SOURCE: Page, Philip. “Living with the Abyss in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe.” CLA Journal 40, no. 1 (September 1996): 21–45.

In the following essay, Page examines the metaphorical image of the abyss in Bailey's Cafe.

In Toni Morrison's Jazz, the imagery of wells is significant. Because Violet Trace's mother committed suicide by jumping into a well, Violet's severe depression and near suicide are centered on her fears of wells: “the well sucked her sleep,”¹ she is “scare[d]” by “deep holes” (223), and she is lured by the “limitless beckoning from the well” (101) and by “the pull of a narrow well” (104). The well is an image of death—enclosed, dark, and final, much like a grave or a coffin. It is a fixed point, a closed circle, where variation, alternatives, movement, play, indeed life, all cease. Yet Violet's extreme withdrawal is erroneously based on her attempts to repress her mother's suicide, her own...