Category: Beloved

Toni Morrison’s Beloved encompasses the individual traumas and battles of several characters due to their experience and connection to slavery. Sethe, the novel’s protagonist, has a deeply scarred past as a result of slavery, which poses an emotional roadblock with her daughter, Denver. Denver was born during her mother’s journey in escaping slavery. She spends a lot of her time in isolation at 124 Bluestone Road due to the deprivation of her mother’s love and care. Throughout the novel, she goes on to say that she “can’t live here” because no one speaks to them and that “nobody comes by” (Morrison 17). Her serenity is shattered when she learns what Sethe did to her sister and had intended in doing to her as well. Although, Denver is a rather resilient character as she encounters the most positive character development. The appearance of Beloved at 124 heralds the start of Denver’s development. Her obsession with the spirit guides her to achieve a sense of purpose as well as reach a point of enlightenment that drives her to overcome her traumas.

One of Sethe’s traumas is the fact that she murdered her unnamed baby girl in her earlier years of motherhood. The baby’s spirit, referred to as Beloved, haunts the house of 124. The murder is essentially the genesis of Denver’s trauma, as the murder is her first and most devastating memory. It leaves her in a constant state of terror as she cannot help but feel that Sethe might assassinate her as well. Moreover, the lingering spirit of Beloved physically embodies the psychological traumas of Denver and her mother. The nature of Denver’s trauma is so ambiguous it leaves her questioning why she feels this way. Her trauma silences her and it is what makes her aloof. She lacks a sense of self because she only knows her mother’s past and stories. Hence why Denver is determined to keep Beloved in her life when she begins to take a physical form, as she has been living in isolation for a long time. Denver is pleased when Beloved is content since she desires another person to provide her purpose:

Upstairs Beloved was dancing… Denver sat on the bed smiling and providing the music. She had never seen Beloved this happy. She had seen her pouty lips open wide with the pleasure of sugar or some piece of news Denver gave her. She had felt warm satisfaction radiating from Beloved’s skin when she listened to her mother talk about the old days. But gaiety she had never seen (Morrison 87).

Denver and Sethe’s brittle mother-daughter relationship results in Denver lacking a sense of her individuality. Through a Freudian lens, the lack of conversation between the two entails that they skipped the oral stage of psychosocial development in their relationship. It is crucial in a child’s growth because it affects the outcome of their personality and behavior. In this case, Denver is deprived of oral gratification in terms of communication with her mother. This further decipher the factors of Denver’s loneliness. Morrison distinguishes the trauma of Denver by stating that she “took her mother’s milk right along with the blood of her sister,” which reveals the relations between Denver and Beloved; the struggles of being Sethe’s daughter (Morrison 179). She conveys her emotional suffering through retrospective thinking: “I love my mother but I know she killed one of her daughters and tender as she is with me, I’m scared of her because of it” (Morrison 242). The fear of her mother continues to be instilled in her present life, as she is constantly in denial of her mother’s actions. Denver’s denial is justified as it is a common reaction to trauma. Correspondingly, Denver has a scarcity mindset given that as someone who experiences traumatization, she is accustomed to believing that she is not worthy of an abundance of anything. Morrison displays this through the repetition of hunger and food, as well as the use of imagery: “To go back to the original hunger was impossible. Luckily for Denver, looking was food enough to last. But to be looked at in turn was beyond appetite” (Morrison 139). Beloved, on a symbolic level, portrays the unavoidable, horrific history of slavery that has resurfaced to torment the present. Her presence, which becomes more malignant and invasive as the narrative develops, eventually sets the stage for Denver’s emotional evolution. Furthermore, Morrison’s pivot in Beloved’s flagrant behaviors changes Denver. The baby’s animosity for Sethe grows more ferocious: “I fixed it didn’t I? Didn’t I fix her neck? After you choked her neck. I kissed her neck. I didn’t choke it. The circle of iron choked it” (Morrison 119). Denver’s disturbance towards Beloved leads to her awareness of the clashing issues between the two individuals she loves most. This meant no more rationalizing Sethe’s past murders, nor brushing off Beloved’s deceptive and destructive nature.

Because of Beloved, Denver went from doing the absolute most for the spirit to then transforming into an irrepressible and free-spirited young woman. Her personal growth is what makes her character so dynamic. Additionally, she begins to learn how much Beloved debilitates her mother. That very moment is when Denver recognizes that her family’s survival is at her disposal. This gives her the courage to eventually leave the world of 124 and conquer her generational trauma. She has not left her home in over a decade and when she did, it would always be with the company of her mother. Denver leaving is a pivotal moment as she had always been dependent on her mother. It was also a huge accomplishment because she finally lets go of her attachment to Beloved. She returns to her home with a new role. In essence, she switches roles with her mother and becomes the primary caretaker of the family:

Not since Miss Lady Jones’ house have I left 124 by myself? Never. The only other times—two times and all—I was with my mother. Wants to see grandma baby put down next beloved, she’s my sister. The other time Paul D went to and when we came back I thought the house would still be empty from one heat through my sister’s ghost out. But no. When I came back to 124, there she was. Beloved. Waiting for me. Tired from her long journey back. Ready to be taken care of; ready for me to protect her (Morrison 243).

Denver takes on a job in helping the Bodwins which illustrates the independence she is beginning to grasp for the first time in her life (Morrison 299). Consequently, Denver is finally liberated from all the chaos once the community performs an exorcist on the spirit, Beloved.

Thus, Denver reaches her peak in character growth once Beloved leaves 124. This is because her journey in becoming an adult results in her stability as well as her ability to care for her mother. It is a victorious moment for her which leads to her success in conquering the intergenerational trauma she has been experiencing her whole life. Of course, it is not as if she completely erased it, rather she took control of her life. Overcoming traumatization means recognizing what is in the individual’s control and accepting the parts of their life they cannot dominate. For Denver, this means that she acknowledges that her trauma is the card that was dealt and that her future is entirely in her power. She is finally able to realize that it is her responsibility to get herself to heal. What makes her journey so positive and triumphant is that her ability to take control of her own life ends in her helping her mother heal as well. She becomes a symbol of hope for future generations.

The story of Beloved is Morrison’s intrinsic take on the emotional and physical strain brought by slavery. However, the individual struggles all share a common characteristic: finding a sense of ‘self.’ Trauma will inevitably ruin the development of a person, whether it is generational, chronic, complex, or acute. Alas, it leaves people with an identity crisis in a way because when an experience with something or someone results appallingly, it forms a grey area in one’s life. Following a traumatic experience, several people may encounter a trigger in their life that will pull them back into that grey area. That fallback immediately follows a reaction which is a coping mechanism for that trauma. There are numerous ways one may react to their traumas. Relating it to Denver, it can be seen that her trauma spurs from her mother’s trauma. This intergenerational trauma is the reason for her anger and low self-esteem. When her trauma is triggered she resorts to social hostility.

