#3 The Circular Communities

In the text “Circularity in Toni Morrison's Beloved” author  Philip Page, discusses a point in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved that many people may not have read or identified. Morrison has written this story with so much detail, that many interpretations of the text can be derived. Page discusses the idea of circular metaphors. Page reveals that “An examination of these explicit and implicit circles and their implications reveals the subtle relationships between the novel's content and its form.” (Page, 31) He goes to prove how these circular metaphors enhance the reading of the text. However, other than enhancing the experience as a reader, it gives the reader immense insight on how Toni Morrison chose to write the novel. She clearly chose to write the novel with a theme of power and strength in mind. All characters in some way show power and strength in their individual stories. With a dedication of the book made to the 60 million slaves, Morrison uses the “circle” to exemplify the unity and solidarity these slaves had while going through such hardship. Page writes, “One circle is the black neighborhood around 124 Bluestone. Composed of other refugees of slavery and war, this neighborhood constitutes a community circle whose presence is felt throughout the novel.” This is the circle that holds all the slaves together and binds them together. Page further explains how when one is isolation from this “community circle” they “are haunted by their past…”.(Page, 32) Like mentioned earlier, Morrison used this “community circle” as a way to show the solidarity and togetherness these slaves had through all the beating and dehumanizing tactics used against them. It is so interesting to me that even though Philip page and I are reading the same book, how one person finds meaning in such small details. I personally wouldn’t have identified such a theme myself.  Now that it is visible, however,  my reading is definitely going to become more focused on the smaller details that make the novel so powerful.

Entry #6: The Power One Has Over Another

I read Pamela E. Barnett's essay titled "Figurations of Rape and the Supernatural in Beloved" in which she describes how she viewed the book Beloved while reading it through a feminist lens. Barnett believes that rape was not seen only as a matter of gender but as a matter of race as well. I agree with this being true during the time of slavery. Slaves were not considered human to white people so they found many ways to dehumanize them. One way of doing this was to rape them and use them as an object of sex. This was also dehumanizing them because white people were not getting their consent before sex resulting in their feelings being disrespected and ignored.

One common stereotype of rape is that the men are usually the ones committing rape, but as Barnett points out, in this book Beloved commits an act of rape. Barnett mentions when Paul D found himself having sex with Beloved even though he didn't want to.  Paul D says it's something he can't control and he tells Sethe "that girl is doing it" referring to Beloved. Barnett believes that Beloved must be some sort of supernatural character due to her controlling powers and unusual habits such as always having to drink water. I agree with Barnett and believe Beloved is a reincarnation of the baby Sethe killed. Beloved arrived to 124 by walking out of water which could be seen as a symbol of a baptism. The disappearance of Beloved at the end of the book also brings up the suspicion that Beloved must be supernatural. Sethe, Paul D, and Denver eventually have a hard time remembering Beloved was ever at 124 perhaps due to Beloved's control she has over their minds. Overall, I agree with many of the points Barnett made and I have benefited from learning that I share the same ideas as someone else who has read Beloved through a feminist lens.

Entry #5: Respect the Milk

"I'll tend her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else--and the one time I did it was took from me--they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby. Nan had to nurse whitebabies and me too because Ma'am was in the rice. The little white babies got it first and I got what was left" (236).

While reading this passage through a feminist lens we can see the motherly nature of Sethe and how she cares for her children no matter what. At the end of the day her love for her children is strong. Sethe is a protective mother who wants nothing to happen to her babies. She wants them all to herself, allowing nobody to touch them or go near them except her. She wants to be fully dedicated to her children and care for them with everything she has. One thing she wants to make sure she can provide for them is her milk, even though her children are grown now and no longer need to drink the milk of their mother. The milk represents a connection between a mother and her baby and it develops a relationship between the two.

To learn more about the mother-baby bond through breast-feeding please read this TIME article.

Sethe also feels the need to do provide her children with her milk because of the guilt she feels from when she allowed men to drink from her breasts at Sweet Home. She was the only female slave at Sweet Home while there were several other men there. They always fought over who could have Sethe and wanted to use her for pleasure. One day two men drank from her breasts and that was the only time someone other than her children drank from her, "and the one time I did it was took from me." Women are often seen as a sex symbol and men only enjoy women for their body and the sexual pleasure they can get from them. Women can provide a lot more than sexual pleasure but that is often overlooked. This was true centuries ago when men were drinking from women's breasts and it is still true today when men go to clubs to have one night stands and use women simply for sex, never to talk to them again.

