the personal” (27). Furthermore, habits of judgment “animate
the political in the personal” and “grow from location, historical prac-
tices, institutional affirmation, and cultural repetition” (27, 9). Achieving
a state of mutuality sufficient for communities to set about challenging
the status quo is contingent on the individuals’ ability to reassess their
feelings, monitor their responses to social stimuli, and hold themselves
accountable for their adherence to social conventions that demean them.
This points to what I see as one of the main achievements of the
civil rights movement. Black communities all over the South opted to
resist the covenant of Jim Crow by placing their bodies in harm’s way at
lunch counters, in department stores, and on public transportation. In so
doing, they opted out of the racial skirmishing that involved the recogni-
tion on the part of blacks that making their displeasure and discomfort
visible in the form of heavy sighs, frowns, hesitations, covert sabotage,
and isolated acts of physical retaliation would no longer suffice. What
had long been accepted as a way to register discontent, had a political
dimension that the community had elected not to bring to full flower.
10 H. Beavers

The movement constituted the abandonment of habits of judgment

based on the premise that acts of individual assertion would bring large-
scale forms of violent retribution down on the community. Non-violent
resistance, with its silent assertion that black bodies were occupying
space but with a difference, marked a radical departure from convention.
All of a sudden, black people were no longer content to “stay in their
place,” nullifying badges and jail cells, physical and verbal assault, police
dogs and hoses as methods of enforcing boundaries.8
However, changes in habits of judgment can just as easily be the product
of collective forms of misinterpretation. Readers of Sula will remember that
moment when the inhabitants of Medallion, Ohio, take it upon themselves
to wreak havoc on the construction site of the tunnel being built near the
river. Morrison’s point is that if a community’s habits of judgment reflect
interpretive consensus, then changes of order often result when commu-
nities elect to abandon the interpretive protocols that created it. In the
case of Medallion, though, their acts of destructive protest can be traced
to the death of Sula Peace, whose return to Medallion many years earlier
“changed them in accountable yet mysterious ways” so that they “cherish
their husbands and wives, protect their children, repair their homes and
in general band together against the devil in their midst” (117–118). But
Sula’s death leads them to relinquish their nurturing posture.
And when the new year brings unseasonably warm weather that
sweeps away Winter’s bitter cold and ice, the resulting exultant mood
leads first to infectious laughter and subsequently to a “parade” that
induces their neighbors to join them, “as though the sunshine would
last, as though there really was hope” (160). Hope informs their previ-
ous habits of judgment such that it

kept them picking beans for other farmers; kept them from finally leav-
ing as they talked of doing; kept them knee-deep in other people’s dirt;
kept them excited about other people’s wars; kept them solicitous of white
people’s children; kept them convinced that some magic “government”
was going to lift them up, out and away from that dirt, those beans, those
wars. (160).

The narrator continues: “Old and young, women and children, lame and
hearty, they killed, as best they could, the tunnel they were forbidden to
build,” in a fit of massed rage (161). But in their exuberance, “their need
to kill it all, all of it,” they go too far inside the tunnel, at which point
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

the earth loosens and the poles holding back the water fall away: Water
rushes in and kills a large number of Medallion residents (161).
Sula asserts that a change in habits of judgment cannot be contin-
gent upon anomalous circumstance that creates the illusion of altered
conditions. An alternative political imaginary is not a product of the car-
nivalesque, where celebratory and ceremonial acts signal the temporary
suspension of established habits of judgment. In Sula, what appears to be
a reversal of the power dynamic actually demonstrates how the seeming
nullification of the existing system of scale is momentary. The onrush-
ing water symbolizes the status quo reasserting itself with greater force.
Acts of resistance are opportunities for new beginnings only if defiance
gives way to tactical behaviors that seek to reimagine the future. News
of Sula Peace’s demise and the celebration it occasions intimates that
what seemed to be a reversal of fortune, a nullification of the existing
system of scale, was at best momentary. Though Sula’s return did lead
to an attitude of caretaking and protectiveness in the Bottom, the tunnel
tragedy suggests that the political imaginary that grew up in response to
her presence was purely reactionary. Black communities, both in actu-
ality and in Morrison’s fiction, engage in political discourse in a vari-
ety of settings and in ways that are not often acknowledged as being
­political.9 Hence, it is by no means a far-fetched notion that the novel is
Morrison’s approach to engaging the question of the political imagina-
tion since her work regularly depicts characters who wrestle with hab-
its of judgment that directly impact on how they conceptualize acts of
place-making and empowerment.
Another way to ascertain what it means for Morrison’s characters to
imagine the point where place-making and the political imaginary inter-
sect is through geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s concept of topophilia. Tuan
describes topophilia as “the affective bond between people and place”
(4). As such, topophilia is how we measure the extent to which space
is transformed into place. Tuan’s judicious definition of place increases
in resonance when read alongside George Lipsitz’s provocative notion
that the “persistence of unequal racial-outcomes” in the U.S. forces us to
“come to grips with the fatal couplings of place and race in our society”
(5). Although Tuan’s description of topophilia is couched in humanis-
tic terms that are sufficiently capacious to allow the idea of place-­making
to operate across a variety of registers, we nonetheless need to be mind-
ful of the political machinations inherent in Tuan’s f­ormulation.10
Tuan’s concept of topophilia allows us to see Morrison’s novels as an
12 H. Beavers

