Motherhood is a sacred act for each woman. It is the most powerful and spiritual component of a woman’s life. Published in 1987, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison depicts heart-wrenching lives of African slaves and explores the mother-child relationship and the experience of black women in an unjust and prejudiced society. “Beloved” was based on the real story of a slave woman called Margaret Garner who killed her own child. This masterpiece emphasizes the barbaric and cruel effects of slavery and oppression of black women in the circumstances of racial inequality and abusive behaviors. They were not allowed to live, get married; however, giving birth to a child was encouraged because this act promised new slaves for slaveholders. Therefore, slave women were beneficial not only as laborers but also as creatures with reproductive ability. “Beloved” is a novel of slavery and how it severed the slave women motherline by treating them like property, selling their children, and robbing them of the natural and desired motherhood.
During the time of slavery, black women were both granted and denied motherhood. Indeed, “motherhood” was a wrong term for enslaved black mothers because they did not legally own their children because they were the property of their slaveholder. “When planters sought to increase surplus through increased exploitation of workers, they employed reproductive and productive forms of exploitation. They increased profits by acquiring more land and by engineering enslaved women’s rate of reproduction of human commodities through explicit sexual and reproductive violence (Weinbaum 443). A terrifying thing was the fact that slaveholders had the legal right to separate slave mothers and their children and sell them in the marketplace. It is important to mention that many children were the result of sexual assaults because black women were not protected by laws, “Nineteen-century miscegenation laws and rape laws, after all, were meant for the ostensible protection of white women, not black women. These laws were selective , even in the face of black women’s clear vulnerability to sexual attack” (Alexandre 926). Therefore, numerous slave women were reluctant to give birth to children whose future was already determined. Their efforts to assert the right for motherhood proved that bonds between mothers and children were strong and undeniable.
Morrison states that the responsibility for nurturing children lies only with the black mothers because, during slavery, black men were separated from women and worked in the fields. Moreover, the author emphasizes the fact that black men could have had numerous relations to produce more slaves for their masters. Therefore, their position in the families was insignificant. This fact is proved by the episode when Paul D asks Sethe to have a baby with him. Sethe says that children are of great value for her, but for him, possibly, a child is a sign of power and control over the woman. Besides, Sethe is sure that Paul D has dropped numerous offspring everywhere. The woman also draws a kind of pride and triumph from the belief that he is not the head of their family, “They were a family somehow, and he was not the head of it” (Morrison 132). This statement also demonstrates Sethe’s attitude to fatherhood who finds it unimportant and inessential.
The fact that the white families of the Gardners, the Bodwins, and Amy Denver are childless emphasizes the importance of motherhood for black women. Besides, it was a risky thing because children were taken from their mothers to become slaves, “Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it were her children she had settled on to love” (Morrison 44). Moreover, Morrison claims that it is difficult for a woman to be a mother without her own motherline. For example, when Sethe has a conversation with Paul D, she tells that it was difficult for her to raise children in Sweet Home without elder women to ask for advice or support. It was necessary for her to know when children could eat solid food or just talk about something unimportant. Sethe proves the fact that daughters learn important things from their mothers who also give them practical pieces of advice for their future motherhood.
In “Beloved,” Morrison demonstrates what happens when a slave woman challenges the whole system of slavery and insists on the right to own her children. It is notable that black mothers struggled for their motherhood but refused to love children from white masters. Sethe’s mother and Baby Suggs are the examples of how feelings are blunted between mothers and children, especially when children are the results of sexual exploitation. Infanticide shown in the novel was not a single example of cruel acts of desperate black mothers, there were regular murders of infants for many reasons, including economic and psychological. Sometimes, it was considered as resistance and sometimes as a mercy killing of those whose future was determined. Sethe’s mother and Ella are the examples of women who killed their children from white masters. However, the lives of these women were extremely difficult and emotionally devastating, and the image of quilt may represent a difficult life of its characters, “Scraps of cloth from dresses, pants, work and play clothes, curtains, night clothes, uniforms, and other vestiges represent their life experiences” (Daniel 327). Black women’s lives were similar to quilts because they consisted of numerous painful moments and decisions.
