Paradise

by

Toni Morrison

The Convent Symbol Analysis

The Convent Symbol Icon

The Convent represents the complications of constructing a paradise. Specifically, it represents the conflicting facts that a paradise demands the exclusion of dangerous forces—but that excluding and avoiding those dangers instead of addressing them inevitably destroys the paradise. Just as Ruby is an all-Black community removed from the dangers of white people and racism, the Convent is an all-female community removed from the dangers of men and the patriarchy. Each of the women’s trauma is rooted to some extent in mistreatment by men: Mavis and Seneca were both abused by their partners, Pallas and Connie were both betrayed by theirs, and Gigi harbors unresolved tension with both her ex-lover Mikey and her father. The Convent ensures that the women will never be mistreated again by isolating them from men entirely. In this way, the Convent becomes a “paradise” for the women, just as Ruby is a paradise for the Black men who founded it. The stability of both paradises necessitates exclusion and isolation. These features are more pronounced in Ruby, since the town leaders enforce them upon a community that does not unanimously agree on their importance, but they are also present in the Convent, which the women keep free of any radios or newspapers.

An isolated paradise removed from oppressive forces promises safety, but that safety is not permanent. Unlike Ruby, though, the Convent ceases to be a paradise because of external forces. When the men of Ruby allow the Convent to function independently, its safety allows the women to grow closer and help each other move through their respective traumas. However, the flourishing of this paradise threatens the patriarchal tenets that uphold Ruby’s paradise, so the men of the town attack the Convent and murder the women who live there. The men’s violence is the culmination of years of discord in Ruby, and the massacre marks the point when Ruby ceases to be a paradise and becomes “like any other country town.” Both paradises end at the same time, but Ruby destroys itself while the Convent is destroyed by the system it tried to escape.

The Convent Quotes in Paradise

The Paradise quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Convent. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
).
Ruby Quotes

As new fathers, who had fought the world, they could not (would not) be less than the Old Fathers who had outfoxed it; who had not let danger or natural evil keep them from cutting Haven out of mud and who knew enough to seal their triumph with that priority. An Oven. […] the Old Fathers did that first: put most of their strength into constructing the huge, flawlessly designed Oven that both nourished them and monumentalized what they had done.

Related Symbols: The Oven, The Convent
Page Number: 6-7
Explanation and Analysis:

Unique and isolated, his was a town justifiably pleased with itself. It neither had nor needed a jail. No criminals had ever come from his town. And the one or two people who acted up, humiliated their families or threatened the town’s view of itself were taken good care of. Certainly there wasn’t a slack or sloven woman anywhere in town and the reasons, he thought, were clear. From the beginning its people were free and protected. A sleepless woman could always rise from her bed, wrap a 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 […] beyond the limits of town, because nothing at the edge thought she was prey.

Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 8-9
Explanation and Analysis:

Bodacious black Eves unredeemed by Mary, they are like panicked does leaping toward a sun that has finished burning off the mist and now pours its holy oil over the hides of game.

God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby.

Related Characters: Ruby Morgan
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Mavis Quotes

Mavis frowned at the pecans. “No,” she said. “Think of something else I can do to help. Shelling that stuff would make me crazy.”

“No it wouldn’t. […] Look at your nails. Strong, curved like a bird’s––perfect pecan hands. Fingernails like that take the meat out whole every time. Beautiful hands, yet you say you can’t. Make you crazy. Makes me crazy to see good nails go to waste.”

Later, [Mavis watched] her suddenly beautiful hands moving at the task […].

Related Characters: Consolata (Connie) Sosa (speaker), Mavis Albright (speaker), Frank Albright
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Grace Quotes

It was the I-give woman serving up her breasts like two baked Alaskas on a platter that took all the kick out of looking in the boy’s eyes. Gigi watched him battle his stare and lose every time. He said his name was K.D. and tried hard to enjoy her face as much as her cleavage when he talked. It was a struggle she expected, rose to and took pleasure in––normally. But the picture she had wakened to an hour earlier spoiled it.

Related Characters: Grace (Gigi), Coffee (K.D.) Smith
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
Seneca Quotes

The third day, [Seneca] began to understand why Jean was gone and how to get her back. She cleaned her teeth and washed her ears carefully. She also flushed the toilet right away, as soon as she used it, and folded her socks inside her shoes. […] Those were her prayers: if she did everything right without being told, either Jean would walk in or when she knocked on one of the apartment doors, there’d she be! Smiling and holding out her arms.

Meanwhile the nights were terrible.