A Final Reflection- Erin

Reading this book was an experience. At times it was a really disturbing experience as some of the details in the book were especially unnerving. But the history of the novel were very evident throughout the book. But what I most learned from this book was the importance of facing your past. The theme of the book is that people are burdened with their past and they must face it to move forward. Sethe was so consumed by the guilt of killing her daughter that she felt like she had to be punished. This is evident when she wouldn't move from the haunted house and when she kept trying to justify her actions to Beloved. The psychological effects of past pain is forever but people cannot keep living in the past. Denver is able to move forward when she confronts herself and the outside world that she was once so scared of. Paul D was able to move forward when he was able to open the rusty tin box of his heart. And Sethe, at the end, was trying to protect her children like she should have, attacking the white person instead of killing her children.

The history in this book is astounding. It directly confronts all the pain and inhumanity of the slave trade and the effects of the people afterword. This is not in any history textbook or class. This book can really open up a person's eyes to the institution of slavery. Also as I was reading the articles I looked at the text in different ways. I was really surprised when I was presented with the story of Margaret Garner. Sethe's story of killing her children was based on a real life story that became one of the most ground breaking fugitive slave trial of the pre-Civil War period. Looking through at this book through the New Historian lens gave me more information about slavery. But reading other peoples blogs helped me see the book through other lens's that made this book very relevant because this book is about confronting our past. Everyone has memories that they would rather forget but if we continue to focus on them then we lose our chance in the present. We should remember the past but we should not let it consume us.

Slave Narrative-Erin

This article, Revisions, Rememories and Exorcisms: Toni Morrison and the Slave Narrative by Cynthia S. Hamilton, describes the multiple books that have been written about the institution of slavery and the dehumanizing practices. It discusses the structure of a typical slave narrative, bringing multiple examples. They describe the story telling process and the limitations of some of the authors. The typical structure of a slave narrative, according to the article, is that the plot is chronologically linear. the protagonist learns the full horror of slavery, tries to escape multiple times, achieve freedom at a cost and then tells us what it is like to be free. Hamilton does acknowledge that many slave narratives were limited by the white audience as the authors had to make the book agreeable to them. The early slave narratives were about victimization of the slaves while the later books celebrate the accomplishments made since their emancipation. These books all pander to the abolitionists, focusing on the cruelty, not on "the power dynamics and the unequal relationships" (Hamilton, 433). The typical slave narrative "[scarifies} the rich complexity of the slave's experience to the needs of propaganda" and augments white power  (Hamilton, 435).

Beloved is different. Morrison breaks the classic slave narrative by using the gothic as her main frame for the novel. She also directly confronts sexual violence, a topic that previous authors did not touch much on before, and shows how the psychological effects of this event inhibit Sethe's ability to nurture her child. The timeline is also not linear. The reader has to piece together the events through the memories. The way that Morrison handles the narrative allows more feeling and psychology to be seen and given more emphasis. Victimization is never a theme in Beloved. Instead we focus on how others help one another to deal with past pain, anger, and shame brought upon them from their slavery. Morrison also shows the effect of the warping dower of white domination on the black community and how they help each other heal from it. Baby Suggs brings the community together in her clearing and tells them that they have to love themselves and each other because of what the white folk did to them.

Morrison critiques the past slave narratives through her book by breaking the mold and presenting the book in a way that does not make the protagonists victims. The gothic elements of the book are seen multiple times. The ghost baby and the gothic villain in Schoolteacher, and the flawed personalities of the characters. This book combines the slave narrative and the gothic masterfully making a book that critiques the inhumanity of slavery in a more powerful way then previous slave narratives.

This is it. Final Blog of the Year.

A lot has happened in Beloved and it was really mind boggling, eerie, heart breaking at times, and sometimes confusing. With the flashbacks into Sethe's past and the constant search for clues to understand Sethe's and Beloved's behaviors, the novel Beloved ended up being a completely mysterious and creepy book that still had some charm just like Beloved herself. Some of the main themes I took away from the book were the patterns of the different relationships in Beloved, sacrifice, and the hardships slavery put on African American mothers and their children.