Sethe’s mother represents a clear example of how black women were treated. Sexual exploitation and hard labor drove her to the acts of retaliation. Sethe has little knowledge of her own mother whose name is not mentioned; she remembers only fear and isolation while being a slave in South Carolina as well as her mother. Sethe was nursed by Nan, her mother’s friend and a slave nanny, because her mother had to do a lot of heavy work in the field. Nan tells her that Sethe’s mother had many children both black and white; however, she killed them, just threw away. These incidents of infanticide state clearly black women tried to employ all possible tools struggling against oppression and racial injustice. The author writes that when Sethe was a little girl, this story did not impress her; however, when she grew up, Sethe was angry but did not know the reason for such attitude. “Now, in remembering her on relationship to her two daughters, she is able to understand her mother’s acts” (Rushdy 590). Sethe’s mother like any other nameless black women was treated like an animal and also demonstrated animal behavior in destroying her offspring.
Nevertheless, by taking back lives of her children, Sethe’s mother regains freedom and control over those whose fate is to be enslaved. Moreover, by committing infanticide, Sethe’s mother and many other black mothers assert their right for their children and fight against sexual oppression. In “Beloved,” all black women are similar in their exploitation, and only mother’s milk can provide stability and hopes for the future. Before being killed, Sethe’s mother lifts her breasts to demonstrate her daughter a brand of slavery: a circle and cross branded into her body. When the girl sees this mark, she wants to have the same one, her mother slaps her because, obviously, the woman does not want her daughter to have such burden. The example of Sethe’s mother proves the desire of black mothers for motherhood and nurturing their children.
Baby Suggs is an example of a woman who has given birth to numerous children and watched how they were taken from her one by one by one. Her life is also tragic because she was exploited by whites as a baby-machine and forced in sexual contacts just to make her white master richer. “I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread” (Morrison 5). These memories are painful for Baby Suggs; however, such identifying marks are the only things she was allowed to have and remember about her children. Possibly, slave mothers hoped to find their offspring in future with the help of such slight memories. Halle, her youngest son and husband of Sethe, is her last ray of hope in the tragic existence of Baby Suggs. During slavery, black mothers were frequently forced to be separated from children, and they even did not name their offspring. Therefore, Baby Suggs was lucky to nurture Halle. However, the circumstances of this maternal happiness were tragic. Halle was a symbolic compensation to Baby Suggs because her two daughters were sold, “God take what He would, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gave her freedom when it didn’t mean a thing” (Morrison 23). That is why when Halle suffers from mental break down, she also becomes mentally ill and sees only colors. “It was as though one day she saw red baby blood, another day the pink gravestone chips, and that was the last of it” (Morrison 39). Baby Suggs’s story also proves the fact that slave women were entrapped by a system that could easily deny family bonds and maternal feelings. They had only two variants such as bitter acceptance or open resistance.
Sethe had the rare distinction from other slave women because she was married to one man and gave birth to four children within that union. This very fact accounts for her constant insistence on the maternal rights. Sethe manages to withstand the atrocities to herself and children and, finally, survives. Desecrated by Schoolteacher’s nephews, the woman is determined to see her children free and happy. Sethe calls her children to be her own best thing. Sethe demonstrates great inner strength and does everything she can for her offspring. Her love for the children is limitless. When Paul D calls love “too think,” she says, “Too thick, he said. My love was too thick. What he know about it? I wouldn’t draw breath without my children. (Morrison 203). The fact that Sethe does not know her mother plays a great role in her own relationships with her children because she places importance on nurturing and breastfeeding them. Sethe is emotionally devastated when her milk is stolen. As a little child, she was deprived of the possibility to be nurtured by her own mother. She was fed by Nan whose milk was also given to white babies who got it first. Sometimes, Sethe was left hungry but she understood that she could not call Nan’s milk her own. Thus, in her childhood, she had to fight for milk that is why Sethe understood the importance of breastfeeding for children and mothers who usually were deprived of motherhood.
