NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Throughout Mckinney-Whetstones Tumbling, it is often stated how different two of the main characters, Noon and Ethel, are. In Tumbling, Noon is a housewife coping with her family's, church's, and community's challenges. Ethel also soon becomes an indirect part of Noons tumultuous life because of Herbie, Noons husband, and his clandestine relationship with Ethel. Not only does Herbie have a secret connection with the mysterious and soulful singer Ethel, but both of Noons adopted daughters, Fannie and Liz, are also related to her as well.
Ethel has twice placed these two girls on Noons doorstep, knowing that they would be bathed in Noons maternal instincts and nurturing warmth and not corrupted by her fast and hard entertaining lifestyle. While there are many contrasts between the two women, the differences are found upon the surface in the way that they live their lives. However, the way in which these two women carry on with their own secret burdens and how they thrive on warmth and love can be considered quite similar. Many things about Noon and Ethel's lives are different. From Ethel's racy low ruffle of her red blouse (Mckinney-Whetstone 67) to Noons demure seersucker button down dress (Mckinney-Whetstone 98), there is no question their chosen lifestyles vastly counter one another. Noon is a caring mother who keeps her house clean and makes sure there is a warm dinner at the table every night.
She chats with the neighbors, goes to church every Sunday, and relies on her community for comfort. Ethel is a singer of the blues who lives her life jumping from city to city and finding solace in consoling the men who come to her in a provocative and promiscuous manner. In this way, Ethel provides for Herbie's own sexual needs while Noon in the meantime cannot because of her own traumatic past. However, both know how to tend to another love that Herbie cannot resist. A great similarity between Ethel and Noon is that there is no question that they both love Herbie, Liz, and Fannie with great abundance. It is greatly apparent that they each have a romantic love for Herbie.
Noon was moved to marry him after a long period of coolness from men during her time as a young woman and Ethel has a special interest towards Herbie out of a flock of pursuers. Being that Liz is Ethel's own niece, Ethel has a strong motherly love towards Liz because she herself raised Liz during Liz's earlier years a girl. She cared for Liz's well-being so much that she placed her under Noons care knowing that she could not provide for Liz the home that a girl truly needed. As the years went on, Ethel also ensured that Noon would be financially assisted because of the addition of a new member to the family.
Of course, Noon took Liz under her wing and treated Liz as if she had been her own, just as she had done with Fannie. Ethel had also left Fannie at Noons doorstep previous to her abandonment of Liz. Fannie had become Herbie's and Noons first adopted daughter and loved her from the moment they took her in. Unbeknownst to Herbie till the end of the story, he was the true biological father to Fannie as Ethel was the true biological mother.
Again, Ethel had wanted only the best love for her daughter and placed her in home where Fannie would receive it. A warm home and warm arms were the things that Noon knew she could make for the girls so she let them in. However, she could not let Herbie into her arms. While both women loved Herbie.
They loved him in both separate and similar ways. Noon wanted to love him and give him the pleasure that he wanted to give her but she could not. She was held back by a trauma in the past that seemed to forever haunt her. Herbie then went to Ethel for this love as an alternative.
However, while Herbie went to Ethel for this love, her source for giving this love came from a traumatic past as well, like a trauma that held Noon back from giving the same love. She wanted to open up for him. She wanted to smother him with her body until it made him cry out. But she was afraid of falling into that place where her passions died when she was just twelve. That place that had already claimed her insides (Mckinney-Whetstone 23). Noon was afraid to give this love to Herbie but still tried to reassure him that she was healing and in the meantime gave him a motherly love that she knew he would still appreciate to a degree.
She could appeal to his goodness, though, that part of him in every man that makes him yearn for the feeling he got when his mama told him how good he was, how proud he made her feel. Mothers love, mothers love. Raised up with all brothers, Noon understood that kind of power. Itd make a six-foot man humble and blush like a schoolgirl, and a leaned-over man of seventy straighten his back and strut. It protected men from commission of heinous acts that might have otherwise seemed like the natural thing to do. It was their conscience, their guilt, their goodness.
For Mama, even when they werent aware, their best was done for Mama (Mckinney-Whetstone 116). Ethel also knew how to give a healing love to Herbie even if it was just through a touch of the hand: There was always a wholesomeness to being with Herbie. He wasnt just with her just for his basest pleasures. It was like he needed healing (Mckinney-Whetstone 323). Nonetheless, during the time in which Noon was finding ways to self-heal she was still fighting her past: The onlookers chanted and fainted and came to calling for blood. They wouldnt stop until they saw blood.
Not the first searing pain of a young girl being stretched wide, but the gushing that came later, seemed like hours later When she wished all of her would die but only part of her did, the part where her womanly passions were just starting to come to life (Mckinney-Whetstone 161). Noon was getting over her traumatic past and at the same time Ethel was still struggling with hers: tried to shut her thinking down. But once she got to this point she never could. The point where her mother turned around and the whole side of her face was raw flesh Heavy black circles wrapped around both of her eyes, and her top lip was separated and oozing blood (Mckinney-Whetstone 179) her mother grabbed the paring knife Ethels little girls arms went along for the ride as her mother plunged the knife into where Alfred's chest rose and fells tried to push the blood back in Alfred's chest that was spurting like wine from a fountain at a wedding feast (Mckinney-Whetstone 180). With these events followed Noons and Ethel's love and assurance in the early morning sunrise. Because of this, their lives intercepted near the closing of the story, and instead of finding comfort from the sun they found comfort from each other, strangers.
While their lives were separate and different they became women who could love in the end.
Free research essays on topics related to: ethel, liz, mckinney, mothers love, noon
Research essay sample on Ethel For This Love Love To Herbie Noon
