Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ is a violent, gritty yet deeply moving novel set during the slavery era and the terrible grief of the slaves. The novel touches upon a lot of subjects such as slavery, love, motherhood, racism, violence, guilt, loss and more. Sethe is the protagonist of the novel, her life shaped by her being a black woman and a slave. Sethe, her husband and few others work as slaves in the Sweet Home plantation. Although they are slaves, life is tolerable for them. Things however change when Mr. Garner, the owner dies and the schoolmaster, his brother takes over the plantation. He is racist, cruel and when he hears about the slaves wanting to escape, he tortures them mercilessly. Sethe is a victim of this torture and this coupled with her history as a slave child and the future she envisions for her child (as a slave) make her murder her own kid. Sethe kills her kid motivated by fear for herself and her kids. She has also seen the abuses meted out to slaves, especially women and looks out for her kid when she kills her. Her scarred past and oppressive present and a hopeless future drive her eventually to kill her kid. Her decision although legally not acceptable is right and could be understood by any mother who is driven to a corner. By killing her kid, she was not denying them a shot at life but was preventing them from living a cruel and a torturous existence.
Although she tries to kill all her kids while escaping from the Schoolmaster, she succeeds in killing only one child-the child who has not been named and whose tombstone reads Beloved. Although Sethe cuts the throat of ‘Beloved’ as a child and kills her, her presence is felt by Sethe and her family members for decades. First in the form of a ghost or a supernatural presence in the house and then as a reincarnation as a young woman, Beloved is very much a part of Sethe’s life. Sethe’s relation with Beloved, the young woman, is characterized by guilt. Perhaps this is why she lets herself be manipulated and hurt by Beloved. Beloved’s presence in Sethe’s life and her unwavering love for her raises the question of the ‘murder’ Sethe commits? Was Sethe right in killing her baby? Was it an act of murder or a selfless act of mercy killing?
The killing of the child also brings into focus the lives of the slave women like Sethe and the reasons they are forced into killing their own children. Sethe is not the only person who kills her baby in the novel. Sethe’s mother does it too. Sethe’s mother also commits infanticide, killing the children ‘without names’; she does it because she does not want to have the children of the white men who had raped her. She chooses to keep Sethe as she had her with a person she chose to be with. Ella is another black slave who kills her children born from rape by white men. Sethe’s mother and Ella kill their children because they do not want to rear children who are a symbol of racist cruelty. The children were also born out of force and not out of love. Sethe’s case however is different, she has the kid with the man she loves and perhaps it is because of this that the desire to protect them is even stronger. While her mother and Ella kill their kids because they cannot grow to like them, Sethe kills her kid because she loves them too much. It is out of a deep motherly love that she kills the kid and given her situation she is right in doing so.
Sethe as a black woman and a slave is at the bottom rung of the societal ladder. She not only has to face racism as a slave, but also torture because of her gender both by the white men and the black men. As a black woman working in a plantation, she is seen as a breeder of children or a sexual object. In spite of having kids and being a mother, she is not allowed to nurture. Sethe experiences this as a kid. She sees her mother very rarely; she does not remember sharing any tender moments with her and the few memories that she does have of her are not pleasant. Sethe feels the lack of a mother in her life and understands completely the constraints her slave existence would place on her as a mother and on her daughter when she grows up. Perhaps Sethe’s violent and protective love for her children is a result of this lack of the presence of a mother. She does not want to relive the life her mother had with her and neither does she want her kids to experience it after her. She’d rather kill them than put them in the same situation of hers. “beloved’, thus becomes a victim of not only Sethe’s personal demons but also a victim of society that would not let a mother be. A black woman in a slave society is stripped of her dignity as a woman and her dignity as a mother. She also leads a less than human existence at the hands of the plantation owners, worked to death and not have any semblance of normalcy as a human being. Sethe here thinks of the future her children would face as slaves as tries to kill them from the tortures she had to face. Seen from the lens of a brutal dystopian slave society her decision feels right. Although killing of an innocent child is legally wrong and punishable by law, seen from the position of Sethe, death seems to be a better option than dying slowly in the plantation.