When Schoolteacher comes to return her and her children, the woman defies him by murdering her little daughter and injuring the other children. By means of this violent act, Sethe asserts her maternal autonomy and desire to save them from slavery that was even worse than death. In challenging slavery, Sethe refuses to abdicate her role as a mother. Therefore, when the woman kills her daughter, the act is regarded as the desire to save her from slavery but not challenge economic or sexual oppression. For Sethe, murder is an act of mother love, “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (Morrison 193). Sethe is an example of a desperate mother who does even terrible things to protect her children from slavery. “Her deciding to try to kill her children stands out in the novel, not as a decision to deprive her children of the minimal conditions for life accorded them by slavery, but rather as an attempt to claim for herself something of which, under slavery, she ought not even to have been able to dream” (Babbit 7). Sethe was simultaneously enslaved by the slaveholder and her own children. She loved them very much and wanted the best for them. Sethe believes that grown children are also children for a mother because a child is a child. The fact that they grow older means nothing for her heart.
When Sethe’s sons escape run away and Beloved is dead, the woman tries to establish a special relationship with her remaining daughter, Denver. Their bonds are quite solid until the ghost appears. Sethe loves Denver with an extraordinary passion. In general, Morrison narrates about mother-daughter relations and emphasizes the importance of a special bond between them and the feeling of connection. Indeed, there is nothing as intimate in the world as the special knowledge about possibilities, obstacles, physical and emotional changes, hopes, and secrets shared by daughters and mothers. Sethe and Denver are not connected by a perfect bond, instead, they have difficulties. Sethe has always had the ambition to provide her children with everything possible; however, this fact destroyed her possibilities to establish the normal relationship with others. Sethe has become the breadwinner for the family and lives in constant fear that her children will be taken away. Therefore, her life is full of anxiety, stress, guilt, and negative recollections. When Beloved appears again, Sethe wants to compensate for her previous inadequate behavior and tries to spend all her time with the ghost. Denver feels lonely and neglected; therefore, her former relationship with the mother is broken. However, Sethe’ overidentification and attachment with Beloved may be interpreted metaphorically. It is narrated that they were very similar and even had the same faces. This fact points at Sethe’s desire to connect with her lost motherline and be a daughter to her mother who had no ability to raise her daughter. Sethe’s mother was deprived of her motherhood, and this fact affected her daughter whose children also suffered from the loss of mother-child relationship.
Motherhood presented great challenges and difficulties to African American women in the period of slavery. Slavery had extremely poignant and devastating effects on motherhood. It destroyed mother-child relationships and turned children into the property of slaveholders. Black women were not able to nurture their children and become attached to them. They did not have the opportunity to perform their maternal roles as it is shown in “Beloved” by Morrison. When the author depicts the terrible act of Sethe killing her little daughter, Morrison truly reveals the complexity of black women motherhood. She narrates the event from the woman’s point of view and does not allow sentimentality. Obviously, it is a brutal act, but the circumstances and reasons for killing are even worse. The narrative makes it clear how motherhood sometimes can be an awful experience for women. Here, the infanticide is not presented as a mother’s right to give and take the life of the child. The enormous Sethe’s mother love is not power but powerlessness. Mother love is a very broad notion that can have various adjectives. In many cases, they are positive and cheerful, but in “Beloved,” mother love has been referred to as ruinous, horrific, distorted and pernicious. While slavery may have succeeded in destroying slave mother-children relationships and motherhood, it did not destroy the maternal love and bonds between them.
Works cited
Alexandre, Sandy. “From the Same Tree: Gender and Iconography in Representations of Violence in “Beloved”. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2011: 915- 940. Print.
Babbit, Susan E. “Identity, Knowledge, and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”: Questions about Understanding Racism.” Hypatia, 1994: 1 - 19. Print.
Daniel, Janice Barnes. “Function or Frill: the Quilt as Storyteller in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought, 2000: 321 – 329. Print.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987. Print.
Rushdy, Ashraf H.A. “Daughters Signifying History: The Example of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” American Literature, 1992: 567 – 597. Print.
Weinbaum, Alys Eve. “Gendering the General Strike: W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Black Reconstruction” and Black Feminism’s “Propaganda of History.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 2013: 437 - 463. Print.