investigative circumstance through which to highlight the inherent dif-

ficulty that accompanies acts of generating and sustaining community in
the face of hostility and disenfranchisement. In short, she invites us to
think about how we come to love where we are and how, in occupying
space, we elect to face up to its challenges rather than hiding from them.
But the relationship between affect and belonging can just as eas-
ily assume negative characteristics. For example, in Paradise, when
Reverend Pulliam presides over the wedding ceremony of Arnette and
K.D., he offers remarks on the nature of love. “Love is divine only and
difficult always,” he declares, “If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you
think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without rea-
son or motive except that it is God” (141). The reverend’s thoughts veer
sharply away from conventional understandings of love, which is in part
the reason for his jeremiad. For him, love exists outside of both human
intentionality and human physiology. Further, he insists that love should
not be considered a basic human right, an expectation with no prior
requirements. Pulliam asserts that as individuals, we do not deserve love
simply because “of the suffering [we] have endured,” because “some-
body did [us] wrong,” or even “because [we] want it.” By his judgment,
“Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring privileges: the
privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it” (141).
Reverend Pulliam’s assessment of love is not intended, as one might
expect, for the bride and groom, especially when he declares, “God is
not interested in you.” Rather, Pulliam sees love as the possession of a
God “who is interested only in Himself,” because “he is interested
only in love.” Hearing Reverend Pulliam’s troublesome characteriza-
tion of love, Anna Flood concludes that his views are not for the ben-
efit of the couple. They are directed at Reverend Misner, who pastors
the Baptist church in Ruby, who has been deeply involved in the civil
rights and Black Power movements, and who ministers through what
might be termed liberation theology. Anna concludes that Pulliam’s dia-
tribe is meant to discredit Misner’s overall approach to ministry, to reject
the “namby-pamby sermons of a man who thought teaching was letting
children talk as if they had something important to say that the world
had not heard and dealt with already” (143). But we also need to regard
Pulliam’s observations regarding love as assertions of scale. His version
of God is so consumed by an ontology of self-interestedness, any con-
cern he might display toward human frailty, need, or longing ultimately
fall outside his gaze. Within Pulliam’s spiritual geography, individuals
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

seeking to cleave one to another commit sin which, in its capriciousness,

makes love akin to blasphemy.
What makes Pulliam’s observations about love intriguing in the present
context is that by directing them at Misner, he is rejecting any thought of a
political imaginary not organized from the top downward, an arrangement
in which men like Deek and Steward Fleetwood preside and everyone else
conforms to their will. By asserting that human beings are of little interest
to God, Pulliam is likewise insisting that the effort to exercise agency in the
face of injustice is beside the point. The model of leadership he values most
is one in which the individual submits to God’s externalized will; it involves
setting aside the question of unconditional acceptance to embrace an ethic
that is wholly conditional, leaving the individual scarcely able to ascertain
whether a spiritual walk is motion at all.
Reverend Misner’s response to Pulliam’s diatribe is not a verbal
rebuttal. Misner is angered by Pulliam’s attack, angry at the wound
­
inflicted upon him for reasons he does not fully understand. But rather
than voicing his dissent, he walks to the rear of the church and unhooks
the cross hanging on the wall and walks back up to the pulpit, where he
holds it “before him for all to see—if only they would. See what was cer-
tainly the first sign of any human anywhere had made: the vertical line,
the horizontal one” (145). By holding the cross aloft, Misner seeks to
communicate that in its simplicity lies its power as a symbol of human
agency, a symbol that is integral to a meaningful life:

Without this sign, the believer’s life was confined to praising God and tak-
ing the hits. The praise was credit; the hits were interest due on the debt
that could never be paid. Or, as Pulliam put it, no one knew when he had
“graduated.” But with it, in the religion which this sign was paramount
and foundational, well, life was a whole other matter. (146)

Once again, the theological debate between Pulliam and Misner is less a
concern than the ways that their respective approaches to religious practice
articulate approaches to place-making and the ways it contributes to build-
ing and sustaining a political imaginary. In the former, Pulliam describes
a power relationship that mirrors the white supremacist imaginary: it is
arbitrary and punitive, indifferent and self-centered. In the latter, the cross
asserts that the relationship reflects egalitarian principles, a symbol that
poses the question to the entire gathering, “See how this official murder
out of hundreds marked the difference, moved the relationship between
God and man from CEO and supplicant to one on one?” (146).
Another random document with
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definitely ascertained. It may be an assumption that time will prove to
be unwarranted that all the Leptomedusae pass through a
Calyptoblastic hydrosome stage.

Fam. Aequoreidae.—In this family the hydrosome stage is not

known except in the genus Polycanna, in which it resembles a
Campanulariid. The sense-organs of the Medusae are statocysts.
The radial canals are very numerous, and the genital glands are in
the form of ropes of cells extending along the whole of their oral
surfaces. Aequorea is a fairly common genus, with a flattened
umbrella and a very rudimentary manubrium, which may attain a size
of 40 mm. in diameter.