The story as a whole shines a light on the generational trauma found in the black community. Beloved presents the impacts of slavery and how it carries out through the bloodline of every former slave in the history of White America. This sort of strain found within the African-Americans ancestors has such a deep scar on the black community of today, as the history of black people carries so much suffering with violence and discrimination. On the contrary, white Americans carry a history filled with privilege and power, and that is the ‘deep scar’ that they made for themselves. Today, black Americans continue to fight for their rights because white people continue to hold a tremendous amount of privilege. This injustice is why racism can be found in almost every aspect of society. For instance, environmental racism and police brutality. These two examples are the consequences of slavery as a whole. This further supports the notion of the identity crisis found within the individuals in a community that deals with generational trauma. It is the daily struggles and consequences they have to face as a community, along with their the is going through motherhood, while Denver is in her coming-of-age stage in life. However, their personal traumas are outcomes of the greater trauma which is slavery.

Just after the Civil War, a mother grapples with her tortured slave past and the emotional effects of her behavior stemming from it. That is just about all that will be revealed here about the plot of Beloved.

The reason is that the story of Beloved, as directed by Academy Award winner Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon, Paradise) unwinds remarkably hesitantly. Where in most movies, the setting and characters are traditionally set within the first quarter of the film, the narrative parameters of Beloved do not become accessible until the last quarter of the film, making any further discussion of the story detrimental to the enjoyment of the film.

And it is a film to be enjoyed. Not only for the lyrical folds of the story but for the remarkable lens through which the audience sees it. Without having not read the novel, the author cannot comment on how closely the film mirrors the book. However, the film succeeds here in ways one does not typically find in films based on books. Ordinarily, films made from such tawdry comic books written by John Grisham or Tom Clancy tend to be plot-oriented, with scant attention to character. Films based on such books tend, at best, to be neat and tidy, but with little lingering effects. In the case of Beloved, the structure of Morrison’s story takes a marked departure from this trend, in that character is a primary element, with the plot accompanying only as needed. Demme takes this rich source and brings to bear the full weight of his considerable talent to make the film sensuously alive.

Demme’s characteristic use of full-frame direct close-ups is used to remarkable effect. Although violating the classic film rule of “never look into the camera” has a tendency to confuse the narrative of a story, the wrenchingly emotional and psychological themes of Morrison’s story are the ideal foil for such jarring shots. Demme’s traditional use of back-lighting is also present, bringing a magical softness to an otherwise harsh environment. The film is generally well-photographed, including flash-backs filmed through an antique sepia filter, and intercut shots of insects and flora.

However, the jewel in Demme’s crown is his ability to draw unforgettable performances out of his actors. His last two feature films have earned Oscars for Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, and Tom Hanks, and that trend may very well hold true for a certain actor by the name of Oprah Winfrey [‘one should not predict Oscars’ — fortune cookie — ed.]. Although her performance in The Color Purple was utterly magnetic and earned her an Academy Award nomination, Winfrey has taken extremely few film roles in the interim. She is, of course, better known for her highly successful daytime talk show, and the general media presence her success and stature afford. Winfrey’s book club can make a new author a bestseller, and now her clout has made a bestseller into a gorgeous film. As a producer of the film, Winfrey was instrumental in bringing the story of Beloved to the screen. Her love for the surprisingly inaccessible character of Sethe is clearly evident in her on-screen portrayal. Winfrey makes almost no attempt to simplify the decidedly complex psyche of Sethe by playing her as a strong black woman, as a broken black woman, or even as a black woman at all. Winfrey simply is Sethe in this film. Race and slavery, although key aspects of the texture of the environment, are merely apparitions when compared to the main conflicts of Beloved. Winfrey clearly understands this and plays the role in a direct manner.

Winfrey is well-supported by her former costar Danny Glover (The Color Purple, Witness), who regularly delivers a talented performance when he’s not cashing Lethal Weapon checks. Thandie Newton (Interview with the Vampire, Mission: Impossible 2) puts in a seductively visceral turn as the title character of Beloved, bringing a gurgling, otherworldly quality to the role. Against all these dramatic performances then comes that of Kimberly Elise (Set It Off), in the role of Denver. Her Denver is a seething, potent creature, whose tenacity and intelligence peer through a masterful gaze of fury and compassion. She deserves not to be overlooked.

Having said all this, one of the strengths of Beloved is at times its major drawback. The air of uncertainty that weighs over the first three-quarters of the film adds narrative strength, but at the same time forbids emotional access to the characters. The dramatic momentum of this story is thus not evenly maintained across the three-hour length of the film. Winfrey’s dogged adherence to an ambiguous Sethe makes the character emotionally confusing to the audience. Although the story is unusually brilliant, the direction uncommonly lyrical, and the performances lasting, the film is, at times, too slow. Nonetheless, the film is sufficiently mystical and transporting to enjoy on its own terms.

Fear can be described in many ways, whether it is out of supernatural experiences, haunting or fear suffered by characters in a book. The topic of fear is depicted by the authors in both Beloved and Dracula. Fear in each of the texts can be fuelled by the reader’s interpretation or within the author’s objectives to create a perception of fear for the reader to feel.

One aspect of fear in ‘Beloved’, is depicted through the idea that Beloved is a genuine reincarnation of Sethe’s daughter, Beloved. The character comes across as a supernatural entity in the novel, which could be the cause of fear starting to unravel. It can be argued that beloved is Sethe’s daughter as, when Beloved is discovered, she is fragile and sick. However, she is seen to have superior strength, “I seen her pick up the rocker with one arm”. The imagery produced here suggests that Beloved has power beyond her realistic abilities, regardless of the concept that she “acts sick, sounds sick”. The repetition of the word sick allows Morrison to stress the concept of Beloved being unwell and thus she must be weak too. Morrison allows it to grow into an important point to focus upon so that the reader can see the juxtaposition in beloved being “sick” and “weak”, but still being capable of raising a rocking chair with one arm. This proves Beloved to be somewhat supernatural and these themes being established could spark a great sense of fear for the reader with concern to the safety of the other characters, since they are residing with Beloved, who may not necessarily be human. Thus, supports the idea that Beloved, is, in fact, a re-embodiment of Sethe’s late daughter whose main priority is to haunt or create fear to the additional characters. These supernatural themes are like that of those cast by Bram stoker in his text, ‘Dracula’. In this novel, the supernatural themes are conducted through the arrival of Johnathan Harker at Dracula’s castle.

This is where it begins to be clear that Harker is a ‘prisoner’ within Draculas’ castle. Harker’s lack of control and dominance when in the presence of Dracula, installs a sense of panic and fear within the reader. His diary entries being the ‘narrator’ within the novel further allows us to fully understand the anxiety in which Harker is feeling. The fear of the ‘unknown’ is what drives Harker to be curious of Dracula’s ‘inhuman’ actions and attributes, “I have not seen the Count eat or drink” and Harker not seeing “him in the mirror” casts a lasting feeling of uncertainty for the longevity Johnathan’s character. Bram Stoker’s repetitive imagery of the count acting strangely inevitably leads to the anagnorisis of Harker and Van Helsing realising Dracula is a vampire, this insight further instils fear within the characters as they are still are unaware of the counts’ capabilities, being of a supernatural nature.

