for her. Love and mothering to Eva is about sacrifice and self-preservation, "…what you talkin' 'bout did I love you girl I stayed alive for you can't you get that through your thick head or what is that between your ears, heifer?" (69) Doubleness Sula demonstrates numerous doubles or parallels between the novel's characters. For example, Sula and Eva both kill men (Sula kills Chicken Little; Eva kills Plum). The death of Chicken Little results in a closed casket funeral (64). Likewise, for Hannah, "the casket had to be kept closed at the funeral" (77). Chicken died by water, Hannah died by fire. Nel watches Chicken die by drowning, according to Eva at the later scene in the nursing home (168). Sula watches Hannah die in flames (78). Both Plum and Hannah —brother and sister— die by fire (Plum is burned to death by Eva, Hannah dies from her injuries after catching fire by accident). Symbolism Though Morrison's of symbolism is continuous through the novel, the most important symbol is the birthmark Sula has over her eye. The darkening of it over the years represents her maturity and gradual defiance of social conventionality. The appearance of the birthmark is utilized to reveal how each character perceived Sula. Nel thought it looked like a rose, symbolizing love, friendship, and female beauty; Jude thought it was a snake, symbolizing deception and seduction, which the rest of the town agreed with; Perhaps even more significant than Nel's perception of the mark is Shadrack's, who thought it looked like a tadpole. He was the only person that thought of her as harmless. Literary significance and criticism Sula was integral to the formation of black feminist literary criticism. In 1977, black feminist literary critic Barbara Smith, in her essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," advanced a definition of black feminist literary criticism and (in)famously performed a lesbian reading of Sula. In her 1980 essay "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," Black feminist literary critic Deborah McDowell responded to Smith's challenge by acknowledging the need for a black feminist criticism and calling for a firmer definition of black feminism. In her essay "Boundaries: Or Distant Relations and Close Kin", Deborah McDowell draws on the critical practices of Hortense Spillers and Hazel Carby and reads Sula from a poststructuralist perspective, urging black women critics to "develop and practice […] critical approaches interactively, dialogically" instead of viewing "black