Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik
HpS: Landmarks of 20th Century African American Novel Writing
WS 2003/04

The Mother-Daughter-Relationship
in
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved

Kathleen Niebl

7. Sem., MA,
Germ. Lit.-Wiss., Amerik. Lit.-wiss., D.a.F.

Contents

1. Changes in the Perception of Motherhood during the Twentieth Century  ... 3

2. The Mother-Daughter-Relationship in Toni Morrison’s Beloved ... 5

2.1 The Motives for the Telling ... 5
2.2 Maternal Love in Beloved ... 6
2.2.1 Sethe’s Childhood and Socialisation ... 6
2.2.2 Sethe’s Escape from Sweet Home ... 9
2.2.3 The Hierarchy of Motherhood and Selfhood ... 11
2.3 Who is Beloved?  ... 13
2.4 Sethe and Denver  ... 15
2.5 Sethe and Beloved  ... 16
2.6 Beloved’s Exorcism from 124 ... 18

3. Conclusion  ... 19

4. Works Cited  ... 20

1. Changes in the Perception of Motherhood during the Twentieth Century

In the course of the twentieth century, the perception of motherhood, both as a cultural concept and a literary theme, has been subjected to considerable changes.¹ Due particularly to psychoanalytical discoveries emphasising the formative influence of early childhood upon the mental growth and health of the individual, the nineteenth-century notion of motherhood as solely based on devotion, self-sacrifice and restriction to the domestic sphere was further strengthened during the first half of the twentieth century (Würzbach 370-374). What was for a long time assumed the natural and consequently most satisfying task for a woman, has increasingly been called into question under the influence of the feminist movement after 1968. Influential and frequently quoted studies like Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born (1977) or Marianne Hirsch’s The Mother/Daughter Plot (1989)² reveal how the perception of motherhood, commonly interpreted as a mere cultural reality construct, has been shaped and altered in accordance with the changing needs of a patriarchal society, and its questionable ideas of economic progress and sociological as well as cultural advancement (Krimphove 11-68).

Although these theories have proven substantial and inspiring for not only female authors, the universal validity of the assumptions made by these predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon feminists has been challenged by women belonging to ethnic minorities. Accompanied by the questioning of the premises and possibilities of the literary canon, doubts also arouse whether the specific experiences and the unarguably incomparable historical backgrounds of previously marginalized groups of women are compatible to eurocentric “white” feminist theories, especially those that deal with psychoanalytical concerns (Krimphove 11-68).

In its function as an “interdiscourse” (Würzbach 389), literature, and in particular the novel, provides an appropriate ground for challenging established and seemingly unassailable social norms and collective beliefs. In her discussion of the mother image in nineteenth-century English literature, Natascha Würzbach points out how the image of the perfect mother, for instance, is subversively undermined through the use of various narrative strategies in numerous of these texts (389). In twentieth-century American fiction, especially since the 1960s, it is now in particular the previously marginalized group of female authors of color who draws a somewhat different picture of maternity as opposed to the prevailing “white” notions of ideal motherhood. They frequently emphasize the strong emotional attachment of black mothers to their daughters, depicted repeatedly as resulting from shared experiences of oppression. In her intercultural study of the mother-daughter-relationship in American literature, Petra Krimphove explains how black mothers are recurrently presented in their will to impart the crucial amount of self-confidence and inner strength to their daughters which is necessary in order to survive in a sexist and racist environment (18). The emergence and appreciation of this ingenious presentation of black motherhood was very often severely hampered by pervasive stereotypes like the image of the Southern “black mammy”, a powerful caricature that the South inflicted on Afro-American women, which “must have made it difficult for an Afro-American writer to create a really penetrating view of black motherhood” (Christian 225).

Toni Morrison is undoubtedly one contemporary black female author who admirably succeeds in creating such a “penetrating view of black motherhood”. The inevitable difficulties and enormous obstacles black mothers have been confronted with in the upbringing of their children are certainly a key theme in her novels. Task and aim of this paper will therefore be an in-depth examination of the mother-daughter-relationship depicted in Toni Morrison’s fifth novel Beloved. Although it seems tempting to apply one of the numerous extensive psychoanalytical surveys on the mother-daughter-relationship to the novel, from Freud’s questionable observations on the mother-daughter-dyad to contemporary French and Italian feminist psychoanalytic theory, the interpretation this paper suggests centers on the extent to which Morrison evokes a perception of motherhood in Beloved which not only questions but all the more rejects the often simplifying views on maternity proposed not only by psychoanalytical studies but by contemporary society as well. As will be further argued, it is by means of a specific maternal discourse and way of acting that not only female characters in Beloved provide other individuals with relief from their particular kinds of pain and anxiety.

[...]

1 See Würzbach for an insightful analysis of the mother image in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury English novels.

2 For a detailed discussion and bibliography of feminist psychoanalytical studies, see Krimphove pp. 11-68.