Related Characters: Seneca, Jean
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 127
Explanation and Analysis:
Divine Quotes

[…] Pulliam had just sprayed [poison] over everything[.] Over the heads of men finding it so hard to fight their instincts to control what they could and crunch what they could not; in the hearts of women tirelessly taming the predator; in the faces of children not yet recovered from the blow to their esteem upon learning that adults would not regard them as humans until they mated; of the bride and groom frozen there, desperate for this public bonding to dilute their private shame. Misner knew that Pulliam’s words were a widening of the war he had declared on Misner’s activities: tempting the youth to step outside the wall, outside the town limits, shepherding them, forcing them to transgress, to think of themselves as civil warriors.

Related Characters: Reverend Richard Misner, Coffee (K.D.) Smith, Arnette Fleetwood, Reverend Senior Pulliam
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Consolata Quotes

That is how the loud dreaming began. How the stories rose in that place. Half-tales and the never-dreamed escaped from their lips to soar high above guttering candles, shifting dusts from crates and bottles. And it was never important to know who said the dream or whether it had meaning. In spite of or because their bodies ache, they step easily into the dreamer’s tale.

Related Characters: Consolata (Connie) Sosa, Mavis Albright, Grace (Gigi), Seneca, Pallas Truelove
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 264
Explanation and Analysis:
Lone Quotes

The women in the Convent were for [Steward] a flaunting parody of the nineteen Negro ladies of his and his brother’s youthful memory and perfect understanding. They were the degradation of that moment they’d shared of sunlit skin and verbena. They, with their mindless giggling, outraged the dulcet tones, the tinkling in the merry and welcoming laughter of the nineteen ladies who, scheduled to live forever in pastel shaded dreams, were now doomed to extinction by this new and obscene breed of female. He could not abide them for […] desecrating the vision that carried him and his brother through a war, that imbued their marriages and strengthened their efforts to build a town where the vision could flourish.

Related Characters: Deacon (Deek) Morgan/Connie’s Lover, Steward Morgan
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:
Save-Marie Quotes

Whether they be the first or the last, representing the oldest black families or the newest, the best of the tradition or the most pathetic, they had ended up betraying it all. They think they have outfoxed the whiteman when in fact they imitate him. They think they are protecting their wives and children, when in fact they are maiming them. And when the maimed children ask for help, they look elsewhere for the cause. […] How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it. Soon Ruby will be like any other country town: the young thinking of elsewhere; the old full of regret.

Related Characters: Reverend Richard Misner
Related Symbols: The Convent
Page Number: 306
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Paradise LitChart as a printable PDF.
Paradise PDF