Fam. Thaumantiidae.—The Medusae of this family are

distinguished from the Aequoreidae by having marginal ocelli in
place of statocysts. The hydrosome of Thaumantias alone is known,
and this is very similar to an Obelia.

Fam. Cannotidae.—The hydrosome is quite unknown. The

Medusae are ocellate, but the radial canals, instead of being
undivided, as in the Thaumantiidae, are four in number, and very
much ramified before reaching the ring canal. The tentacles are very
numerous. In the genus Polyorchis, from the Pacific coast of North
America, the four radial canals give rise to numerous lateral short
blind branches, and have therefore a remarkable pinnate
appearance.

Fam. Sertulariidae.—In this family the hydrothecae are sessile, and

arranged bilaterally on the stem and branches. The general form of
the colony is pinnate, the branches being usually on opposite sides
of the main stem. The gonophores are adelocodonic. Sertularia
forms more or less arborescent colonies, springing from a creeping
stolon attached to stones and shells. There are many species,
several of which are very common upon the British coast. Many
specimens are torn from their attachments by storms or by the trawls
of fishermen and cast up on the sand or beach with other zoophytes.
The popular name for one of the commonest species (S. abietina) is
the "sea-fir." The genus has a wide geographical and bathymetrical
range. Another common British species frequently thrown up by the
tide in great quantities is Hydrallmania falcata. It has slender spirally-
twisted stems and branches, and the hydrothecae are arranged
unilaterally.

The genus Grammaria, sometimes placed in a separate family, is

distinguished from Sertularia by several characters. The stem and
branches are composed of a number of tubes which are
considerably compressed. The genus is confined to the southern
seas.

Fam. Plumulariidae.—The hydrothecae are sessile, and arranged

in a single row on the stem and branches. Nematophores are always
present. Gonophores adelocodonic. This family is the largest and
most widely distributed of all the families of the Hydrozoa. Nutting
calculates that it contains more than one-fourth of all the Hydroids of
the world. Over 300 species have been described, and more than
half of these are found in the West Indian and Australian regions.
Representatives of the family occur in abundance in depths down to
300 fathoms, and not unfrequently to 500 fathoms. Only a few
species have occasionally been found in depths of over 1000
fathoms.

The presence of nematophores may be taken as the most

characteristic feature of the family, but similar structures are also
found in some species belonging to other families (p. 277).

The family is divided into two groups of genera, the Eleutheroplea

and the Statoplea. In the former the nematophores are mounted on
a slender pedicel, which admits of more or less movement, and in
the latter the nematophores are sessile. The genera Plumularia and
Antennularia belong to the Eleutheroplea. The former is a very large
genus, with several common British species, distinguished by the
terminal branches being pinnately disposed, and the latter,
represented by A. antennina and A. ramosa on the British coast, is
distinguished by the terminal branches being arranged in verticils.

The two most important genera of the Statoplea are Aglaophenia

and Cladocarpus. The former is represented by a few species in
European waters, the latter is only found in American waters.

Fam. Hydroceratinidae.—The colony consists of a mass of

entwined hydrorhiza, with a skeleton in the form of anastomosing
chitinous tubes. Hydrothecae scattered, tubular, and sessile.
Nematophores present. Gonophores probably adelocodonic.

This family was constituted for a remarkable hydroid, Clathrozoon

wilsoni, described by W. B. Spencer from Victoria.[317] The zooids
are sessile, and spring from more than one of the numerous
anastomosing tubes of the stem and branches. The whole of the
surface is studded with an enormous number of small and very
simple dactylozooids, protected by tubular nematophores. Only a
few specimens have hitherto been obtained, the largest being 10
inches in height by 4 inches in width. In general appearance it has
some resemblance to a dark coloured fan-shaped Gorgonia.

Fam. Campanulariidae.—The hydrothecae in this family are

pedunculate, and the gonophores adelocodonic.

In the cosmopolitan genus Campanularia the stem is monosiphonic,

and the hydrothecae bell-shaped. Several species of this genus are
very common in the rock pools of our coast between tide marks.
Halecium is characterised by the rudimentary character of its
hydrothecae, which are incapable of receiving the zooids even in
their maximum condition of retraction. The genus Lafoea is
remarkable for the development of a large number of tightly packed
gonothecae on the hydrorhiza, each of which contains a blastostyle,
bearing a single gonophore and, in the female, a single ovum. This
group of gonothecae was regarded as a distinct genus of Hydroids,
and was named Coppinia.[318] Lafoea dumosa with gonothecae of
the type described as Coppinia arcta occurs on the British coast.

Perisiphonia is an interesting genus from deep water off the Azores,

Australia, and New Zealand, with a stem composed of many distinct
tubes.

The genus Zygophylax, from 500 fathoms off the Cape Verde, is of
considerable interest in having a nematophore on each side of the
hydrotheca. According to Quelch it should be placed in a distinct
family.

