Beloved
by Toni Morrison explores the unique connection mothers have with their
children by depicting three different mothers and their relationships with
their children. The novel seems to be expressing that it is hard to pin down
what exactly makes a “good” mother, or what makes a “bad” one. Some of these
mother’s actions can be considered disgusting, however the context in which the
actions were committed blurs the line between necessity and cruelty.
The
first mother in the chronological story, Baby Suggs, is a woman whose son bought
her freedom by working overtime. She moved north to ensure her son’s hard work
did not go to waste. Tired from the hard life of slavery, she felt it difficult
to truly enjoy freedom but she felt is necessary to create a home for which her
son and his family to escape. Though Baby Suggs does not commit a deplorable
act against her children, she does possess a deep spiritual connection with her
sons. Every time one of her children dies, she can sense a loss within her.
Loss wears away at her until she falls into a deep depression, and eventually
passes away. Perhaps her depression is in part due to regret for not being able
to protect her children, or perhaps it is due to the departure of her
grandsons, Buglar and Howard, Sethe’s children.
Sethe’s
dedication to her children runs deep within her character, motivating her to
defy death (or welcome it in some cases) in order to protect her children. She
is forced to decide, before leaving Sweet Home to either wait for her MIA
husband, Halle, or leave with the presented opportunity to reach her kids.
During her escape to freedom, she has a near death experience in which she
collapses from exhaustion and pain. As she is about to give up, she feels her
baby Denver in her womb kicking, and she thinks of her children waiting for her
in the North. Amy discovers Sethe and nurses her back to health, and Sethe with
a second wind takes her enormously pregnant self to safety in the North. (Ok so I need to mention this, I am not sure if a lot of you
are 100% aware of how IMPOSSIBLE it is to move when you’re really freaking
pregnant like ok I am sure you have all seen pregnant people but listen ok my
mom was pregnant when I was a subbie and lived with her and tended to her I am
absolutely sure that traveling in the wilderness with no shoes would kill 9/10
pregnant women like Sethe is metal ok that is a mommy’s love thank you)
Once
in the North, Sethe is able to decompress and enjoy freedom with all of her
children… until schoolteacher shows up. Sethe’s reaction is instinctual. She
makes the decision for her children that death is better than a life of
slavery. People criticize Sethe because Sethe had escaped slavery to the North.
In order to better understand Sethe’s rationale (if there even is any) for her
choice, we need to look into what we can assume about her mother from the
information were given about her as well as Sethe’s experience as a slave.
Sethe’s mother wsas hung perhaps over a failed attempt to escape slavery. Sethe
thinks over this and wonders if her mother really would leave her in order to escape
to freedom. These thoughts motivate Sethe to be a better mother and never leave
her kids behind. She has an ingrained dedication to her children over the
abandonment she felt when she was young. To kill her children was a desperate
attempt to protect them from the life she lived under school teacher. In her
mind, she saved her children from being raped, from being whipped, from being
separated and sold, and she saved them from living a life that was not their
own. Whether or not her children could have escaped slavery if they were taken
is irrelevant. They were not taken. If they were taken, the suffering they
would have had to endure would taint the rest of their lives. A physical representation
of this tarnish is Sethe’s tree on her back. Do I agree with Sethe’s actions?
It is hard to say… I am still deciding what I think. It is hard to wrestle with
because it was instinctual, it had noble intentions, and it ended up saving 3/4
of her children.
A
mother that killed her children not out of protection but out of hatred and
disgust was Ella, a former slave that was sexually abused and raped by her
white owners. She was forced to carry the child of one of her rapists, and
instead of raising the child she hated, she let it die. This was another really
difficult choice that was made in Beloved,
and another hard choice to judge. Toni Morrison may have been creating such
difficult scenarios to make us look into ourselves and think about how
judgmental we are being. We are being just like the community in Cincinnati. It
shows the kinds of impossible decisions mothers must make in order to do what
is right.
This is a really interesting post, I hadn't considered the significance of the three different mothers until now. But after reading your post, it's clear that motherhood is definitely an important theme in the novel. I think you might be right that Morrison was trying to make the reader think more about being judgemental about people in impossible situations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that Morrison chose to intentionally make the situations in her book ambiguous and difficult to judge. While there is no objectively 'correct' answer as to whether or not what Sethe did was right, I think I lean towards her opinion that she was justified in killing her child. Yet there is the argument that she was only thinking of her own experiences and not considering that things could be different for her children--as Paul D points out, it's possible that there could have been another way.
ReplyDeleteI liked this analysis of the themes of motherhood in Beloved. I'm a bit confused as to why you liken Baby Sugg's connection to her children to the "deplorable acts" committed by the other mother's you examine.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, that was a necessary comparison to make to deliver the full effect of the wonderful point Lark is making here. There are multiple different families and contexts covered in Beloved, and one has to understand each on its own terms to comprehend the actions and feelings of each mother. Baby Suggs's connection to her children is what allowed her to understand Sethe's actions, and even if she did not forgive her, Baby Suggs at least knew that Sethe acted out of love and not out of hate. This is particularly important to understand the dynamic between the two generations of mothers after Sethe comes to 124 since Baby Suggs soon loses her status in the community and slowly wastes away because of what Sethe did. Understanding that Baby Suggs values her family above all else, even above her community, and that that is something she was only able to really do once freed from slavery, will allow you to actually understand her motivations and actions throughout the novel.
DeleteI agree with you, motherly affection is a huge theme in Beloved, one that drives the entire plot of the book. By depicting many different situations and their outcomes, Morrison is attempting to say something. I feel like it's more than just the importance of motherly affection, and how far a mother will go for her child, put I haven't pinned it down yet. Your post does a great job of exploring each mother-child situation, though.
ReplyDeleteAnd Baby Suggs's experience is a sobering reminder that any effort to judge "good" or "bad" mothering is absurd in the context of slavery, where family ties and family dynamics are reduced to meaninglessness. She is indeed lucky to have a son like Halle, but we have to remember that this is the first of her children she's even been able to see grow into adulthood. For everything that makes him special, she has equally traumatic memories of her children being taken from her, sometimes at a very young age. She makes it to Cincinnati with enough "mother love" for the whole community, despite these unimaginable losses, but Sethe's extreme action depletes what's left of that love.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting I had never thought of Baby Suggs in comparison to Sethe and having that same deep mother's love. Motherly love pushes this book along and the intense relationship between mother and child.
ReplyDelete