The Convent Symbol Timeline in Paradise

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Convent appears in Paradise. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Ruby
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Nine men arrive at the Convent intending to murder the women who live there. They shoot a white woman and continue... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
...other men enter the chapel. All the surrounding congregations agreed that getting rid of the Convent women is necessary. The men remember how the Convent existed long before the town, which... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
Most people believed that the Convent women were strange but harmless, but now the men now that the women’s acts of... (full context)
...families pack up the Oven and move deeper into Oklahoma. The brothers marvel that the Convent is a greater threat to their community than any of the dangers it has faced... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
The New Fathers of Ruby find the Convent women. They are running away, and the men see them as “bodacious black Eves unredeemed... (full context)
Mavis
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Mavis walks down roads for hours until she finds the Convent. She meets a woman sitting by the Convent’s impressive vegetable garden. The woman identifies herself... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
...to catch the shells, Connie explains that there are no radios or newspapers in the Convent. Connie and Mavis shell pecans together until Connie steps out to check on a woman... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
A well-dressed, dark-skinned woman comes into the Convent looking for Connie, and she pauses to admire Mavis’s work with the pecans. Connie returns... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
Mavis decides to spend the night at the Convent, partly because it is dark and she forgot to ask Soane’s son for directions, but... (full context)
Grace
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
On the way to the station, Roger Best stops at the Convent to pick up the body of Mother, who has recently died. Gigi is startled to... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Gigi explores the Convent while Connie sleeps. When Connie wakes up, Gigi asks who died, and Connie answers, “A... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Gigi spends the night in the Convent, and the next morning she is unsettled to find an etching of a female saint... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Mavis returns after a month away to find Gigi sunbathing naked outside the Convent. The two women are immediately at odds, but Connie assures them they will grow to... (full context)
Seneca
Community Theme Icon
...also voices concern that Soane is too partial to the women who live in the Convent. (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
...Deek wonders if they should have supported K.D.’s relationship with Arnette, who later visited the Convent and returned no longer pregnant and without a baby. Deek arrives at the bank and... (full context)
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
...as “sin.” The two women continue walking through a growing blizzard until they reach the Convent, where the women take Sweetie in and try to treat her fever. Sweetie hears children... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Seneca lies uncomfortably in the Convent, trying to make herself as agreeable as possible to Mavis and Gigi. She has always... (full context)
Divine
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...a vicious fight with Billie Delia’s mother, Billie Delia lived for a time at the Convent. Her time there changed her. She has come to Arnette’s wedding out of loyalty to... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
...the secret invitation to the wedding reception that she extended to the women at the Convent. (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...his way to join the reception when he sees the Cadillac speeding back toward the Convent. (full context)
Community Theme Icon
The Convent women drive away after being expelled from the party. None of them are embarrassed or... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
...the car. After they exhaust themselves, Mavis wordlessly continues driving, and they return to the Convent. Gigi tends to her wounds and recalls a protest she attended in Oakland that turned... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
...her to the clinic where Billie Delia works. Billie Delia then brought Pallas to the Convent. Pallas’s shame prevents her from explaining the “nightmare event” that forced her to hide in... (full context)
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
...and bites Pallas. Later, Mavis explains to Pallas that Connie delivered Arnette’s baby at the Convent, but Arnette didn’t want it. The baby died, and Arnette accused the women of killing... (full context)
Patricia
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...out of town, so they had to beg the men to take Delia for the Convent to help, and all the men refused. (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...Poole, Pat beat Billie Delia so violently that she ran away to stay at the Convent. Pat doesn’t entirely understand her feelings about her daughter, but she recognizes that Billie Delia... (full context)
Consolata
Community Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
...The other women try to help her, but besides Mavis (who has been at the Convent for eight years), Connie has trouble telling the women apart. She has lost interest in... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
...than Connie. Connie tries to push away her feelings, but when the man visits the Convent to buy peppers, she gives in. The two have sex in his truck, and he... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
As the nuns debate with lawyers and clergymen about the fate of the Convent, Connie’s feelings deepen for Connie’s lover. After several months, he skips a weekly visit, and... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Soane Morgan arrives at the Convent to ask for Connie’s help with an abortion. Connie recognizes Soane as her lover’s wife,... (full context)
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...is ashamed that she forsook Christ for a mortal man, and she prays in the Convent’s chapel. Mary Magna tells her never to speak of the man again, even though Connie... (full context)
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
The Convent’s last two students are transferred to a different residential school, which they later escape. Connie... (full context)
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Lone is visiting Connie at the Convent when Deek’s sons and their friend crash their car. Lone brings Connie to the accident... (full context)
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...Pallas to deny that she is pregnant. Connie recalls a pregnant Arnette coming to the Convent, repulsed by the fetus within her. The Convent women offered Arnette shelter and aid, but... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
...that the women must live as she commands if they want to stay at the Convent. In exchange, she will “teach [them] what [they] are hungry for.” The women are taken... (full context)
Lone
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
Lone drives away from the Convent after the women dismiss her warnings about an impending danger. Two hours ago, she heard... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...which Ruby has changed and formulate a plan to defend the town by attacking the Convent. They recall various incidents to highlight the Convent women’s evil: their behavior at K.D. and... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
The men’s claims against the Convent women escalate. They accuse them of wanton drinking, hiding away abused children, and deviant (that... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
...considers the personal biases of each man. Sargeant Person, a farmer, wants to own the Convent’s land. Wisdom Poole seeks justification for losing control over his family, especially Brood and Apollo,... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...but Steward also believes Arnette’s first child, a potential Morgan man, was killed in the Convent. He resents Connie for her affair with Deek, and he sees all the Convent women... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
The Convent women dance together in the rain as Lone looks for Pious DuPres, who she considers... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
The men slowly approach the Convent. A white woman emerges, and Steward shoots her immediately, filling the other men with confidence.... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...where the rain has undermined its foundation. Dovey and Soane, quickly set out for the Convent. Dovey thinks about how Steward’s successes have always led to loss, and she hopes that... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...Steward alone for Connie’s murder and Dovey disagrees. Finally, the townspeople of Ruby leave the Convent. When Roger Best, who was out of town, drives up to the Convent to collect... (full context)
Save-Marie
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
...on the town. Misner and Anna Flood returned two days after the attack on the Convent, but they have yet to receive a clear account of what happened, as all the... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
...support of the DuPreses and their allied families. Eventually, she stops telling her story; the Convent women have disappeared, and without victims, the truth is malleable. Lone also believes, however, that... (full context)
Community Theme Icon
Exclusion Theme Icon
...as proof that he stood against evil. Sargeant Person, the farmer, has taken over the Convent’s lands. Not all the men were so fortunate, though––Menus Jury’s alcoholism has worsened drastically, and... (full context)
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
Misner and Anna don’t believe the mass disappearance of the Convent women, so they go to the Convent themselves to investigate. When they find no evidence... (full context)
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
Community Theme Icon
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
Change vs. Tradition Theme Icon
Billie Delia walks away from the funeral. She misses the Convent women, but she is confident they will return someday. She imagines their vengeful figures destroying... (full context)
Motherhood and Intergenerational Trauma Theme Icon
God, Holiness, and Faith Theme Icon
In the following years, the Convent women experience “the reprieve.” Gigi, in an army uniform, appears to her father in prison.... (full context)