Ophiodes has long and very active defensive zooids, protected by

nematophores. It is found in the Laminarian zone on the English
coast.

Fam. Eucopidae.—The hydrosome stage of this family is very

similar to that of the Campanulariidae, but the gonophores are free-
swimming Medusae of the Leptomedusan type.

One of the best-known genera is Obelia, of which several species

are among the commonest Hydroids of the British coast.

Clytia johnstoni is also a very common Hydroid, growing on red

algae or leaves of the weed Zostera. It consists of a number of
upright, simple, or slightly branched stems springing from a creeping
hydrorhiza. When liberated the Medusae are globular in form, with
four radial canals and four marginal tentacles, but this Medusa, like
many others of the order, undergoes considerable changes in form
before it reaches the sexually mature stage.

Phialidium temporarium is one of the commonest Medusae of our

coast, and sometimes occurs in shoals. It seems probable that it is
the Medusa of Clytia johnstoni.[319] By some authors the jelly-fish
known as Epenthesis is also believed to be the Medusa of a Clytia.

Fam. Dendrograptidae.—This family includes a number of fossils

which have certain distinct affinities with the Calyptoblastea. In
Dictyonema, common in the Ordovician rocks of Norway, but also
found in the Palaeozoic rocks of North America and elsewhere, the
fossil forms fan-shaped colonies of delicate filaments, united by
many transverse commissures, and in well-preserved specimens the
terminal branches bear well-marked uniserial hydrothecae. In some
species thecae of a different character, which have been interpreted
to be gonothecae and nematophores respectively, are found.

Other genera are Dendrograptus, Thamnograptus, and several

others from Silurian strata.

Order V. Graptolitoidea.
A large number of fossils, usually called Graptolites, occurring in
Palaeozoic strata, are generally regarded as the skeletal remains of
an ancient group of Hydrozoa.

In the simpler forms the fossil consists of a delicate straight rod

bearing on one side a series of small cups. It is suggested that the
cups contained hydroid zooids, and should therefore be regarded as
the equivalent of the hydrothecae, and that the axis represents the
axis of the colony or of a branch of the Calyptoblastea. In some of
the forms with two rows of cups on the axis (Diplograptus), however,
it has been shown that the cups are absent from a considerable
portion of one end of the axis, and that the axes of several radially
arranged individuals are fused together and united to a central
circular plate. Moreover, there is found in many specimens a series
of vesicles, a little larger in size than the cups, attached to the plate
and arranged in a circle at the base of the axes. These vesicles are
called the gonothecae.
The discovery of the central plate and of the so-called gonothecae
suggests that the usual comparison of a Graptolite with a Sertularian
Hydroid is erroneous, and that the colony or individual, when alive,
was a more or less radially symmetrical floating form, like a Medusa,
of which only the distal appendages (possibly tentacles) are
commonly preserved as fossils.

The evidence that the Graptolites were Hydrozoa is in reality very

slight, but the proof of their relationship to any other phylum of the
animal kingdom does not exist.[320] It is therefore convenient to
consider them in this place, and to regard them, provisionally, as
related to the Calyptoblastea.

The order is divided into three families.

Fam. 1. Monoprionidae.—Cups arranged uniserially on one side of

the axis.

The principal genera are Monograptus, with the axis straight, curved,
or helicoid, from many horizons in the Silurian strata; Rastrites, with
a spirally coiled axis, Silurian; Didymograptus, Ordovician; and
Coenograptus, Ordovician.

Fam. 2. Diprionidae.—Cups arranged in two or four vertical rows on

the axis.

Diplograptus, Ordovician and Silurian; Climacograptus, Ordovician

and Silurian; and Phyllograptus, in which the axis and cups are
arranged in such a manner that they resemble an ovate leaf.

Fam. 3. Retiolitidae.—Cups arranged biserially on a reticulate axis.

Retiolites, Ordovician and Silurian; Stomatograptus, Retiograptus,

and Glossograptus, Ordovician.
 Fossil Corals possibly allied to Hydrozoa.
Among the many fossil corals that are usually classified with the
Hydrozoa the genus Porosphaera is of interest as it is often
supposed to be related to Millepora. It consists of globular masses
about 10-20 mm. in diameter occurring in the Upper Cretaceous
strata. In the centre there is usually a foreign body around which the
coral was formed by concentric encrusting growth. Running radially
from pores on the surface to the centre, there are numerous tubules
which have a certain general resemblance to the pore-tubes of
Millepora. The monomorphic character of these tubes, their very
minute size, the absence of ampullae, and the general texture of the
corallum, are characters which separate this fossil very distinctly
from any recent Hydroid corals. Porosphaera, therefore, was
probably not a Hydrozoon, and certainly not related to the recent
Millepora.

Closely related to Porosphaera apparently are other globular,

ellipsoidal, or fusiform corals from various strata, such as Loftusia
from the Eocene of Persia, Parkeria from the Cambridge Greensand,
and Heterastridium from the Alpine Trias. In the last named there is
apparently a dimorphism of the radial tubes.

Allied to these genera, again, but occurring in the form of thick,

concentric, calcareous lamellae, are the genera Ellipsactinia and
Sphaeractinia from the Upper Jurassic.

