Motherly Love In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Toni Morrison redefines the boundaries and capacities of love in her novel about freed African Americans, Beloved. Due to their positions and past experiences, the former slaves in Beloved have a tendency to disassociate themselves from love. Sethe, one of Morrison’s main characters, suffers from the opposite affliction; Sethe loves too much and much too hard. Morrison explores the complex feeling of love and its power to hurt both the receivers and givers of this feeling.

The past comes back to haunt accurately in Beloved. Written by Toni Morrison, a prominent African-American author and Noble Prize winner for literature, the novel Beloved focuses on Sethe, a former slave who killed her daughter, Beloved, before the story begins. Beloved returns symbolically in the psychological issues of each character and literally in human form. The novel is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, a slave in the 1850s, who committed infanticide by killing her child. Barbara Schapiro, the author of “The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, Andrew Levy, the author of “Telling Beloved”, and Karla F.C. Holloway, the author of “Beloved: A Spiritual”, present ideas of the loss of psychological freedom, the story being “unspeakable”, Beloved being the past, and the narrative structures of the story rewriting history.

In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved there is a mother-daughter relationship in which Sethe out of motherly love, murders her daughter Beloved to free and protect her from the harshness of slavery. Through this, the ghost of her deceased daughter haunts her conscience and later further haunts Sethe about her act of love. From the time she slits the throat of her infant daughter and until the end of the novel, Morrison presents justifications of Sethe's actions and understanding of her use of this conflict to recreate history in relaying the harshness of slavery in this time period. Morrison uses tactics which incorporates Beloved and slavery making them synonymous and depicting the importance of the bittersweet ice skating scene.

After reading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, I could not help but feel shocked and taken aback by the detailed picture of life she painted for slaves at the time in American history. The grotesque and twisted nature of life during the era of slavery in America is an opposite world from the politically correct world of 2016. Morrison did not hold back about the harsh realities of slavery. Based on a true story, Toni Morrison wrote Beloved about the life of Sethe, a slave and her family. Toni Morrison left no stone unturned when describing the impact slavery on had the life of slaves. She dove deeper than the surface level of simply elaborating on how terrible it is to be “owned” and forced to do manual labor. Morrison describes in detail, the horrors and profoundly negative impacts slavery had on family bonds, humanity of all people involved and the slaves sense of self even after they acquired their freedom.

Sethe’s relationship is in a balance at the beginning. She has the two poles of attraction, Paul’s desire to settle down and start a family, and Beloved’s desire to draw Sethe back into the past. Throughout the novel, acts of cruelty wind into her life and alter the outcome of her days. Cruelty in Beloved affects both the perpetrator and victim in that the perpetrator becomes consumed by such acts, and the victim simply devolves to be more and more vulnerable to such acts. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Beloved’s acts of cruelty reveal how one’s inner desires can overcome the perpetrator, and dehumanize victim in the long term.

Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, allows for one to experience slavery through three generations of women. The complex development of the horrors of black chattel slavery in the United States intertwined with a story a freedom helps the reader to understand the ongoing struggle of the Afro-American population after emancipation. Denver, although never a slave, is at first held in bondage by her mother's secrecy about her past and only sets herself free when her mother is forced to cope with her memories.

Sethe is not simply attempting to kill her children just for the sake of doing it; she sees no other option for the betterment of their lives. Sethe is attempting to take the lives of her children out of pure love and the opportunity to not drag them through a life of suffering.

Sethe understands that her history, filled with the pain of slavery, grief over losing her children, and guilt over Beloved's death, and tries to hide from all the anguish. However, she admits that the past seems to "always be there waiting," thereby emphasizing the idea that past horrors of life continue to haunt forever. It appears as though the power of her experience in slavery influences her so greatly that the memory triggers great pain, causing the horrifying incidents to "happen again." Even though Sethe understands that she cannot ever fully escape her history as it will come back to trouble her, she still tries to avoid them and thus attempts to shield her daughter from the horrors of history: "As for Denver, the job Sethe had of keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her was all that mattered" (45). It seems as though Sethe tries to deny the fact that history does not simply disappear. She still tries to protect Denver "from the past" even though history "waits," prepared to cause trouble and inflict the pain Sethe tries to repress. It appears as though Sethe continuously tries to fight against her memories and ignore her past in part one. For example, after she wakes, she begins "Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day's

Sethe lives in the shadow of her act of infanticide throughout the entire length of the book. This is because its legacy pervades itself throughout the entire novel, showing events leading up, and ways the future has been affected. The novel begins as such: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. (Page 1)” This baby refers to Beloved, who became a ghostly presence in Sethe’s house and continuously terrorizes the house

Krumholz argues that Beloved is a mind healing recovery process that forces the characters to remember and tackle their past. In her essay, “Toni Morrison”, Jill Matus regards Beloved as a form of cultural memory that analyzes vague and possibly removed history. Furthermore, in his book, Fiction and Folklore: the Novels of Toni Morrison, Trudier Harris focuses on the issue of ownership and slavery in Beloved. In all, historical background is a huge player in understanding Beloved. Morrison set the novel during the Reconstruction era, after the Civil War, which sets the entire tone and plot for the main character, Sethe.

Through character development, the story also portrays the theme of escaping the past. Sethe’s actions are influenced heavily by her dead child, Beloved. When the “human” form of Beloved arrives while sleeping

Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Beloved, is a historical novel that serves as a memorial for those who died during the perils of slavery. The novel serves as a voice that speaks for the silenced reality of slavery for both men and women. Morrison in this novel gives a voice to those who were denied one, in particular African American women. It is a novel that rediscovers the African American experience. The novel undermines the conventional idea of a story’s time scheme. Instead, Morrison combines the past and the present together. The book is set up as a circling of memories of the past, which continuously reoccur in the book. The past is embedded in the present, and the present has no

Toni Morrison’s Beloved shows the dehumanization of slavery and its effects on African-Americans and their basic forms of existence—specifically motherhood. Morrison depicts the strong maternal bond between Sethe and her children. Most importantly, her use of Sethe’s controversial act of infanticide shows the lengths that Sethe will take to protect her children from slavery. Morrison’s depiction of Sethe’s motherhood shows how slavery has deconstructed the Eurocentric expectations and traditions of motherhood and gender for black women. Rather than victimize Sethe’s as an enslaved woman, Morrision decides to celebrate her triumphs and suffering in Beloved. Therefore, Sethe’s identity as an enslaved black mother deconstructs the expectations of Eurocentric gender roles with her exertion of independence and control for the benefit of her children.

Her healing actions toward Sethe, not only gives Sethe the physical strength to go on, but the restoration of self-worth and dignity.

 Sethe learned the value of motherhood from an early age.  Not wanting the children of the white men that raped her, Sethe?s mother, Ma?am (as she is called in the book), threw all the unwanted children away.  But, Sethe?s father was a black man whom Ma?am loved, and so she kept Sethe.  Recalling the story, Sethe thinks back on what Nan (the woman who knew Sethe?s mother and raised Sethe, herself) said, ?She threw them all away but you.  The one from the crew she threw away on the island.  The others from more whites she also threw away.  Without names, she threw them.  You she gave the name of the black man? (Morrison, 62).  Thus having an identity because of her mother, ?Sethe learns Ma?am?s history and grounds her personality in motherly-love? (Kubitcheck 123).  Kubitcheck also says, ?mother-love offers the strongest defense against slavery.  When Nan tells Sethe that her Ma?am chose to conceive and bear her, Sethe acquires the base on which to build feelings of self-worth? (135).  She could also identify with her mother by the mark branded below Ma?am?s