Critical Lens Experts Blog- Stephanie Serrano

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a piece of literature that incorporates strong perspectives on a story of former slave, Sethe, and the life changing event she was forced to face that haunts her every day and brings the story together. As a mother who had to kill her own daughter, Sethe travels a path of pain that brings her into conflicts with the world of womanhood. Looking at the story as a whole through a feminist lens, the reader can see that as a woman Sethe feels inclined to repair the distress of her daughter because she feels it’s her duty to protect her as a mother. However, while Sethe is focused on protecting her daughter Beloved, she hurts herself and others emotionally and physically.

Sethe killed her daughter Beloved in order to protect her from getting taken away by her side. She preferred Beloved be dead before being forced into slavery. In Sethe’s head, this was an act of love and protection. Barbara A Schapiro states ”How can a child see self or mother as subjects when the society denies them that status? The mother is made incapable of recognizing the child, and the child cannot recognize the mother...When she[Sethe] becomes a mother herself, she is so deprived and depleted that she cannot satisfy the hunger for recognition”(The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”). Sethe fears that if Beloved becomes a slave, she wouldn't recognize her as a mother and that it would make Beloved feel unloved and not important or of value. This drives Sethe to fear the loss of recognition and serves as a main factor in the murder of Beloved. What society saw as an atrocious act of a crazy slave, Sethe saw as Beloved’s way of escape from a life of distress and acts upon it believing it was out of love. It takes her time to realize she committed a crime against her daughter and that things were going to change from then on. But, when she realizes Beloved was not at peace with being killed, Sethe starts to feel guilt and lives with the haunting burden of what she did. This goes to show that women get emotionally attached to their children, and in Sethe’s case will do the unspeakable in order to protect their child. However, ironically Sethe’s motherly love leads to the death of her daughter and does not allow her to leave the path of guilt, that causes her many problems and hurt in her life as well as the life of others.

Critical Lens Experts

In the figurations of rape and the supernatural by Barnett, she explains how men are portrayed as victims and the women are viewed to be blamed for everything. The article explains how in the book Sethe and other women that were in slavery had to be sexually violated in order to get money and pay for things that they couldn't afford to pay. Men would see woman only as sex objects and not humans. Beloved symbolizes the history of rape and slavery throughout time, and when she comes back she brings it back with her. In Beloved the African women are inferior to the white women. And the African American men are inferior to White men. As Barnett states “ Beloved serves as a powerful reminder that rape was and often still is a racial issue..Susan Brownmiller has asserted “a process of intimidation by which all men keep all woman in a state of fear” (15). While male and female do not formulaically describe rapist and victim in the novel, white and black almost always do” (425). Barnett is explaining the absence in rape culture from the times of slavery. She describes how Morrison is constructing the discourse of the rapes of African American men and women who have been raped during slavery. She is using her novel to show the various powers that structure rape and trauma.

Close Reading

“...he had come to be a rag doll - picked up and put back down anywhere anytime by a girl young enough to be his daughter.. it was more than appetite that humiliated him and made him wonder if school teacher was right. It was being moved, placed where she wanted him, and there was nothing he was able to do about it” (148). The setting of this quote is about a male African American being controlled by a female African American. Paul D is being raped by Beloved, who is his lover's daughter who came back from the dead. This quote identifies the gender roled throughout Morrison's Beloved. Throughout the text, Morrison uses multiple writing techniques to express the gender roles through the text. The males are known to have more control over woman rather than the woman having the control. The quote explains the feelings and emotion that Paul D was feeling, how controlled he felt by Beloved. Morrison describes Paul D as a “ragdoll” to imply that he has no control over his body, that Beloved is taking over him. In this moment, Paul D is horrified and cannot believe that a woman is able to move him how she wants, and he can’t stop her. Acting as if she were superior to him.