Another important series of fossil corals is that of the family

Stromatoporidae. These fossils are found in great beds of immense
extent in many of the Palaeozoic rocks, and must have played an
important part in the geological processes of that period. They
consist of a series of calcareous lamellae, separated by considerable
intervals, encrusting foreign bodies of various kinds. Sometimes they
are flat and plate-like, sometimes globular or nodular in form. The
lamellae are in some cases perforated by tabulate, vertical, or radial
pores, but in many others these pores are absent. The zoological
position of the Stromatoporidae is very uncertain, but there is not at
present any very conclusive evidence that they are Hydrozoa.

Stromatopora is common in Devonian and also occurs in Silurian

strata. Cannopora from the Devonian has well-marked tabulate
pores, and is often found associated commensally with another coral
(Aulopora or Syringopora).

Order VI. Stylasterina.

The genera included in this order resemble Millepora in producing a
massive calcareous skeleton, and in showing a consistent
dimorphism of the zooids, but in many respects they exhibit great
divergence from the characters of the Milleporina.

The colony is arborescent in growth, the branches arising frequently

only in one plane, forming a flabellum. The calcareous skeleton is
perforated to a considerable depth by the gastrozooids,
dactylozooids, and nutritive canals, and the gastropores and
dactylopores are not provided with tabulae except in the genera
Pliobothrus and Sporadopora. The character which gives the order
its name is a conical, sometimes torch-like projection at the base of
the gastropore, called the "style," which carries a fold of the
ectoderm and endoderm layers of the body-wall, and may serve to
increase the absorptive surface of the digestive cavity. In some
genera a style is also present in the dactylopore, in which case it
serves as an additional surface for the attachment of the retractor
muscles. The pores are scattered on all aspects of the coral in the
genera Sporadopora, Errina, and Pliobothrus; in Spinipora and
Steganopora the scattered dactylopores are situated at the
extremities of tubular spines which project from the general surface
of the coral, the gastropores being situated irregularly between the
spines. In Phalangopora the pores are arranged in regular
longitudinal lines, and in Distichopora they are mainly in rows on the
edges of the flattened branches, a single row of gastropores being
flanked by a single row of dactylopores on each side. In the
remaining genera the pores are arranged in definite cycles, which
are frequently separated from one another by considerable intervals,
and have, particularly in the dried skeleton, a certain resemblance to
the calices of some of the Zoantharian corals.

In Cryptohelia the cycles are covered by a lid-like projection from the

neighbouring coenenchym (Fig. 136, l 1, l 2). The gastrozooids are
short, and are usually provided with a variable number of small
capitate tentacles. The dactylozooids are filiform and devoid of
tentacles, the endoderm of their axes being solid and scalariform.

The gonophores of the Stylasterina are situated in large oval or

spherical cavities called the ampullae, and their presence can
generally be detected by the dome-shaped projections they form on
the surface of the coral. The female gonophore consists of a saucer-
shaped pad of folded endoderm called the "trophodisc," which
serves the purpose of nourishing the single large yolk-laden egg it
bears; and a thin enveloping membrane composed of at least two
layers of cells. The egg is fertilised while it is still within the ampulla,
and does not escape to the exterior until it has reached the stage of
a solid ciliated larva. All the Stylasterina are therefore viviparous.
The male gonophore has a very much smaller trophodisc, which is
sometimes (Allopora) prolonged into a columnar process or spadix,
penetrating the greater part of the gonad. The spermatozoa escape
through a peculiar spout-like duct which perforates the superficial
wall of the ampulla. In some genera (Distichopora) there are several
male gonophores in each ampulla.

The gonophores of the Stylasterina have been regarded as much

altered medusiform gonophores, and this view may possibly prove to
be correct. At present, however, the evidence of their derivation from
Medusae is not conclusive, and it is possible that they may have had
a totally independent origin.

Distichopora and some species of Stylaster are found in shallow

water in the tropics, but most of the genera are confined to deep or
very deep water, and have a wide geographical distribution. No
species have been found hitherto within the British area.

Fig. 136.—A portion of a branch of Cryptohelia ramosa, showing the lids l 1 and l
2 covering the cyclosystems, the swellings produced by the ampullae in the
lids amp1, amp2, and the dactylozooids, dac. × 22. (After Hickson and
England.)

A few specimens of a species of Stylaster have been found in

Tertiary deposits and in some raised beaches of more recent origin,
but the order is not represented in the older strata.

Fam. Stylasteridae.—All the genera at present known are included

in this family.

Sporadopora is the only genus that presents a superficial general

resemblance to Millepora. It forms massive, branching white coralla,
with the pores scattered irregularly on the surface, and, like many
varieties of Millepora, not arranged in cyclosystems. It may, however,
be distinguished at once by the presence of a long, brush-like style
in each of the gastropores. The ampullae are large, but are usually
so deep-seated in the coenenchym that their presence cannot be
detected from the surface. It was found off the Rio de la Plata in 600
fathoms of water by the "Challenger."

