Mother and Daughter can Merge Into One

Text: Slavery and Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved by Terry Paul Caesar

Link:https://app.activateinstruction.org/playlist/resource-sview/rid/552bdbf8f0778746029da7fd/id/54f8e4077f8b9adc6fff4e70/bc0/explore/bc1/playlist

Terry Paul’s criticism of Beloved has many different interpretations of the novel. The author notes a similarity in theme of the sentimental novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written in the mid 1800’s, and Beloved. The main idea in Terry Paul’s criticism, revolves around the concept of possession and ownership between a mother and daughter. It is interesting to see how in Morrison’s novel, according to Terry Paul, motherhood and slavery are “equitable”. He discusses how if motherhood and slavery are the same, “then the mother can feel she is, exactly, a slave to her daughter, just as a daughter can to her mother”. In Beloved we see this between Sethe and Beloved. However, Terry Paul’s criticism raises the question whether the infanticide was to protect Sethe’s own self possession or to genuinely protect the baby from slavery.

There are clear differences between being a woman and being a mother. When Sethe had her children, she was giving up her life. She had to devote all her time to nurture and care for her family. This is where the idea of a mother being a slave to her daughter is reflected. The freedom one has as an individual, is limited when one becomes a parent. In this case, Denver and Beloved’s life is now Sethe’s life. Both mother and daughters merge into almost being one person. In other words, Sethe is “giving herself away”, only one person can actually exist because they are all sharing the same life. Throughout the novel, Beloved’s behavior begins to change. She becomes more oppressive and takes advantage of Sethe. In the criticism, it was mentioned that “Beloved ate up [Sethe’s] life”. Parents do become enslaved by their children.

When reading Beloved through the feminist lens, I never came across this idea and interpreted the novel the way Terry Paul did. I personally feel that the concept explained in the criticism, was difficult to explain. However, by reading this, certain events in the story seem to be more clear to me now. For example, when Paul D “wants Sethe pregnant”, Sethe is not too enthusiastic. My initial thoughts were that Sethe did not want to be pregnant because she felt too old and was now responsible for both Beloved and Denver. To Sethe being pregnant again with Paul D meant giving her life away, to another baby. Sethe wanted to posses her own life, because she has always struggled with the idea of “claiming herself” even though she has been freed. With a newborn baby, Sethe would never claim ownership of herself and continue to be enslaved internally for many years.