Slavery Experience in Morrison\'s Beloved

¶ … Slavery Experience in Morrison's Beloved

Slavery plays a significant role in understanding Toni Morrioson's novel, Beloved. Slavery rests at the core of the existence of Sethe's life and it is directly linked to the presence of Beloved. Sethe and others yearn for freedom and their objective in life is to find that along with their sense of self. Self-identity becomes more difficult when one is a slave, as Sethe's character demonstrates. Motherhood is also affected by slavery as it becomes difficult for slave women with no real sense of self to devote themselves to their children. Slavery splits families apart and mothers can be separated from their children without notice. The lack of control revealed in these circumstances becomes a central issue as Morrison explores the human psyche in this light. Beloved's role in the novel serves to personalize the slavery story through Sethe's experience. Beloved's shadowed identity allows readers to understand slavery, motherhood, and the female experience as it was -- a tumultuous experience, disfigured by oppression.

Morrison explores the issue of slavery in the novel from the perspective of those reaching for and attaining freedom. The transition from slave to free man is not as easy as it sounds just as moving from the notion of being an object to a free man is. The emotional shift is more of a struggle than anything else is because slavery permeated every aspect of one's life. Paul D. believes it is dangerous for a "used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love" (Morrison 56). This passage reveals one of the most painful aspects a slave woman ever faced, which was the prospect of losing her own child through the process of slavery. In short, being a mother is risky because one never knows when a child will be taken away. In the same sense, love is dangerous. Separation always lingers in the back of the mind of a woman who chooses to love a child or anyone else, for that matter. Love becomes a risk worth serious consideration in the novel because nothing is permanent.

The role of Beloved is one that raises many questions. As the ghost-daughter, Beloved confronts Sethe for her death. Murder is cruel but Sethe believes her reasons are justified. Simply put, Sethe wanted to save her daughter from a life of slavery. Self-discovery is linked to slavery, as the characters in the novel must come to terms with their identity through slavery. Jennifer Holden-Kirwan believes that "subjectivity becomes "attainable" (Holden-Kirwan) through this ambiguous character. Beloved is a pivotal character when it comes to seeking a sense of self. For Sethe, especially when she tells Beloved how she cared for her as a baby. Beloved doubts this and as Sethe defends her actions, Beloved is "uncomprehending everything except that Sethe was the woman who took her face away, leaving her crouching in a dark, dark place, forgetting to smile" (Morrison 296). This scene is "tragic" (Holden-Kirwan), according to Holden-Kirwan but it is important when we see what is happening to Sethe. She sees the dead child, which is what Beloved wants. The child wants to be known. Holden-Kirwan writes each character's "desire can be read as a demand for recognition from the other" (Holden-Kirwan). When this recognition occurs, healing can occur. Without the presence or memory of the dead child, this healing could have never happened.

The notion of freedom is interesting to consider in Beloved because on the surface, freedom is a good thing. Freedom was emphasized by escaping to the North until the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. However, it is important to realize everything that the notion of freedom meant. It was more than just a word and it was more than simply an action. For the slave, it was something completely unimaginable. For women slaves, it was even more so. Before the Fugitive Act passed, freedom was a great risk into the unknown and it was complicated. Nancy Jesser writes:

Without being able to know what being free might mean, they risk the known for the unknown. Of course, the harsh lesson of freedom in the 'Magical North' is that it offers little to combat the racist institutions, whether in the form of chattel slavery or the brutal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. (Jesser)

We often think of freedom being something as a "no-brainer." However, it was anything but this. Escaping into a vast unknown, into a world that still saw African-Americans as property, was deadly. With little support or help on the outside, remaining a slave at least offered shelter and some sort of safety. Not to mention, it was familiar. Escaping meant throwing all of that away and it was doubly dangerous for women. Sethe realizes that the idea of freedom is more attractive than the reality of the word. When Schoolteacher discovers her, she decides jail would be better than returning to being a slave in Sweet Home. Even with a baby, Sethe had to literally choose between the better of two evils. Imprisonment behind bars was better than a slave's life. When she tells Paul, "Any life but that one. I went to jail instead" (Morrison 52), we understand the burden of slavery. Sethe's dream of freedom was nowhere near the reality of it but she still believed the live she chose was better than the life knew. She was responding to the innate yearning to be free with which all humans are born.

