The Character of Sula as a Rose The authors developed the canon to establish a standard of literature that most people were expected to read or were familiar with. The works included in the canon used words such as beautiful, lovely, fair, and innocent to describe women. The standard works also used conventional symbols to compare women to flowers such as the rose and lily. Thomas Campion describes the typical description of women in his poem "There is a garden on her face". He describes women by stating, “There is a garden in his face/ Where roses and white lilies grow, / A heavenly paradise is that place, / Where all pleasant fruits flow” (1044-5). Roses and lilies are used to portray beautiful, fragile women who are admired by all and placed high on a pedestal for all to worship. Going against the norm, Toni Morrison again uses flowers to describe women in her novel Sula. The women Morrison describes are not righteous, pure, or innocent. Sula, the protagonist compared to a rose, is not admired by everyone in society. Society despises her due to her promiscuity and carefree attitude. In Sula, Morrison describes Sula as having a rose-shaped birthmark over one eye. Sula's birthmark "extended from the center of her eyelid toward her eyebrow, forming something like a stemmed rose... [which] gave her other wise and simple face a broken excitement" (52). At the beginning, when Sula is young and inexperienced, the mark is "the same shade as her gold-flecked eyes" (53). The light shade of the brand represents the time before Sula goes to college and experiences men and her sexuality. When Sula returns from the outside world to the Bottom, Nel, Sula's best friend, notes that "[the mark] was dark... in the center of the paper... and does not need the Bottom's approval. Toni Morrison clearly describes an opposite view of the traditional symbolization of the rose. Although Sula is not fragile and beautiful, she is still placed on a pedestal, instead of admiring her, people fear her and the life she leads excuse to lead a better life. the Bottom collapses. The people no longer have a common bond of hatred towards Sula. Reality hits the community with Sula's death, "[the people of the Bottom] returned to a deep resentment of the burden of the elderly. Wives pampered their husbands; it no longer seemed necessary to strengthen their vanity" (153-4). The city no longer has a rose to blame for their misadventures. Instead they must face their reality and their misfortune..