In Errina the pores are sometimes irregularly scattered, but in E.

glabra they are arranged in rows on the sides of the branches, while
in E. ramosa the gastropores occur at the angles of the branches
only. The dactylopores are situated on nariform projections of the
corallum. The ampullae are prominent. There are several
gonophores in each ampulla of the male, but only one in each
ampulla of the female. This genus is very widely distributed in water
from 100 to 500 fathoms in depth.

Phalangopora differs from Errina in the absence of a style in the

gastropore; Mauritius.—Pliobothrus has also no style in the
gastropore, and is found in 100-600 fathoms of water off the
American Atlantic shores.

Distichopora is an important genus, which is found in nearly all the

shallow seas of the tropical and semi-tropical parts of the world, and
may even flourish in rock pools between tide marks. It is nearly
always brightly coloured—purple, violet, pale brown, or rose red. The
colony usually forms a small flabellum, with anastomosing branches,
and the pores are arranged in three rows, a middle row of
gastropores and two lateral rows of dactylopores on the sides of the
branches. There is a long style in each gastropore. The ampullae are
numerous and prominent, situated on the anterior and posterior
faces of the branches. Each ampulla contains a single gonophore in
the female colony and two or three gonophores in the male colony.

Spinipora is a rare genus from off the Rio de la Plata in 600 fathoms.
The branches are covered with blunt spines. These spines have a
short gutter-like groove at the apex, which leads into a dactylopore.
The gastropores are provided with a style and are situated between
the spines.

Steganopora[321] from the Djilolo Passage, in about 600 fathoms, is

very similar to Spinipora as regards external features, but differs
from it in the absence of styles in the gastropores, and in the wide
communications between the gastropores and dactylopores.

Stylaster is the largest and most widely distributed genus of the

family, and exhibits a considerable range of structure in the many
species it contains. It is found in all the warmer seas of the world,
living between tide marks at a few fathoms, and extending to depths
of 600 fathoms. Many specimens, but especially those from very
shallow water, are of a beautiful rose or pink colour. The corallum is
arborescent and usually flabelliform. The pores are distributed in
regular cyclosystems, sometimes on one face of the corallum only,
sometimes on the sides of the branches, and sometimes evenly
distributed. There are styles in both gastropores and dactylopores.

Allopora is difficult to separate from Stylaster, but the species are

usually more robust in habit, and the ampullae are not so prominent
as they are on the more delicate branches of Stylaster. It occurs at
depths of 100 fathoms in the Norwegian fjords. A very large red
species (A. nobilis) occurs in False Bay, Cape of Good Hope, in 30
fathoms of water. In this locality the coral occurs in great submarine
beds or forests, and the trawl that is passed over them is torn to
pieces by the hard, thick branches, some of which are an inch or
more in diameter.

Astylus is a genus found in the southern Philippine sea in 500

fathoms of water. It is distinguished from Stylaster by the absence of
a style in the gastropore.

Cryptohelia is an interesting genus found both in the Atlantic and

Pacific Oceans at depths of from 270 to about 600 fathoms. The
cyclosystems are covered by a projecting lid or operculum (Fig. 136,
l 1, l 2). There are no styles in either the gastropores or the
dactylopores. The ampullae are prominent, and are sometimes
situated in the lids. There are several gonophores in each ampulla of
the female colony, and a great many in the ampulla of the male
colony.

CHAPTER XI
 HYDROZOA (CONTINUED): TRACHOMEDUSAE—NARCOMEDUSAE—
SIPHONOPHORA

Order VII. Trachomedusae.

The orders Trachomedusae and Narcomedusae are probably closely
related to one another and to some of the families of Medusae at
present included in the order Calyptoblastea, and it seems probable
that when the life-histories of a few more genera are made known
the three orders will be united into one. Very little is known of the
hydrosome stage of the Trachomedusae, but Brooks[322] has shown
that in Liriope, and Murbach[323] that in Gonionema, the fertilised
ovum gives rise to a Hydra-like form, and in the latter this exhibits a
process of reproduction by gemmation before it gives rise to
Medusae. Any general statement, therefore, to the effect that the
development of the Trachomedusae is direct would be incorrect. The
fact that the hydrosomes already known are epizoic or free-
swimming does not afford a character of importance for distinction
from the Leptomedusae, for it is quite possible that in this order of
Medusae the hydrosomes of many genera may be similar in form
and habits to those of Liriope and Gonionema.

The free border of the umbrella of the Trachomedusae is entire; that

is to say, it is not lobed or fringed as it is in the Narcomedusae. The
sense-organs are statocysts, each consisting of a vesicle formed by
a more or less complete fold of the surrounding wall of the margin of
the umbrella, containing a reduced clapper-like tentacle loaded at its
extremity with a statolith.
 Fig. 137.—Liriope rosacea, one of the Geryoniidae, from the west side of North
and Central America. Size, 15-20 mm. Colour, rose. cp, Centripetal canal;
gon, gonad; M, mouth at the end of a long manubrium; ot, statocyst; t,
tentacle; to, tongue. (After Maas.)