Sethe’s punishment or torture at the hands of the schoolmaster and his nephews also play an important role in her decision to kill the kids and the death of Beloved. The Schoolmaster and his nephews not only violate her but also milk her like a cow. Her treatment at the hands of the white masters can be described as inhuman as best. They whip her without any mercy and ‘suck her lactating breasts’. Breasts or any part of a woman’s body is her private domain and any forcible touch is a violation of her privacy and her dignity. To ‘milk’ her breasts while she is pregnant like she is some kind of an animal is debasing her at a vulnerable state. Breast milk was probably the sole thing she could give her babies, something which was hers alone to give. Strangers doing the suckling act or taking the milk strips her of this too.
The ‘whites’ who do this to her do not have sympathy for her as a woman, a human being or a mother. The fact that she is pregnant does not matter to the aggressors who sole aim is to punish and humiliate her. Sethe knows that her children would live to be treated in a similar fashion and cannot bear to see that happen. This is the reason she tries to kill them while escaping from the Schoolmaster and the men. Sethe takes refuge in her mother in law’s house after her brutal treatment but the white men come and find her there. She is also forced to go back to the plantation when he makes her escape. The act of killing her daughter could also be a resistance against slavery, her own way of telling the white men that they could take her, but could not take something that she had made. In that case, Sethe’s decision raises some moral and ethical questions. Does she have the right to take the lives of her children? Can she decide what is right for them and what is not? Was her daughter her possession about which Sethe could make a decision? These questions do not have an easy answer. It is easy to judge a killer citing moral, legal and ethical reasons. Sethe might have taken a decision for her kid, but she did it out of benevolence. Although the act in itself was cruel; cutting the throat of her kid could not have been easy for a mother, she did it so the kid would not suffer as an adult. Sethe would have come across as a bigger monster to herself if she had seen her daughter treated the same way she was. The trauma she suffers as a result of the violation gives her a strong incentive to kill her child. She is right as a mother in wanting her kids not to suffer or be humiliated like she was. Sethe giving her reasons for killing her child says, “It’s my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that.” (165).
Sethe’s killing of her child is not a premeditated act. Rather it was a result of hopelessness and helplessness. She and her kids are against a world that would not let them be free. Her return to the plantation would mean more punishment not only for her but for her kids too. She was cornered and like any mother who would protect her young ones from a threat, Sethe was protecting her children. Killing them and saving them from a life was slavery was the only act of protection she could think of when she realized there was no future for them. She not only loses her peace of mind, her dignity but also loses her husband in the process. Her husband Halle is a mute spectator of Sethe’s violation and loses his mind as a result of it. Sethe no longer has the luxury of going to him for protection or even crying on his shoulders. When Sethe talks about the killing of her child, she says that she, “ couldn’t let all that go back to where it was, and I couldn’t let her nor any of ‘em live under schoolteacher. That was out” (200). She is quite determined that she could not let any of her kids face the same torture that she suffered under the schoolmaster and his nephews.
Sethe’s killing of her child can be condoned given her situation. She had just lost her dignity, her husband and has no hope of a better future. Also at that time she could not have possibly known that slavery would be abolished in a few years and her children could have lived as free men and woman. She took the decision out of desperation, she killed her child when she knew her captors were close and getting caught would only mean more torture. Sethe does not want her children to experience the physical, mental and the sexual trauma that she went through and takes the option that she thinks is best. Sethe’s action is motivated by not only her past, but of the stories and experiences of other slave women. The things she experiences and witnesses play heavily on her mind and leads her to make this decision. She is put in prison as killing is against the law. But as a mother, her decision was right. Killing her child was the most compassionate thing she could think of for them.
Sethe says, “That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you (251).” She knows that once caught her kids will no longer be hers, but enslaved just like her and it is something she does not want for them.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Random House. 1987. Print.