A lot of fear produced in ‘Beloved’ is through Sethe and Paul D coming to terms with their harrowing reminiscences of abuse, as a result of slavery. The significance of the past is essential to the text, with the majority of the themes of fear being generated through the memories that the characters remember. The tone helps to enforce this through the continuous switch between characters perspectives, flashbacks of the past provide different perspectives of fear within each character, and how they act upon these emotions. Morrison often makes it clear that the characters have not come to terms with their traumatic pasts, as this is shown by the memories being eluded to but never stated or spoken about, much like in Dracula, in which again, issues are eluded to but never specifically deal with, one occasion being the arrival of Johnathon to the castle. He endures with what appears to be a serious case of amnesia, as he alleges, “if I had been fully awake, I must have noticed the approach to such a remarkable place”. Not only is Jonathan sceptical of whether he noticed his approach or not, but he implies that he is uncertain of whether this was a result of a hallucination or actual memory loss. Harker’s disregard for the seriousness of this event could be a result of the fear installed with the knowledge of knowing the count’s capabilities, however, the lack of acknowledgement is what ultimately leads them to undermine Dracula’s supernatural power by the end of the novel.

The idea of sin is widely present in both novels, the characters’ awareness of the sins committed in the past could be a powerful force for why they are so fearful in the present day. As fear is made a clear theme for Sethe’s past, it can be argued that the physical embodiment of Beloved ‘haunts’ Sethe in the present. The victim of her infanticide leads to the arrival of her deceased child later in her life. Despite the tragic death of her children, it was a sacrifice of her maternal instincts, she couldn’t let her children endure the torture and suffering she was faced with at sweet home. To Sethe, the fear of watching her children become slaves was equal, if not more painful than to murder them, this highlights the daily torment the “60 million and more” endured. Similarly, in ‘Dracula’, the character of Lucy Westenra commits acts of murder against young children whilst under the supernatural power of the count. Even though Lucy is unaware of the acts she’s committing, the characters observing her sinful acts present a sense of fear as they are aware of the amount of dominating power Dracula could potentially have over them. Witnessing a once innocent individual, such as Lucy, commit acts “unclean and full of hell-fire”, obliterates any lasting hope they had for salvaging her soul from eternal damnation. Furthermore, it can be argued that Lucy was a sacrifice to Dracula as she conveyed the sexual desires of a ‘New Woman’ and was killed as punishment for the betrayal of the Victorian ideal. The New Woman in the Victorian era would not be dependent on men for survival, not only does this contradict Lucy’s character at the start of the novel where its seen she seeks the approval of men, evident of ”three proposals in one day”, but is extremely ironic as by the end she’s dependant on Dracula’s vampiric power to remain surviving. Readers of the Victorian era would despise Lucy for her in conformity to women’s societal standards, however, as of the modern era, women are no longer seen as objects of men, therefore Lucy would be portrayed as a revolutionary female of the 21st century

To conclude, the authors of both novels use fear to create a sense of identity, while Stokers characters move voluntarily towards authority as an outlet for repressed fear, Morrison presents characters that suppress their past as a result of induced anxiety. Both authors see fear as highly representative, both psychologically, socially and morally, which is reflected in the damage triggered by emotions.

Walt Whitman’s quote, within the title of this essay, is in essence a look into the self and how the self is multidimensional. The two novels that I have been studying and will be exploring throughout this essay – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ – also explore the concept of the multitudinal self (although not influenced by Whitman’s work). Throughout this essay, the aim is to discover how exactly Woolf and Morrison present the ‘multiple selves’ within their respective novels.

To begin, I will look at Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Dalloway unwinds on a single day in 1923 wherein, while preparing for a party, protagonist Clarissa reminisces on her past as a teenager and beyond. Thus, the entire premise of the novel promotes the idea of a ‘multiple self’ – the present self but yet the past self that is being reflected upon; Beloved, with a similar premise, explores the multitudinal self in the same way.

One of the most significant points within Mrs Dalloway where Clarissa’s fragmented self is explored comes early in the novel; specifically, Clarissa reminiscing of the kiss she shared with Sally Seton. This kiss is regarded as a near-religious experience for Clarissa; she states, ‘[she] felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up and told to keep it, not to look at it’ (Woolf, 1992 p.38); thus presenting her fragmented self. The kiss with Sally is something secret, something illicit; the impression is given that this kiss is not for this ‘present’ Clarissa to explore at that moment but for a different Clarissa. The kiss, for Clarissa, symbolizes possibility – a new exciting possibility for her to grasp at.

However, it is important to note that Peter Walsh is described in much the same way. Peter is condescending as he interrupts the ‘moment’ between Sally and Clarissa. Clarissa reacts to this interruption with great frustration; however, it can be argued that this reaction comes not because she wants to continue kissing Sally, per se – it is because he has interrupted their moment and thus taken that sense of exciting possibility away from Clarissa. Woolf proves this by having Clarissa’s perspective shift away from Sally’s explosive kiss to Peter Walsh.

Peter and Clarissa’s relationship is presented in a much less exciting way than that of Sally and Clarissa but still is implied to be regarded as a possibility to her – the repeated use of interrogatives, ‘What would he think when she came back? That she had grown older, would he say that or would she see him thinking when he came back, that she had grown older?’ (Woolf, 1992 p.39) show this. Woolf within this extract then shifts perspectives for a final time to show Clarissa reflecting on herself both literally and figuratively; literally, in that she regards ‘her self’, ‘her delicate pink face’, ‘her dart-like features’ (Woolf, 1992, p.40) in the mirror. How Woolf lists Clarissa’s features gives the impression of something mechanical – as if the fragmented Clarissa is bringing herself together one by one as one whole so she can host her impending party. Yet Clarissa reflects on herself figuratively; she sees herself not as whole but as a series of fragmented possibilities – perhaps with Sally, perhaps with Peter – continually reflecting on the possibilities of the past and the ‘selves’ she has left behind to become the self that she is in this moment. Deborah Guth reveals another possibility; that Clarissa’s selves are duplications of her artificial self which she reveals to those at the party; that we do not see the ‘real’ Clarissa throughout the narrative but continue to see the artificial and idealised version. This presents another artificial self – the ‘real’ self versus the artificial self. Guth’s point is emphasized during the mirror scene here; the mechanical nature in which Clarissa recalls herself is Clarissa’s method of ‘putting on a front’ rather than exposing her fragmented self.