This statocyst is innervated by the outer nerve ring. There appears to

be a very marked difference between these marginal sense-organs
in some of the best-known examples of Trachomedusae and the
corresponding organs of the Leptomedusae. The absence of a stalk
supporting the statolith and the innervation of the otocyst by the
inner instead of by the outer nerve ring in the Leptomedusae form
characters that may be of supplementary value, but cannot be
regarded as absolutely distinguishing the two orders. The statorhab
of the Trachomedusae is probably the more primitive of the two
types, and represents a marginal tentacle of the umbrella reduced in
size, loaded with a statolith and enclosed by the mesogloea.
Intermediate stages between this type and an ordinary tentacle have
already been discovered and described. In the type that is usually
found in the Leptomedusae the modified tentacle is still further
reduced, and all that can be recognised of it is the statolith attached
to the wall of the statocyst, but intermediate stages between the two
types are seen in the family Olindiidae, in which the stalk supporting
the statolith passes gradually into the tissue surrounding the statolith
on the one hand and the vesicle wall on the other. The radial canals
are four or eight in number or more numerous. They communicate at
the margin of the umbrella with a ring canal from which a number of
short blind tubes run in the umbrella-wall towards the centre of the
Medusa (Fig. 137, cp). These "centripetal canals" are subject to
considerable variation, but are useful characters in distinguishing the
Trachomedusae from the Leptomedusae. The tentacles are situated
on the margin of the umbrella, and are four or eight in number or, in
some cases, more numerous. The gonads are situated as in
Leptomedusae on the sub-umbrella aspect of the radial canals.

In Gonionema murbachii the fertilised eggs give rise to a free-

swimming ciliated larva of an oval shape with one pole longer and
narrower than the other. The mouth appears subsequently at the
narrower pole. The larva settles down upon the broader pole, the
mouth appears at the free extremity, and in a few days two, and later
two more, tentacles are formed (Fig. 138).

At this stage the larva may be said to be Hydra-like in character, and

as shown in Fig. 138 it feeds and lives an independent existence.
From its body-wall buds arise which separate from the parent and
give rise to similar Hydra-like individuals. An asexual generation thus
gives rise to new individuals by gemmation as in the hydrosome of
the Calyptoblastea. The origin of the Medusae from this Hydra-like
stage has not been satisfactorily determined, but it seems probable
that by a process of metamorphosis the hydriform persons are
directly changed into the Medusae.[324]

Fig. 138.—Hydra-like stage in the development of Gonionema murbachii. One of

the tentacles is carrying a worm (W) to the mouth. The tentacles are shown
very much contracted, but they are capable of extending to a length of 2
mm. Height of zooid about 1 mm. (After Perkins.)
In the development of Liriope the free-swimming larva develops into
a hydriform person with four tentacles and an enormously elongated
hypostome or manubrium; and, according to Brooks, it undergoes a
metamorphosis which directly converts it into a Medusa.

There can be very little doubt that in a large number of

Trachomedusae the development is direct, the fertilised ovum giving
rise to a medusome without the intervention of a hydrosome stage.
In some cases, however (Geryonia, etc.), the tentacles appear in
development before there is any trace of a sub-umbrella cavity, and
this has been interpreted to be a transitory but definite Hydroid
stage. It may be supposed that the elimination of the hydrosome
stage in these Coelenterates may be associated with their
adaptation to a life in the ocean far from the coast.

During the growth of the Medusa from the younger to the adult
stages several changes probably occur of a not unimportant
character, and it may prove that several genera now placed in the
same or even different families are stages in the development, of the
same species. In the development of Liriantha appendiculata,[325] for
example, four interradial tentacles appear in the first stage which
disappear and are replaced by four radial tentacles in the second
stage.

As with many other groups of free-swimming marine animals the

Trachomedusae have a very wide geographical distribution, and
some genera may prove to be almost cosmopolitan, but the majority
of the species appear to be characteristic of the warmer regions of
the high seas. Sometimes they are found at the surface, but more
usually they swim at a depth of a few fathoms to a hundred or more
from the surface. The Pectyllidae appear to be confined to the
bottom of the sea at great depths.

The principal families of the Trachomedusae are:—

Fam. Olindiidae.—This family appears to be structurally and in
development most closely related to the Leptomedusae, and is
indeed regarded by Goto[326] as closely related to the Eucopidae in
that order. They have two sets of tentacles, velar and exumbrellar;
the statocysts are numerous, two on each side of the exumbrellar
tentacles. Radial canals four or six. Manubrium well developed and
quadrate, with distinct lips. There is an adhesive disc on each
exumbrellar tentacle.

Genera: Olindias, Olindioides, Gonionema (Fig. 139), and Halicalyx.

As in other families of Medusae the distribution of the genera is very

wide. Olindias mülleri occurs in the Mediterranean, Olindioides
formosa off the coast of Japan, Gonionema murbachii is found in
abundance in the eel pond at Wood's Holl, United States of America,
and Halicalyx off Florida.

Two genera may be referred to in this place, although their

systematic position in relation to each other and to other Medusae
has not been satisfactorily determined.

