Tar Baby

by

Toni Morrison

Tar Baby: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Jadine sits in the restaurant at the Old Queen Hotel. She calls L’Arbe de la Croix and tells Ondine that she missed the ferry and needs a ride to the island. Jadine is proud of herself for leaving Son without telling him she was going or where she would be. When Jadine arrives at the house, she goes upstairs to get her things and sees Margaret cleaning out clothes from Valerian’s closet. Margaret asks if Jadine will be staying for long, and Jadine says she’ll leave tomorrow. Margaret assumes she’s returning to France to marry Ryk, but Jadine says she’s not going to marry him and changes the subject. Margaret says that Valerian has recently been “trembling” but won’t see a doctor. She also says that Michael is going to begin law school at Berkeley next semester.
Jadine has called off her engagement with Ryk, which suggests that she is taking steps to distance herself from men like Ryk and Valerian and forge her own path forward through self-empowerment. In the time Jadine has been gone, Valerian has also fallen ill and become a frail older man. Having to reckon with his own complicity in Margaret’s abuse of Michael has eroded Valerian’s health and destroyed the veneer of innocence his paradise once held for him. 
Themes
Systemic Racism and Power Theme Icon
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon
Innocence and Guilt Theme Icon
In the kitchen, Ondine puts lobster into a pot to boil. She asks Jadine if she ran away with Son. Jadine says the relationship is over, and it was a mistake. Ondine says that Margaret wants her and Sydney to stay, while Valerian mostly listens to music in the greenhouse. Jadine asks Ondine if she and Sydney want to stay, and Ondine says they don’t have much choice. She then tells Jadine that a girl has to learn to be a daughter before she can be a woman. Then she can learn how to be worthy of a child, a man, and the respect of other women. She says that a daughter is someone who looks out for the people who took care of her and that Jadine hasn’t been doing that. 
Ondine directly expresses some of the stifling expectations of womanhood that Jadine has been contending with. Namely, Ondine says that a good daughter is someone who cares for the people who cared for her and that a woman must learn that general practice to successfully perform the role of being a mother and wife. She implicitly suggests that it is woman’s obligation to forgo her own ambitions and needs to serve others.
Themes
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon
Jadine responds that there are other ways to be a woman and that she doesn’t want to be the kind of woman that Ondine is. Ondine says there’s only one kind of woman. Jadine leaves to finish packing, and Sydney comes into the kitchen. He says that Jadine hasn’t done right by him and Ondine. Ondine says that she’s young and will learn as she gets older. Ondine tells Sydney that Son was violent toward Jadine, and Sydney says he hopes Son comes to the island then so he can kill him.  
Jadine’s rejection of Ondine’s ideas implies that she (Jadine) will prioritize her own happiness and ambitions to try to free herself from the oppressive restrictions of traditional ideas of womanhood, as espoused by Ondine and the “night women” from Jadine’s dream. After Jadine rejects Ondine’s entreaties, Ondine notably defends Jadine when talking to Sydney, showing that Ondine believes that Jadine may find a way to balance her own ambitions with her obligation to serve others—or, perhaps, that the prevailing hierarchies of the world will force her to learn.
Themes
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon
Sydney then brings lunch to Valerian in the greenhouse—he has started to feed Valerian because Valerian’s tremors have made daily tasks difficult. Sydney remarks that the greenhouse is falling into disrepair, and Valerian says that it’s his place, so he can do what he wants with it. Valerian asks Sydney if he knew about Margaret’s abuse of Michael. Sydney says he didn’t, and Valerian remarks that, since Christmas, Margaret and Ondine have been talking to each other in the kitchen like they used to when they were friends. Valerian says he wants to return to Philadelphia, but Sydney says he suspects they’ll all stay on the island for a long time.
The greenhouse, which once served as a symbol of the Garden of Eden, has fallen into disrepair following Ondine’s revelations about Margaret’s abuse of Michael. That disrepair represents Valerian’s exile from the supposed Eden he once inhabited. He has been exiled because, as he says, his so-called innocence was actually a form of ignorance: a willful ignorance that allowed Margaret’s abuse of their son to continue. Valerian’s desire for the world to be just and good didn’t make it so—it only prevented him from seeing and interfering in the world’s wrongs.
Themes
Systemic Racism and Power Theme Icon
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon
Toxic Masculinity Theme Icon
Innocence and Guilt Theme Icon
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The next day, Jadine goes to the airport in Dominique. She thought New York would protect her from the “night women”—the women who appeared to her in a dream when she was in Eloe—but that effort turned out to be futile. So she’s on her way to Paris for a new start. In the airport, a young woman approaches Jadine. At first, Jadine doesn’t recognize her but then sees that it’s a friend of Thérèse’s who used to work at L’Arbe de la Croix. Nonchalantly, she asks if Jadine killed Son. Thérèse said she did. Jadine says that Thérèse killed Son. Jadine calls the woman Mary, but she corrects her and says her name is Alma Estée
As Jadine leaves Isle des Chevaliers, she refers again to Alma Estée as Mary, the name that people who live at L’Arbe de la Croix use for all of the Black women from the island who work at the house.  socioeconomically inferior. Jadine’s use of that name shows that while she has called off her engagement to Ryk and pointedly didn’t see Valerian during her visit, she remains complicit in the systemic racism of the unjust power structures that those two men represent. This points to the book’s ultimately cynical outlook on the nature of power. Empowerment, the book suggests, necessitates oppression. It is impossible to exert control over oneself without subjugating someone else in the process.
Themes
Systemic Racism and Power Theme Icon
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon
Colonialism and Enslavement Theme Icon
On the plane, there aren’t many other passengers aside from Jadine in first class. Jadine thinks that she’s ready to “tangle” with the “night women” who judge her for failing to live up to their expectations of womanhood. She looks down at the island below and thinks of the soldier ants marching there. Most of the soldier ants are women, and they work endlessly. There is little need for males. And when they are needed, the queen has sex once and then gives birth. Jadine wonders what happens to the male ant after that, and she thinks it must be as hard for the queen ant to forget that male ant as it will be for her to forget Son.
Jadine’s idea that she is ready to “tangle” with the “night women” points to her intent to  prove them wrong: she will show them that it is possible to live a fulfilling and good life without sacrificing one’s own needs and ambitions in order to care for others. Her reflection on ants suggests she isn’t so convinced, however. In parting ways with Son, she has refused to submit herself to him and asserted her agency. At the same time, though, his absence weighs on her.
Themes
Systemic Racism and Power Theme Icon
Expectations of Womanhood Theme Icon