Interestingly, past drafts of Dalloway only serve to emphasise Clarissa’s fractured self-identity further; initially for instance it was Clarissa who passed on at the end of the novel rather than Septimus. Of course, this idea has changed in the final version of the novel but remnants of that initial draft are shown countless times through the parallelism of Clarissa and Septimus; such as the two reminiscing about their lost possibilities – Clarissa with Peter, Septimus with Isabel Pole – and their homoerotic tendencies. Essentially, there is yet another set of ‘selves’ that haunt the novel in some way. Arguably, this also means that both Clarissa and Septimus can never be their whole selves as they will continue to be interlinked with one another. Thus, unless something can break their parallelism, a part of them is ‘lost’.

This concept of interlinked characters ‘haunting’ a novel is also, fittingly, explored throughout Beloved. The black slave protagonists throughout the novel are haunted both literally (by the ghostly character of Beloved) and metaphorically – through the ghosts of their past that they are unable to escape. The linkage between characters that are explored in Dalloway, above, is also explored in ‘Beloved’ between Sethe and Beloved herself. When Sethe first sees Beloved she is overcome by an uncontrollable urge to urinate. On the one hand, it is as though Sethe regresses to childhood – yet on the other, this uncontrollable urge symbolizes the waters of the womb – and the waters subsequently breaking. ‘But there was no stopping water breaking from a breaking womb.’ (Morrison 2007 pp.61)

As Sethe loses control just outside the outhouse, Beloved is said to be ‘drinking cup after cup of water’ (Morrison 2007 pp.61) thus placing her as the one responsible for Sethe’s urge and emphasizing that Sethe and Beloved are the same – two fractured souls that become united once more upon meeting. This is further backed up by Sethe’s ‘regression’ wherein she recalls her mother and unlocks that sensation of need once more. In this case, readers see Sethe both as a mother (to Beloved) and as a daughter, where Beloved takes on the figure of Sethe’s mother. It reinvigorates Sethe’s ‘ghosts’; not only the memory of her mother that she has locked away for so long but a reminder of her need to be something other than a ‘slave’; in this instance, it is to be a mother and to be mothered. This subsequently allows for the filial maternal role to be fulfilled and emphasizes Morrison representing the self both as fragmented yet united.

“The narrative into which life seems to cast itself surfaces most forcefully in certain kinds of psychoanalysis.” suggests Toni Morrison (1992) within her collection of essays, ‘Playing in the Dark’. This remark from Morrison links ‘Beloved’ to the subject of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, specifically, is concerned with telling a story of the self, the ‘broken and fragmented’ self that appears as a result of trauma. Thus, the concept of psychoanalysis embodies ‘Beloved’ (and the subject of the self) on the whole. According to Morrison (1994;p.257) ‘Beloved’ explores “national amnesia […] about something that the characters don’t want to remember, I don’t want to remember, black people don’t want to remember, white people won’t want to remember.” – a dramatized representation of the ghosts that the marginalized characters hold.

But, most importantly, the titular protagonist of the novel is what truly embodies the fractured self; Beloved herself. Beloved is a ghostly figure who for many of the characters embodies a different thing. Her name, ‘Beloved’ can be taken literally; she is the beloved relation lost to history. She is also, as we have discussed, both Sethe’s daughter and her filial mother. For Denver, Beloved is the ghost of all she has lost (such as her siblings or grandmother) hence her strong feelings toward her – her sheer desperation for Beloved not to leave her in the cold house; ‘Don’t, don’t go’; ‘She wouldn’t put up with another leaving.’ (Morrison, 2007 pp.145-146) Denver feels that Beloved embodies her lost loved ones but by doing so Beloved also embodies some of Denver, as Denver too holds the memories of her loved ones. That is why, within this same extract, Denver ‘…is crying because she has no self’ – without Beloved, she relives the pain of losing her loved ones again but this time loses herself, too. From the moment Beloved arrives, Denver is fractured and even when Beloved is gone she cannot remain whole as she once was.

Most evidently however ‘Beloved’ embodies slavery – for the black slaves of the novel they are unable to partake in the aforementioned national amnesia as Beloved represents what they are trying to forget. Her rocking while with Denver in the cold house is reminiscent of the rocking of the Middle Passage ships wherein slaves were packed in tight. This is also reminiscent of the aforementioned psychoanalysis. Beloved is also repeatedly described as smiling; this is also symbolic of ‘the bit’, a punishment that was suffered by many black slaves forcing them to smile while simultaneously silencing them.

The concept of slavery on the whole presents the self as both one and as multiple simultaneously. There is the ‘slave self’ – the ghostly memories of slavery pre-abolition which haunt the characters of ‘Beloved’ through the ghostly figure herself – and there is the post-slavery self, now free from the shackles of slavery and able to restart and to re-memorise the past. However, just as the past of Septimus Smith haunts him in Woolf’s Dalloway, the characters within Beloved belong in the same predicament. Essentially, it can be said that Beloved shows the story of the multiple selves — both the past self which is continually reflected upon and cannot be forgotten, and the present self, attempting to heal from the traumatic events of slavery but always being brought back to the past in some way. Yet paradoxically slavery also blocks the ‘multitude selves’ from emerging. The act of being a slave encompasses your entire identity – you are nothing more, nothing less – but a slave. Any children born out of slavery are simply placed in the slave line; there is no chance for a slave to mother her children for, at the moment of birth, slavery snatches this away.

Thus in a sense, Sethe’s harrowing act of infanticide is a reclaiming of sorts. She has to kill her child because killing her child means the child will not be subjected to slavery as she is; it is ultimately an act of maternal love rather than hatred. Moreover, it is symbolic of Sethe having the ability to reclaim her subjectivity and become something more than a slave — to become a mother, even if it is only for a matter of moments. This scene, then, embraces the idea of the multitudinous self as Sethe becomes both slave and mother. The killing of her child does not mean however that Sethe reverts to simply being ‘oneself’ once her child has passed but rather cements her identity as a multitudinous self forevermore both a slave and a mother. This ‘reclaiming’ is also seen within Dalloway; Septimus Smith is tangled up in war-induced PTSD to the point that it swamps his identity, he cannot see the world for its beauty but only hallucinates – for instance toward the end of the sky-writing scene where he notes, ‘the elm trees, rising and falling’. (Woolf, 1992 pp. 22-24)

Thus, Septimus’ suicide is not only him escaping the horror of his PTSD, it is him cleansing himself of the PTSD that stole his sense of self. In death, Septimus becomes more than a PTSD-ridden soldier – he becomes a person again, just as Sethe reclaims her position as a mother despite harming her child. Interestingly, Septimus’ death also allows for Clarissa’s reclaiming — alluding to the parallelism aforementioned in this essay. This is why Clarissa can reconcile herself with the idea of her future and identify with the old woman she sees out of the window.