Beloved is associated with slavery collectively. The spirit represents many victims and Baby Suggs reinforces this notion when she says death does not forget. This statement is spoken in light of the historical aspect of American slavery and its history stemming from African heritage. The two cannot be separated and the image of the African dead reaching across the land is powerful. Baby Suggs tells Sethe, "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief . . . We lucky this ghost is a baby. . . You lucky . . . Be thankful, why don't you?"(6). Baby Suggs accepts what is happening and she attempts to find something positive in it. The ghost, she believes, is a young one and that would be better than an old, bitter ghost. Even more interesting is how she accepts the ghost. In doing so, we see how this belief is a part of Baby Sugg's African heritage.

Beloved also represents the need for freedom in relation to motherhood. Holden-Kirwan believes Beloved is Sethe's ghost-mother. Sethe's lack of a maternal role model "greatly impairs the development of the child's subjectivity" (Holden-Kirwan). Sethe was not around her own mother very much and when she was around her, she seemed to be working. What she remembers most about her mother is the lack of her presence, according to Holden-Kirwan. Sethe did not have a mother that fixed her hair and she even thinks her mother might have intentionally left her. Sethe's lack of maternal care makes her resent her mother even though Sethe knows how the system of slavery works. She did not have what most young girls did and because of her mother's death, "Sethe is denied daughterhood" (Holden-Kirwan). This proves to be a complicated and painful circumstance for Sethe in that this is a situation that time cannot heal. Denial of daughterhood prevents Sethe from achieving "subjectivity through daughterhood" (Holden-Kirwan). In addition, the "absence of the maternal look as a child continues to deprive Sethe of subjectivity as an adult" (Holden-Kirwan). Having her own children complicates the issue because she is living within a society that can snatch motherhood from her at any moment. Sethe feels as though she can never truly have, or parent, a child when she is denied the seemingly simplest notion of knowing herself. White society at that time owned slaves and their children. The nuclear family as it was intended is stripped from the slave. Motherhood becomes a phantom for Sethe because, as a woman, she feels its instincts but as a slave, she is denied its benefits. As a free woman, however, Sethe can truly love and experience motherhood as intended by nature. This circumstance brings Beloved into the picture as she returns from the dead "hoping to receive the attention, affection, and recognition from her mother that she had lost when her mother committed suicide on the slave ship" (Holden-Kirwan). Her return is linked with her loss as a slave that is also a mother.

Beloved as a ghost-mother allows Sethe to heal. Through the presence of Beloved as ghost-mother, Sethe recognizes the anger she feels toward her mother. She still believes she was neglected because she never had the opportunity to be anyone's daughter. More importantly, Sethe's mother died because of slavery. This caused Sethe to miss out on a significant part of her childhood and her identity. Sethe cannot deny this part of her life when it comes to her own daughter and refuses to let the same thing happen. Sethe does not see death as such an opposing alternative compared to the life she remembers. Beloved, seen as the ghost-daughter, is returning back to her mother but she is doing so angry. She is angry for the same reasons as Sethe -- she missed out on the opportunity to be a daughter. Sethe can now take care of Beloved like she was supposed to before. Sethe sees her mother as she never did before and begins to accept her circumstance.

Beloved's identity symbolizes the ghost-child and ghost-mother of Sethe and others who passed before her. Deborah Horvitz believes the ghost represents both the dead child and the dead mother. She writes the ghost-child prompts Sethe to "remember her own mother because, in fact, the murdered daughter and the slave mother are a conflated or combined identity" (Horvitz). From this perspective, we can understand the importance of the mother/daughter relationship. Sethe's mother experienced the Middle Passage and "relates that ordeal through a coded message from the ship revealing that she too is a Beloved who, like Sethe, has been cruelly separated from her own mother" (Horvitz). Having the ghost represent both absent characters completes a cycle of "mother-daughter loss, perceived abandonment, betrayal, and recovery (Horvtiz)" in the novel.