Family Drama; Fable; Southern Gothic
Morrison is doing a lot of different things in this book. She gets to: she's a literary genius. On a basic level, though, the book is a straight-up family drama. The first half of the book is taken up mainly by the drama surrounding the relationship between Valerian, Margaret, and their son (Michael), along with the relationship between Sydney, Ondine, and the niece (Jade).
Although we leave the Isle des Chevaliers and the highly dysfunctional Street mansion and follow Son and Jade's failed romance, the idea of family is never far behind. Son takes Jade to Eloe, where he expects her to become a wife and mother. He expects, in other words, Jade to take her place within his biological family unit and within the larger societal family of Eloe.
By the end of the novel, Jade is getting taken to task by her auntie Ondine for not being a good enough daughter, and, by extension, not a good enough woman. This exchange pretty much solidifies Tar Baby's place in the family drama camp: Jade is thought of in terms of her familial role even when she's off by herself. Even Jade's loneliest drama is family drama.
But Tar Baby isn't just your run-of-the-mill family drama. Its title alludes to the folktale of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby and there is a strong folktale/ fable element to the novel. The short version of the moral of both this fable and the novel itself is that sticky situations tend to just get stickier. It's hard to extricate yourself from tricky situations by simply struggling, whether you find yourself stuck in a tar pit or in a really emotionally draining relationship.
Finally, Tar Baby is a bit of a Southern Gothic. True, it's not (mainly) set in the American South but the elements that make a Southern Gothic a Southern Gothic are all there: moldering old mansions, spooky family dynamics (burning your infant son, anyone?) and racial tensions aplenty. There's also the element of the sublime, like the visions Jade has while in Eloe or Son's final, desperate clamber along the rocky shore of Isle des Chevaliers.