On the whole, it is evident that both novels explore the multiple selves to a great extent and with different views; Dalloway presents both the danger of the fractured soul and the possibilities it yields. Admittedly it is clear that the concept is explored to its full potential within ‘Beloved’ – a novel which could be said to be not a novel that talks of slavery, but a novel that talks of regaining and recomposing the fractured soul that slavery has left behind. Yet it is implied the ghost of Beloved still haunts the house of 124; emphasizing that the ghostly trail of slavery and all that Beloved embodies cannot be forgotten.

Mrs. Dalloway, too, implies a recomposing of the fractured self and ends with Clarissa as a whole as she can reconcile with herself and her future – in this case, the multiple selves are regarded as an exciting possibility. Septimus’ passing means he has reclaimed his fractured identity and, too, is whole. Yet there is no denying that both novels express that trauma, be it PTSD or slavery, will alter the self to become multiple. It is only in death that the soul has unity; in life, the soul will be (and will always be) multiple no matter what is done to prevent or conceal it.

At the beginning of the novel, Toni Morrison establishes many modes to create a world. The narrator allows an interplay of voices at the beginning of the novel. Fragments of the past reveal Sethe and Paul who met after eighteen years. Then, Baby Suggs and Denver join the voices. The voices are filled with pain and suffering that we can’t visualize today. Mainly, the story takes place in two different regions: a farm where called Sweet Home in Kentucky and 124 Bluestone Road on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio. In The Sweet Home, Morrison portrays rural slave life and in 124 Bluestone Road, she highlights the painful results of post-Civil War freedom.

Stylistically, the narrator interlinked the stories of Paul and Sethe into a paradigm of what it means to be a slave in the South part of America, especially for women. However, Morrison makes history integral to her novel. Her narration is based on a ground beat of historical detail. The details in the novel intensify the horror. For example; Baby Suggs’ eight children had six fathers and when slave women were sold, children were unvarnished suddenly. After the war, the southern part of the United States was filled with segregation, chaos, black human blood, and lynching. In other words, the South was “infected by the Klan”. Before the war hangings were common, and slaves were branded. For example; Sethe’s mother has a cross and circle burnt into her skin. Also, an iron bit was thrust into the mouth for days as punishment. For the black people, what happened before slaves got to America was just a memory. They did not remember their African past.

The narrator creates a way to remember to past in the novel but the present has to be made alive and exciting. Therefore, the telling of the narrator doesn’t begin from a point that is fixed in time. So, it can be claimed that the narrator doesn’t use overused symbolism or too thin, too limited a point of view. Also, words are repeated, and phrases and images are used repeatedly to create and generate different meanings. So, it can be observable that the words repeated are simple but powerful. They are repeated to warn slaves not to make anything and to imply they have no future. Interlinked words, parts, and sections warn slaves about the lack of unitary self. In addition, the word “smile-smiling” seems like a simple word in the novel but it’s not. In the novel, the word “smile” resounds when Beloved emerges from the water smiling mysteriously to Denver. It gets more meaningful when Sethe connects the smile with her mother’s smile, and she realizes that her mother “had smiled when she did not smile” (Beloved, p. 203), and realizes further that it was the iron bit clamped on the tongue which had produced that smile. Also, during the storytelling of Paul D. to Sethe, his hatred focused on Mister, “the smiling boss of roosters” (Beloved, p. 109). In the third part of the novel, the word forms get loud and clear. Beloved smiles when she explodes out of existence and the memory of Sethe is “the little shadow of a smile”(Beloved, p 241). As seen, to smile means to know the horror of what it means to be a slave. It’s a statement of endurance.

In addition to those things, the narrator makes use of musical phrases together with chordal accompaniments to produce dissonance, assonance, and consonance. “Wear her out” (Beloved pp. 15) relates to Denver, who is always tired. Then, the phrase is applied to Stamp Paid because he feels bone tired, and toward the end; only then does he understand the marrow boredom that made Baby Suggs give up the struggle and get into bed to die. “Lay it all down” (Beloved pp. 182), she advises Sethe and Denver. She implies that it’s useless to fight, one cannot defend oneself. The phrase becomes a refrain and actually, it’s a conceding of the undefeatable ways of racism and injustice.

Images and metaphors of foods make stronger to this suffering stronger. “The stone had eaten the sun’s rays” (Beloved, p. 44). It’s a trick of style to emphasize the hunger of the slaves who were suffering. All food was decided and provided by masters and hunger was another aspect of slave life. For example; sugar was never provided and that’s why Sethe and Denver crave sweet things. The only thing that a slave woman provided her babies was her milk. That’s why she felt angry when the two white boys stole her milk. She was ready to eat everything that would stop her babies from starving, which was one reason she drove from Kentucky to Ohio. Milk was more than just food. Denver was sucking on a bloody nipple and took in Sethe’s milk with her sister’s blood. Also, the baby sister never gets enough of Sethe’s milk and when she returns in Beloved form, she has a hungry face. The narrator says that Sethe “was licked, tasted eaten by Beloved’s eyes” (Beloved, p. 60). Beloved was hungry to hear Sethe talk and Sethe fed her with stories of the past which always hurt her to tell. In the novel, the narrator uses references, metaphors, and images of food and hunger. So, Morrison aims to reveal of the importance of food, sweet things, and understanding of the past to the readers. Furthermore, Morrison undermines the heaviness of situations by turning word shapes into word sounds. “ …No. No. Nonono” (Beloved, pp. 166); those drumbeats reveal Sethe’s fears of threats in a white world. Word sounds are like rhythmic steps of a dance: “A little two-step, two steps, make a new step, slide, slide and strut on down (Beloved pp. 77). Morrison implies that the listeners hear the repeated sounds of slaves making plans to escape. One of the things that takes the attention of Morrison’s style is a strange adjective that implies a black woman never has a “wedding” with a ceremony but only a coupling. She refers to Sethe’s “bedding” dress made up of pieces Sethe put together. Two pillowcases, a dresser scarf, an old sash, mosquito netting. The word “bedding” actually implies black women’s marriage and it demonstrates how black women are excluded from womanhood. Also, Toni Morrison has a narrator who uses a technique that gathers the subjects around her central character Sethe. All the stories of Sethe, Paul D, Baby Suggs, Stump Paid, Denver, and Beloved have their chronologies fractured and those pieces turn into stories in one form. They are like a puzzle and they cannot be separated. Their love for each other makes their story. In the story, Baby Suggs represents the stories of the old generation and Denver represents the future generation. The narrator begins with Sethe. Sethe has accepted her situation. She is isolated from the Bluestone community and she’s under the influence of her horrific past. She needs healing. In this regard, Paul D. and Beloved enter her life, and the process of healing begins. She understands the importance of love and community. On the other hand, the birth of Denver and the killing of her third child make harder her life. In the novel, the parts that her escaping from slavery and Denver’s birth don’t release with full meanings. Morrison involves delay, repetition, and limited information in her novel. Sethe mentions “that girl looking for velvet” (Beloved. p 11) to Paul D. Later, her name is revealed as Amy. It’s a clue to Morrison’s stylistic narration. In Old French, the name Amy means Beloved. Morrison gives hints through the words of Amy; “anything dead coming back to life hurts” (Beloved pp. 38) and “Nothing can heal without pain” (Beloved pp.78). So story is based on dialogue and narration. Those dialogues make a sensation on readers and readers can observe implications from African beliefs and Christian sources through those narrations. Additionally, in the novel, hubris can be noticed. Baby Suggs knew that she had been guilty on the day of the celebration. It explains why she could smell the disapproval of the community the next day. Sethe is also guilty of arrogantly isolating herself and not going to the community for help even after the Baby Suggs. After the funeral, there was also no union. Sethe didn’t eat their food and they would not eat what she provided. Also, listeners can tell that the end is near in the novel through tantalizing pauses, breaks in narrative switches, and cross-telling.