Fig. 139.—Gonionema murbachii. Adult Medusa, shown inverted, and clinging to

the bottom. Nat. size. (After Perkins.)

Limnocodium sowerbyi is a small Medusa that was first discovered in

the Victoria regia tanks in the Botanic Gardens, Regent's Park,
London, in the year 1880. It has lately made its appearance in the
Victoria regia tank in the Parc de la Bête d'Or at Lyons.[327] As it
was, at the time of its discovery, the only fresh-water jelly-fish known,
it excited considerable interest, and this interest was not diminished
when the peculiarities of its structure were described by Lankester
and others. It has a rather flattened umbrella, with entire margin and
numerous marginal tentacles, the manubrium is long, quadrate, and
has four distinct lips. There are four radial canals, and the male
gonads (all the specimens discovered were of the male sex) are sac-
like bodies on the sub-umbrellar aspect of the middle points of the
four radial canals. In these characters the genus shows general
affinities with the Olindiidae. The difficult question of the origin of the
statoliths from the primary germ layers of the embryo and some
other points in the minute anatomy of the Medusa have suggested
the view that Limnocodium is not properly placed in any of the other
orders. Goto,[328] however, in a recent paper, confirms the view of
the affinities of Limnocodium with the Olindiidae.

The life-history of Limnocodium is not known, but a curious Hydroid

form attached to Pontederia roots was found in the same tank as the
Medusae, and this in all probability represents the hydrosome stage
of its development. The Medusae are formed apparently by a
process of transverse fission of the Hydroid stock[329] similar in
some respects to that observed in the production of certain
Acraspedote Medusae. This is quite unlike the asexual mode of
formation of Medusae in any other Craspedote form. The structure of
this hydrosome is, moreover, very different to that of any other
Hydroid, and consequently the relations of the genus with the
Trachomedusae cannot be regarded as very close.

Limnocodium has only been found in the somewhat artificial

conditions of the tanks in botanical gardens, and its native locality is
not known, but its association with the Victoria regia water-lily seems
to indicate that its home is in tropical South America.
Limnocnida tanganyicae is another remarkable fresh-water Medusa,
about seven-eights of an inch in diameter, found in the lakes
Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza of Central Africa.[330] It differs from
Limnocodium in having a short collar-like manubrium with a large
round mouth two-thirds the diameter of the umbrella, and in several
other not unimportant particulars. It produces in May and June a
large number of Medusa-buds by gemmation on the manubrium, and
in August and September the sexual organs are formed in the same
situation.

Fig. 140.—Limnocnida tanganyicae. × 2. (After Günther.)

The fixed hydrosome stage, if such a stage occurs in the life-history,

has not been discovered; but Mr. Moore[331] believes that the
development is direct from ciliated planulae to the Medusae. The
occurrence of Limnocnida in Lake Tanganyika is supposed by the
same authority to afford a strong support to the view that this lake
represents the remnants of a sea which in Jurassic times spread
over part of the African continent. This theory has, however, been
adversely criticised from several sides.[332]

The character of the manubrium and the position of the sexual cells
suggest that Limnocnida has affinities with the Narcomedusae or
Anthomedusae, but the marginal sense-organs and the number and
position of the tentacles, showing considerable similarity with those
of Limnocodium, justify the more convenient plan of placing the two
genera in the same family.

Fam. Petasidae.—The genus Petasus is a small Medusa with four

radial canals, four gonads, four tentacles, and four free marginal
statorhabs. A few other genera associated with Petasus show simple
characters as regards the canals and the marginal organs, but as
very little is known of any of the genera the family may be regarded
as provisional only. Petasus is found in the Mediterranean and off
the Canaries.

Fam. Trachynemidae.—In this family there are eight radial canals,

and the statorhabs are sunk into a marginal vesicle. Trachynema,
characterised by its very long manubrium, is a not uncommon
Medusa of the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Many
of the species are small, but T. funerarium has sometimes a disc two
inches in diameter. Homoconema and Pentachogon have numerous
very short tentacles.

Fam. Pectyllidae.—This family contains a few deep-sea species

with characters similar to those of the preceding family, but the
tentacles are provided with terminal suckers. Pectyllis is found in the
Atlantic Ocean at depths of over 1000 fathoms.

Fam. Aglauridae.—The radial canals are eight in number and the

statorhabs are usually free. In the manubrium there is a rod-like
projection of the mesogloea from the aboral wall of the gastric cavity,
covered by a thin epithelium of endoderm, which occupies a
considerable portion of the lumen of the manubrium. This organ may
be called the tongue. Aglaura has an octagonal umbrella, and a
manubrium which does not project beyond the velum. It occurs in the
Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

Fam. Geryoniidae.—In this family there are four or six radial canals,
the statorhabs are sunk in the mesogloea, and a tongue is present in
the manubrium. Liriope (Fig. 137) is sometimes as much as three
inches in diameter. It has a very long manubrium, and the tongue
sometimes projects beyond the mouth. There are four very long
radial tentacles. It is found in the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean
Sea, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Geryonia has a wider
geographical distribution than Liriope, and is sometimes four inches
in diameter. It differs from Liriope in having six, or a multiple of six,