Beloved offers a new perspective in how women's lives were during that time. Most books only talk about the torture slaves had to suffer through, but none give a perspective like Toni Morrison has about women slaves. Morrison delved into the sacrifices a mother had to give, the pasts that they ran from, and the future they did anything to stay away from. Specifically Sethe had to give up her children and the happiness they would've brought her, parts of her sanity, and love for most of her life. Using a psychoanalytic lens to analyze what the characters were thinking when, for example Beloved made her way through their lives, really allowed me to figure out characters motivations and fears. When analyzing how Sethe reacted to Beloved joining their family, she had no problem. Mainly at first it was because she would never turn down someone running from slavery (like she believed Beloved was doing), because she knew exactly what it's like to run from torture. But then later on Sethe learns that Beloved is truly her daughter because of the tune she heard Beloved humming, which she and her children only knew because Sethe made it the song up. The way Sethe reacted was surprising to me, because I would expect her to be shocked that Beloved has found a way to be with her in a human form instead of a ghost. But Sethe was ecstatic and she finally felt true happiness. Which makes me connect her reaction to motherly instinct and motherhood during slavery. Beloved's return was a chance for Sethe to provide her maternal instincts to the child she could never raise, because slavery took that chance away from her.

One thing I find interesting is how Denver feels around Sethe. Denver is nothing like Beloved, regarding how she feels about Sethe. It seems like Denver is scared of Sethe, instead of loving her. Ever since Denver discovered that her mother was sent to jail because of the information she found out from Nelson Lord, which was that Sethe killed her daughter Beloved. Since then Denver has feared her, which is why I believe Denver is so attached and protective to Beloved. There's no reason as to why Denver could think that Sethe will not kill her children again after she has already done so to Beloved. Denver's fear of Sethe has lead her to become an independent woman, which we see in her actions like seeking out education herself and going into town to embrace the community she was shut out from all her life. So Beloved's return was sort of an opportunity for Denver. 

Overall Beloved was an eerie and mysterious book that had me rereading pages throughout the whole book, while trying to take in all the clues, history, and emotions of the characters in Beloved. The characters in Beloved all have their past that relates to who they are, like Stamp Paid's name relating to his time helping slaves to freedom. Even though Beloved is now gone from their lives, the history of what all the characters endured has an impact on who they grew to be.

Thanks for sticking with me and my blogs!

-Halemah Shuman

Critical Expert Blog #6: The Heartbreak of Motherhood in Slavery

Text: Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Psychological Reading
Critical Lens: Psychoanalytic

In Sandra Mayfield's essay she defines Beloved as a novel that mainly focuses on motherhood, but also slave women as mothers. Mayfield delves into how motherhood has affected Sethe since she was a slave. Sethe was long affected by the horrors of slavery and she did not want her children to endure the same tortures she did as a slave. To further her analysis Mayfield uses opinions from other authors to provide insight and information on how motherhood can psychologically impact Sethe.

In the start of the article Mayfield manages to use the writings of Sarah Moore Grimke as evidence to support the horrors that slave women endured from their owners. In her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, Addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Female Anti-Slavery Society Grimke says "the virtue of female slaves is wholly at the mercy of irresponsible tyrants, and women are bought and sold in our slave markets, to gratify the brutal lust of those who bear the name of Christians”. Her statement displays how slaves were not regarded as humans who have rights and emotions, and the women slaves were not only forced into manual labor but they also had to endure the lust of their slave owners. This and the things Sethe endured in Beloved is the reason why she did not want to bring children into the world. She did not want to grant herself the happiness of bringing a child into the world, because she knew that there will eventually be pain and sorrow for the both of them.
Sethe herself lost her mother to the horrors of slavery and she knew that if she were to not escape her children might have to deal with the same grief. But it is well known that there is an unbreakable bond between a mother and her child. So when Sethe does have her children she doesn't want to give them up, but in a way she did lose all but one child to the fears of her past as a slave. But she knew for Beloved that in a way death for her child is much better than the horrors of slavery.
In Mayfield's article she uses evidence from psychoanalytic experts, and one quote from a literary critic named Jacques Lacan caught my attention said " the child‟s wish to be “totally captivating, to be everything for the (m)other”. This reminded me that motherhood is not only for the mother, but it also displays the relationship between her and her children. And this quote shows the relationship that Beloved had for sometime with Sethe. This can be seen in chapter 23 when we get a chance in Beloveds mind and she claims Sethe as hers, she repeats "You are mine You are mine You are mine". Which displays to us that Beloved truly wanted to be everything her mother wanted and more. But of course Sethe's past as a slave did not make it possible that she could have that relationship with her daughters, mainly because she can not move from the horrors of her past and the fear that her children would have to endure the same.

So Mayfield's article truly did allow me to relate to most of her claims about motherhood and slave mothers. Her integration of other sources made it possible for me to tie in the possible thoughts and feelings of Sethe as a slave mother through a psychoanalytic lens.