Beloved, classified as a historical fiction and a gothic horror story demonstrates Toni Morrison’s skill in penetrating the unconstrained unapologetic psyches of numerous characters who shoulder the horrific burden of slavery sins. Morrison chooses to marvel that slaves were brutalized beyond endurance. Slavery is a condition in which one human being is owned by the other and is considered as a property of his own by law who was deprived of most of the rights which ordinary people have. In Morrison’s Beloved, it has been reflected that the morality of the individuals at the time of slavery is complex. Slaves were put in a unique de-humanized state which allowed them to express some, but not all human instincts.

An effect of dehumanizing slaves was that a freed slave was never truly free, psychological and societal effects of being a slave continue to plague their lives. Sethe is evidence that the expression of feelings by anyone affected by slavery became extremely ‘risky, thought Paul D., very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything dangerous, especially if was her children she had settled on to love. Expression of emotions was a weakness of the slaves. The novel gives a realistic picture of slavery. Marriage and the slave family were seldom recognized by the slaveholders. When the slaves married, they were always threatened with separation according to the economic needs of the slaveholders. They did not receive any medical care and their diet was usually inadequate for their health. Slave women were frequently not allowed the opportunity to develop attachments with their children due to separation and working for excessively long hours. The use of slave women for sex was a common practice. Children born out of these unions were also thrown into slavery. Slavery had limited Baby Suggs’ self-conception by shattering her family and denying her the opportunity who she wanted to be, i.e., a good wife and mother. Baby Suggs is not only the main character to hint that slavery was an experience that could never be known exactly for what it truly was. Morrison seems to be risking the loss of her main characters to a past that can never be seen nor controlled. She uses Sethe to depict the border between slavery and freedom and unexpectedly does not allow Sethe to grow and escape that painful border in the novel. Through fragmented ‘memories’, we see that Sethe was frequently treated as an animal during her time as a slave. Sethe loses her sense of self, and the experiences continue to haunt her through the novel, using flashbacks most of which are a result of Beloved’s presence. Slavery’s destruction of identity is present throughout the novel, and Paul D. is another example of how slavery destroys any sense of self.

Slavery has a huge psychological impact. Most slaves repressed the memories of their past experiences of slavery in an attempt to forget the past. This repression and dissociation from the past causes a fragmentation of the self and a loss of true identity. Sethe, Paul D., and Denver, all experience this loss of self. As a result of suffering, the ‘self’ becomes subject to a violent practice of making and unmaking, once acknowledged by the audience becomes real. Beloved is a novel that reflects sentimentality and sensationalistic depiction of the horrors of slavery, including its characterization of the slave trade as a Holocaust-like genocide. Morrison does this through her underlying symbolic references to the destructiveness of slavery and the connections between the characters themselves.

Tyler Chan

Mr. Paluch

ENG3UP1

10 January 2018

Beloved: Toni Morrison’s Use of the Elements of Fiction

Beloved, by Toni Morrison, is a tale about slavery. The reader is ruthlessly thrown into an alien environment which, is a shared experience with the book’s characters. Morrison’s use of symbolism and figurative language exposes the cruel aspects of the human condition, making the novel one of the most powerfully convincing depictions of slavery. The central character Sethe was raised motherless in a system of slavery. The plantation she worked on, Sweet Home, was owned by a cruel man called the “School Teacher”. Having endured a childhood of violence and abuse, Sethe and her children escaped to Cincinnati to house 124, and to her mother-in-law, via the Ohio River. When she reached Cincinnati, Sethe was ostracized by her community for being too loving and was criticized for having love that was too “thick”. After experiencing a few days of relative peace, the School Teacher, along with a group of slave catchers, returned to 124 to capture Sethe and her children. When Sethe was faced with the trauma of having to return to slavery at Sweet Home, she attempted to kill her children. She succeeded in killing her baby daughter, Beloved, by cutting her throat with a hacksaw. While taking another human’s life is never justifiable, Toni Morrison uses the elements of fiction to show that Sethe’s killing of Beloved was, instead, understandable considering her past. She also uses these elements to analyze the dehumanization that slaves were subjected to when working in an institutionalized slave system.

Growing up in the latter half of the 19th century, Sethe was born into a system of slavery. While most people associate slavery with shackles, chains, and back-breaking work, the psychological and emotional bondage is never truly understood. Morrison uses multiple points of view to shed light on one of the most significant and prevalent topics in the novel, dehumanization. After Beloved’s death, Sethe partook in a sexual act with the engraver to pay for Beloved’s tombstone. “She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new” (Page 5). The key aspect of this graphic scene is the nature to which the son and engraver contribute to the dehumanization of Sethe. By describing the son as, “looking on”, Morrison creates a sense of spectatorship, almost as if Sethe was an interesting object to gaze upon. The engraver is also described with the words “anger” and “appetite”. This image evokes an animalistic feeling, indicating an almost primal instinctual need for satisfaction. Furthermore, the word “rutting” in this context is defined as sexual acts of farm animals, mainly deer. The repetition of this word shows that the engraver and his son see Sethe as non-human and instead as an animal of little importance. The notion of dehumanization, through Paul D’s point of view, is consistently brought up throughout the text. The violence and abuse that Paul D was subject to at Sweet Home, reduced his personhood to animality. “Mister, he looked so … free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son a bitch couldn’t even get out of the shell by himself but he was still king and I was… Mister was allowed to be and stay what he was. But I wasn’t allowed to be and stay what I was” (Page 86). When Paul D describes Mister, a rooster, as superior to him, the emotional trauma of slavery is evident. By not being able to say what he wants and to be what he is, Paul D’s abilities that define him as human are taken away. He reflects on how Mister, an animal who can’t even hatch on its own, is stronger than him, better. The dehumanizing qualities of slavery have degraded him so low that he considers the rooster as “king”. Furthermore, Sethe’s recollection of slaves being forced to wear bits, devices commonly used on farm animals, emphasizes these qualities. “She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye” (page 84). Morrison’s use of diction with the words “yanked back” and “wildness” evokes the image of taming wild animals. The way slaves were treated can be compared to taming a horse. This practice, called “breaking”, involves using a bit to remove the independence and identity of the horse to serve their master. This method was also used on the slaves as a means of control. Morrison uses plot, diction, and point of view to show the different perspectives on which the characters in Beloved experienced slavery. With an emphasis on dehumanization, Morrison repeatedly used ‘animalistic’ type language to describe scenes of abuse and effectively shed light on the horrors of institutionalized slavery.

