Discuss Names and Naming in Song of Solomon and Moll Flanders
The function of names in Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon are different but equally indicative of the societies in which the novels are set. The ambiguity of Moll's name reflects her turbulent life and times, whereas for the black community depicted by Morrison names are regarded as precious symbols of their freedom from slavery.
Moll's concealment of her true identity is essentially part of the framework of the novel, that is, a rogue biography. The fact that she does not divulge her real name because it would incriminate her lends credence to this insistence that she is a real person:
My True Name is so well known in the Records, or Registers at Newgate, and in the Old-Baily, and there are some things of such Consequence still depending there…that it is not to be expected I should set my Name…to this Work.
Her refusal to identify any of her associates or family members also tallies with this, although it may be partly the result of her self-centredness. She gives the reader the names of just two of her husbands, Robin and Jem, and of the one son, Humphrey, who she sees in adulthood. This is evidence of her early feminism: a husband, in giving his name to his wife, defines her, and Moll refuses to be possessed in this way. Her name is not very important to her because she lacks self-awareness. This is an unusual attitude for a woman in a time when women were made by marriage, and it may be the consequence of Defoe failing to understand the considerations of contemporary women rather than Moll being avant-garde.
Her spontaneous name-changes reflect her independence and quick wit, enabling her to escape detection through her various schemes. They are also appropriate to the time in which the novel is set, encompassing the Great Plague and Fire of London, the English Civil War and the Restoration. At this time names were also much more flexible, varying in spelling and rarely being officially recorded. Moll Flanders was intended to be an 'old' text even when it was published in 1722, purporting to have been written in 1683; the vague sense of identity may have added to its archaic values.
The nickname "Moll Flanders" is given to her by the criminal community:
…they were always catch'd and hurried to Newgate. These were they that gave me the Name of Moll Flanders…nor could I ever learn how they came to give me the Name, or what the Occasion of it was.
It is in keeping with the predominantly proleptic narrative of the book that Moll allows the reader to think of her by a nickname that she does not acquire until she is in her fifties. It also shows a pride in this episode of her life that undermines her claim to be a penitent. Defoe may in fact have been inspired by Moll King, a famous female criminal of the time, and contemporary readers would no doubt have understood this reference and the further satisfaction and glamour it implies for Moll Flanders' dishonest career. Her confusing array of identities also serves to show that the reader is not intended to feel close to Moll despite the first-person narration.
Defoe makes use of place-names to add realism to the story, assuming that his readers are familiar with Moll's world: "…to Holbourn-bridge, when mixing with the Crowd of People usually passing there." However, this practice rings false because geographical references are so infrequent but very prominent when they do occur.
Place-names are used more effectively in Song of Solomon as a demonstration of the black community's subversion of white authority.
Some of the city legislators…had notices posted…saying that the avenue running northerly and southerly from Shore Road…had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street…Southside residents…called it Not Doctor Street, and were inclined to call the charity hospital at its northern end No Mercy Hospital.
Through their bureaucracy the legislators create an opportunity for the blacks' oral tradition to overcome their written culture; the place-names become part of a creole and therefore even more 'black'.
The black population also subverts the white culture that is forced upon them by twisting the traditional Biblical names that they give to their children. In Song of Solomon several characters are named after more unsavoury characters: Pontius Pilate, Hagar, Rebekah and Magdalene. The Biblical background is in many cases highly appropriate. Solomon (or Shalimar) is the patriarch of the novel's central family and can fly, just as his Biblical antecedent is an ancestor of Jesus and is also so wise that he treats the world differently to those around him. Ruth is an outsider inducted into and confused by the Dead family, just as her religious counterpart, a Moabite, is accepted into an Israelite tribe. She also marries a relative of her mother-in-law's, to which Ruth Foster's unnatural relationship with her father may be a reference. Magdalene is devoted to a man, although Lena Dead's choice of her father and her brother is rather less worthy than Jesus. Reba adores her daughter but ruins her by spoiling her to such an extent that she can not sustain relationships; Rebekah, Isaac's wife in the Old Testament, is so devoted to Jacob ("Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob") that she corruptly helps him deceive his father into giving him his brother's inheritance. Because of this Jacob is forced to flee. The Biblical Hagar is given to Abraham as a concubine by his wife and bears him a son, Ishmael, who becomes the ancestor of Israel's enemies. Morrison's Hagar also becomes little more than a prostitute, and to her cousin, continuing the theme of incest.
The most relevant Biblical name is that of First Corinthians. This awkward moniker is, typically for the Dead family, an attempt to show their piousness and respectability. An examination of the contents of First Corinthians, however, shows a covert critique of the family's shortcomings. It contains two warnings on divisions in the church, which could refer to the family's problems. There is counselling regarding relationships between Christians, covering such topics as sexual immorality, ironic because of the Deads' dysfunctionality and incest. Paul talks of the resurrection of the dead, in which they believe because of the ghost of Macon Dead I. It contains warnings from Israel's history, just as the family fails to learn from their ancestors' mistakes; and, most tellingly, it has the Bible's most famous passage on love ("And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love") according to which the Dead family seem to fail on every property.