Having experienced a lifetime of abuse, Sethe was permanently scarred emotionally and physically. She was born motherless, any close friend, family, or relative she knew was either hanged, bought, or sold out as property. The horrifying atrocities of slavery and her experience with it led Sethe to kill her daughter, Beloved, to save her. This choice that Sethe made is the axis around which the novel revolves, and the question arises whether Sethe acted out of true love or selfishness. As seen through the plot, Morrison emphasizes Sethe’s past to show why Sethe’s killing of Beloved was understandable. While at Sweet Home, Sethe overheard the school teacher instructing his nephews on how to treat her. They were told to divide, meaning physically and symbolically, on paper by listing Sethe’s human characteristics on one side, and her “animalistic” characteristics on the other. “And no one, nobody on this earth, would list her daughter’s characteristics on the animal side of the paper. No. Oh no. Maybe Baby Suggs could worry about it, live with the likelihood of it; Sethe had refused – and refused still” (Pg. 296). Having overheard the School Teacher’s conversation, the idea of resisting and escaping the slave system was permanently cemented into Sethe’s mind and was one of the reasons why she killed Beloved – to keep her human. Due to slavery, Sethe never got the chance to be a daughter; she was nursed by a stranger. However, when she became a mother, her mother’s love was incomprehensible to everyone else around her. “Why I did it. How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her” (Pg. 236). In Sethe’s mind, Beloved and the rest of her children are the only good and pure part of who she is and therefore must be protected from the cruelty and “dirtiness” of slavery that Sethe grew up to. In this respect, Sethe acts out of love, but her selfishness lies in her refusal to accept personal responsibility for Beloved’s killing. The motivation behind the murder is dichotomous, she displays her strong mother-love by mercifully sparing her daughter from a lifetime of slavery, however, she refuses to acknowledge that her act of mercy was murder.

The act of killing her child is at first not easy to understand and to be justified; however, the circumstances in which Sethe had to live and the brutality that she had endured as a slave on Sweet Home were what drove her to commit infanticide which is perhaps one of the worst things a mother can do to her child. Sethe’s fear of slavery and its effect was so terrible that she did not want her children, under any circumstances, to experience the same difficulties.

In Beloved, Morrison intends to show the reader what happened to individuals in an institutionalized slave system, specifically, the dehumanization they were subject to. She used the elements of fiction to show that Sethe killed Beloved due to her strong mother’s love and her past as a slave, illustrating that the killing was understandable. Narrating the story from multiple points of view, Morrison focuses on the dehumanizing effect of slavery by emphasizing the sufferings of slaves. The novel shows what happened to Sethe and her family on the Sweet Home plantation. It was seen that Sethe was abused and raped. After she tried to escape from the plantation, she killed Beloved to save her because of the trauma she faced as a slave. After killing her baby, Sethe continued to suffer. She felt regret and pain and had to live an isolated life for a long time in the black community. Her brutal past fostered a new type of love that was incomprehensible to those around her. At the end of the novel Sethe became mentally and spiritually exhausted and had no energy left to live a meaningful life.

The characters in Toni Morrison’s novel undergo various changes throughout the novel. Each change is directly linked to the love and need to possess something, usually Beloved, in the novel. The protagonist of the novel, Sethe, starts as a proud and independent woman who has escaped slavery and is now living in a sort of freedom with her youngest child. As a result of slavery, Sethe barely knew her mother, as a result, Sethe’s motherly instinct became her most prominent characteristic.

Unwilling to surrender her children to the physical, emotional, and sexual trauma she endured as a slave at Sweet Home, she attempts to murder them in an act of motherly love and protection. She manages to succeed in killing her daughter and this action later causes the later events of the novel to unfold. When Beloved returns, the readers can see the change in Sethe’s character. No longer a proud and independent woman but a woman who will give up everything to possess the daughter she lost years ago. Her intense desire to possess her daughter and to keep her close leaves Sethe incomplete and almost completely drained after the exorcism takes Beloved away.

Denver, the youngest child in the family, is the most dynamic character. At the beginning of the novel, the readers can see that Denver is smart, sensitive, and introspective but is emotionally stunted due to the years of isolation and caring for her mother. Beloved’s return sparks a change in her. Denver wants to possess her sister who once lived in the house but disappeared when Paul D arrived. Her sister’s increasing malevolence and her parasitic relationship with their mother forces Denver to overcome her fear of the world and she decides to seek help from the community. Thanks to Beloved, Denver has freed herself from not only her sister but from the fear that kept her caged in 124 for her entire life.

The final character is Beloved herself. It can be argued by many that Beloved represents the inescapable, horrible past of slavery returned to haunt the present. Her presence, which grows increasingly malevolent and parasitic as the novel progresses, ultimately catalyzes Sethe’s and Denver’s respective processes of emotional growth. Beloved wants to possess her mother since she never had a mother. This need to possess Sethe leads to feelings of anger and jealousy towards Paul D, who she feels has replaced her.

Introduction

The purpose of this thesis is to examine what the Harlem Renaissance is and the reflections of the Harlem Renaissance in Toni Morrison’s novels: Beloved and The Bluest Eye. This thesis will explore racism, slavery, and black feminism, and how these themes are portrayed in these two books. These investigations will elucidate the traumas of black people due to their skin color and how they have struggled against white oppression. Toni Morrison crafted compelling stories through the sufferings and experiences of African-American people because of racism and slavery. As an African-American novelist, she hailed from a poor southern migrant family, and her grandparents had firsthand experiences with slavery. Toni Morrison’s parents had to move to different cities to escape racial violence. Her family sought to provide their children with a strong education about Black folk culture, values, and beliefs because they believed it was the only way to challenge racism for Blacks. Toni Morrison deeply loved the black community she lived in and learned a great deal from observing it. Later, she divorced her husband while pregnant, implying that her marriage was one of the unhappy periods of her life. She continued her life independently and criticized other women who obeyed their husbands. Toni Morrison believed that women should challenge their husbands and be strong. Morrison gained significant recognition for her study of American racism and its consequences on Blacks, especially Black women, and she endeavored to be a voice for Black women in literature. Her novel Beloved was based on the story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who killed her children because of slavery.

Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and intellectual movement that took place in Harlem, New York, after World War I and lasted until around 1935 during the Great Depression. The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, was considered to be a golden age in African-American art. After the American Civil War, African-American people continued to live under harsh conditions, seen as an inferior class because white people enslaved them. White people held authority in society, and African Americans endured harassment, torment, and lynching. Sometimes struggles emerged between these two races, but unsurprisingly, white people were the winners, forcing blacks to relocate to other areas. From 1910 to 1920, more than six million African Americans migrated from the rural South to the cities of the North in what was called the Great Migration. During this period, Harlem became the capital of cultural activity for African-Americans, teeming with publishing houses, nightclubs, and theatres thanks to black people. They had many terrible experiences because of whites and felt disconnected from their roots, which can be seen as a reason for the cultural explosion; thus, their negative experiences shaped their personalities. There was a relationship between their music, writings, artworks, and their individual experiences and personalities.

Racism

Binary oppositions such as weak-powerful and black-white are created by humans who desire to be on the powerful side. Racism, where some races consider themselves superior to others, categorizes Black people as an inferior class because of their skin color, as their black skin does not meet white standards of beauty. All the traumas experienced by Black people result from being Black. People are marginalized, and this marginalization is the outcome of racism. Throughout history, many wars have been based on racial discrimination, with people killing and abusing each other due to these obsessive thoughts.

Slavery

Slavery is viewed as an outcome of racism. It is a system where individuals can own slaves and force them to obey their owners. Slaves work under harsh conditions without receiving fair wages. Slavery is based on a relationship of dominance and power, beginning with the arrival of Africans in America, where they were viewed as laborers. The American economy was transformed thanks to African labor. African people had no rights; they were captured, sold by slave owners, and forced to work without the ability to refuse. Many slaves faced physical and mental health problems due to their conditions, and even children were sold into slavery to survive in extreme conditions.

Black Feminism

Black feminism examines female issues and how they are characterized, focusing on spiritualism, folk traditions, mother-daughter relationships, and African-American history and culture. Black women faced numerous oppressions and created a theory to show gender oppression. They experienced double marginalization, enduring both racial and sexual mistreatment. In America, being Black and a woman meant being nothing, with these women used as sex objects during slavery, experiencing rape, torture, physical and psychological abuse, and racism. Some writers, like Toni Morrison, sought to be the voice of Black women and address their oppressions through literature. Morrison attempted to exhibit the ascribed roles of women and their effects on Black women in America.

In The Bluest Eye, black women are portrayed as the influence they suffer from white society in their search for their own identity. These black women are excluded from a universe of love and tenderness, where the figure of a man is a key element in their entrapment in madness, silence, sexual oppression, and hopelessness.

Despite The Bluest Eye focusing on black women and their families, white women play a strong and surprising role in the novel. Their societal status influences the behavior of black women, as they represent the ruling class and are taken as models.

The novel also highlights how black women define strength, beauty, and youth based on standards learned from films, similar to how Pecola, the main character, adopts these standards. This interaction of black women with mass culture creates a form of colonization. Their beauty standards, if any, are inadequate when compared to those of the ruling class, especially concerning the loss of identity, which represents submission and lack of power. Black women start to identify with and aspire to be like those women who hold power and beauty. They seek acceptance and love, like those movie stars. Ironically, the white movie star women are also exploited and reduced to objects, but the black women in the novel do not perceive this reduction. Mrs Breedlove, for example, used to go to the movies even when pregnant, where she was introduced to the idea of romantic love and physical beauty, destructive ideas rooted in envy and insecurity.

Physical beauty becomes the cause of the dark episodes involving Pecola, whose life becomes an endless battle between her real appearance and her desire to have blue eyes, the ultimate symbols of hegemonic white beauty. While Pecola, a child, represents the ultimate symbol of black appearance, rejected by white society, the novel constantly reminds the reader of how ugly she is, reinforcing her desire to be beautiful, loved, and accepted. Even her mother, right after her birth, frames her as ugly, setting her on a path from which she will never recover.

When Mrs Breedlove goes to the movies, she escapes from her self and perhaps her unconscious image of failure: a black working-class woman in a white-dominant society, poor, illiterate, handicapped, missing some of her front teeth, and in a failed marriage. It is precisely during this period, the Forties, that movies, according to Dingwall, show Toni Morrison demonstrating that being a black girl, experiences how her family and friends treat her, the girl who lacks support from family and community. The story is not just about Pecola; it’s also about people in her community.

Both of Morrison’s novels elaborate on domestic violence, rape, and white beauty standards. However, The Bluest Eye solely concentrates on black feminist problems. Black women experienced double oppression, first by the white-dominated society and second, within their own families. Rape, torture, physical and psychological abuse, and racism were nightmares that deeply affected the lives of black women in the United States. The works of both Walker and Morrison focus mainly on slavery, racism, segregation, and how black people suffered both psychologically and socially since being forcibly brought to America. Both novelists attempted to illustrate their particular perspectives in the texts by constructing fictional narratives.

Sethe’s youngest child and the only one still with her at the time of Beloved’s return is Denver. Denver was not born into slavery, Sethe escaped while pregnant with her. As a result, Denver was born free but she still faced the consequences of slavery, specifically the need to claim something as solely hers. Denver’s relationship with Beloved shares some similarities to her mother’s but is different since Denver realizes that Beloved is bad and breaks free from her desire. Like the other characters, she wants Beloved to belong to her and she states that Beloved “[is] mine, Beloved She’s mine” (Pg.230). While never physically present, Beloved was a fixture in the once and was known to Denver as her sister.

For years, Beloved lived in the house as a sort of ghost but when Paul D arrived, her ghost disappeared from 124 only to later appear as a human. Since Beloved has appeared as physical being, Denver wants to possess her newly returned sister and she does not wish to share her with anyone, including her mother. Denver becomes close to Beloved upon her return and stays with her to help her. This close bond would be tied in with the hope that Denver has always held that her father, Halle, would come to 124 to be with her and Sethe.

Beloved’s reappearance makes Denver believe that she has come to wait for Halle together, since if her deceased sister came back, then so can the father that she never met. Denver’s possession is not only linked to her sister but to the house and her mother. Denver is stuck in that house and fears the outside world as a result of her mother. Throughout the novel, Denver becomes more and more independent and the readers see her grow as a character and she gradually breaks free from her mother’s possession of her being. Though Denver never experienced slavery firsthand, she has experienced loss, which compels Denver to claim Beloved as hers and this claim also opens her eyes.

This desire to possess Beloved shows the readers how she will even cast aside her mother to claim Beloved as her own. Her need to possess Beloved has a different effect on her than it does on her mother. While Sethe seems to simply waste away caring for Beloved, Denver begins to grow and realize that her desire to possess Beloved is dangerous and so is her sister. Denver decides to gather the community to help her mother and to put an end to Beloved’s possession over her mother and by extension herself. Denver is also possessed by herself and her mother. She fears the outside world as a result of what happened to her mother. Her venture out into the town and her attempts to find permanent work and possibly attend college mark the beginning of her fight for independence and self-possession.