Pilate, named after Jesus' judge, becomes her brother's judge, reminding him of his greed. She is in fact the only character to overcome the challenge of growing beyond the branding of her name, perhaps because of the loving care taken in its choosing:
His father…had thumbed through the Bible, and since he could not read a word, chose a group of letters that seemed to him strong and handsome; saw in then a large figure that looked like a tree hanging in some princely but protective way over a row of smaller trees.
She keeps her name close to her, in her earring, not allowing anyone to alter her identity by renaming. Her earring, and so her name, encompasses all the factors that shape her life: her mother's box, her father's writing, a gold pin from her father's killers and labour from a Negro smith. In Song of Solomon renaming is inevitably negative, coming as it does from miscommunication (Macon Dead), scandal (Milkman) or whimsy (Guitar).
The non-Biblically named characters, too, reflect their given names: the Dead family is indeed emotionally dead, whereas Milkman and Guitar retain their childhood nicknames because they remain immature. Circe is an unusual name for a black woman as it comes from Greek mythology, but it is appropriate when one considers that the mythological Circe is a witch, just as Milkman describes his father's guardian; and she is also an enchantress who turns men into animals, analogous to Circe's dogs savaging the Butlers' civilised home.
Names act as markers in the text, unifying seemingly disparate parts of the plot. Henry Porter, the man who disturbs Southside shouting, "Send me up somebody to fuck!…or I'ma blow my brains out!" becomes Corrie's genteel suitor, so the reader is surprised when his name is mentioned in this context for the first time. Robert Smith, the insurance agent who tries to fly at the very start of the novel, is mentioned again as an ex-member of the Seven Days. This organisation itself misappropriates the innocuous names of days and turns them into something more significant, which is the overall trend of naming in literature.
For the black community names are especially important since they represent self-ownership as opposed to slavery; at the same time most blacks bear the names of their one-time owners, thus effacing their African origins. Macon Dead is unusual in this sense as, due to the ineptitude of his registrar, he is given an entirely personal name, composed of his background: his hometown, Macon, and his deceased father. Rather than viewing this as a positive step, however, the family resents the name because of its white implications:
His own parents, in some mood of perverseness or resignation, had agreed to abide by a naming done to them by somebody who couldn't care less…a drunken Yankee in the Union Army.
The blend of white and black in his name is also appropriate given Macon Dead's espousal of white capitalist values, which he passes on to his son the property lawyer: "Own things…and then you'll own yourself and other people too."
Milkman comes to an understanding of his nickname and his real name as he learns about his family's past. He inherits from his father a dread of his nickname: "It sounded dirty, intimate and hot." When he is told about his mother's unhealthy relationship with her father he is even more disgusted by it: "His mother had been portrayed…as an obscene child playing games with whatever male was near." Yet he still goes by the name; the significant change comes when he leaves his hometown. When he is in Danville and Virginia he introduces himself proudly as 'Macon Dead', and the name proves to have good connotations for him: "It was a good feeling to come into a strange town and find a stranger who knew your people." From then on Milkman's understanding of the importance of names increases as he learns a host of new ones from his past: Sing, Heddy, Shalimar, Jake. These names provide him with an identity for his roots and thus for himself, and he finally becomes a man rather than an over-grown child; namelessness is an excuse for irresponsibility, but now Milkman must be accountable for his actions.
The concept of 'unnaming' is also important to blacks. It encompasses both the derogatory treatment they experience – every black doctor, businessman and lawyer is also merely a "nigger" – and a quasi-magical revenge on the white 'masters', through rejecting the slave-owners' names bestowed upon them. Malcolm X was a proponent of this, taking his inspiration partly from YHWH, the Hebrew "I am," or literally, "That which cannot be named," giving blacks another chance to undermine the white Biblical culture.
…a name that was real. A name given to him at birth with love and seriousness. A name that was not a joke, nor a disguise, nor a brand name.
For Moll Flanders her name is all of these things: a pun on her being a thief, a means of evading the law, a trademark of her criminal skill. She does not know her mother and therefore cannot be sure of her real name or its circumstances. For the black community depicted in Song of Solomon, however, a respectable name and a solid background are essential; without these families and communities do not function correctly and problems such as incest, violence and racial hatred occur. Ultimately, a name that comes from a loving naming is a badge of self-understanding and a full and useful identity:
We must learn to wear our names within all the noise and confusion in which we find ourselves. They must become our masks and our shields and the containers of all those values and traditions which we learn and/or imagine as being the meaning of our familial past.
Bibliography
1. Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (Oxford University Press, 1981)
2. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (Vintage, 1998)
3. Holy Bible, New International Version (International Bible Society, 1982)
4. Kimberly W. Benston, '"I Yam What I Am" Naming and Unnaming in Afro-American Literature,' Black American Literature Forum, Volume 16, Issue 1
