This paper is a qualitative research study of Toni Morrison's "Beloved", about a former slave's excruciating recollections in post-Civil War Ohio. Furthermore, it employs feminist discourse, primarily Black feminist literary theory because this is a tale that features dominant female characters, therefore, the black feminist approach would be suitable as it does not ignore African-American women’s voices in opposition to sexism oppression.
Through Sethe and the other ladies, Morrison conveys a message about the framework of individuality a black woman should establish and how she should strive for a purposeful pursuit of self. What this paper seeks to explore is the theme of option against and how it is accompanied by a network of hidden racist and misogynistic offenses from the Sethe era.
Abstract
This paper is a qualitative research study of Toni Morrison's Beloved, about a former slave's excruciating recollections in post-Civil War Ohio. Furthermore, it employs feminist discourse, primarily Black feminist literary theory because this is a tale that features dominant female characters, therefore, the black feminist approach would be suitable as it does not ignore African-American women’s voices in opposition to sexism oppression. Through Sethe and the other ladies, Morrison conveys a message about the framework of individuality a black woman should establish and how she should strive for a purposeful pursuit of self. What this paper seeks to explore is the theme of option against and how it is accompanied by a network of hidden racist and misogynistic offences from the Sethe era.
Keywords: Black Feminism, Slavery, African-American Women , Opression
Toni Morrison's fifth book, Beloved, catapulted her to the foreground of conversations about the status of the black female in present political, educational, and literary American culture. Her work, which has been marked by both mistreatment and victory, demonstrates her ability to uncover the societal consequences of being a black woman and her mastery of the literary genre. Morrison is an icon of Afro-American womanhood and a voice for the black community's desire for freedom and resistance against discrimination. Her work also demonstrates the significance of the black imaginations in the development of African-American and American literature. According to Arul Doss, “Morrison exposes the damages that sexist oppression caused on black women, both inside and outside of the ethnic group. She does not prescribe an existential, political feminism as a solution to the oppression of black women. Rather she celebrates the unique feminine cultural values that black women have developed in spite of their ethnic group” (Doss 1). The concerns that Morrison explores in Beloved are crucial in the examination of black female participation in history and literature. Morrison was capable of expressing the unthinkable by liberating the black women's point of view that had been stifled by the hegemonic White western masculine ideology's narrative.
The topic of having no autonomy in Beloved accentuates the story of enslaved Black women who were kidnapped from their native lands, raped into subjugation on the Middle Passage, impregnated against their own will, and compelled to surrender their kids to help white America's economic growth. This story takes place immediately during and before the Reconstruction Period in America. This story depicts the period leading up to and immediately following the abolition of slavery. She shows gender inequalities between male and female slaves in Beloved depicting “Black women writers analyze the complex and complicated social issues because of being black and women. They clearly express the immeasurable and fathomless pain, injustice, and horror of slavery. Black women have faced many kinds of oppression both from the white people and black men. This experience has provided them enough material whereby they can vent their feelings of oppression” (Rao 23). Although the functions occasionally overlap, they are distinct to some extent. Morrison's Beloved is a heart-warming narrative about Sethe, a woman slave who flees the harshness of her slave-owners in Kentucky and finds freedom in Cincinnati. Female slaves are readily distinguishable from male slaves including such as her husband, Halle, and his coworkers like Paul D, Sixo, and the others, as seen through the eyes of the heroine, her mother, and mother-in-law, Babby Suggs. Slaves' demeaning positions result in a profound sense of alienation, a detachment from one's own self or, more accurately, psychological disintegration. Beloved 's scattered form" hints at the characters' perception of estrangement, which is a result of slavery's demeaning nature. Morrison employs a series of flashbacks that throw the chronology of events off. Also, it tells the story of the existence of the other females who are severely impacted by Sethe's actions: Denver, Baby Suggs, and Beloved. Furthermore, the narrative of Beloved depicts the devastating wounds that enslavement puts on African women who are victims of their gender, race, and powerlessness. As previously said, these gender roles represent the degrading aspect of slavery or the annihilation of people's identities as a result of slavery. Africans were relegated to the status of property, to be copied in the same way that money and physical things are.
Morrison investigates the brutality, sexual exploitation, and prejudice performed by white supremacists on the basis of racial supremacy. Although Beloved focuses on the misery that women face as a result of racial discrimination and sexual subjugation, Morrison also emphasizes the inhumane state of black men in the racial world. Paul D. is a disjointed and disoriented human being who has been profoundly affected by slavery's heartlessness. Black women, from the other extreme, are subservient to white women in society due to discrimination, except unlike white females, black women have limited individuality in the dominant society, primarily due to the stigmatization of blackness. In Beloved, sexism is addressed as Sethe is sexually harassed by her white slave owners. Sethe, a runaway slave, murders her infant instead of allowing it fall under their sights when she confronts the white slave lord depicting how “Toni Morrison describes black women’s fight to settle families within which they can have dignity. She portrays a Black family led by a Black woman,” (Désiré 12). In Beloved, Morrison mixes racial and sexual understanding together. As a result, her heinous act of murdering her child is not merely a result of enslavement or bigotry, but also a horrible kind of patriarchy at work beneath the surface. According to “The meaning of patriarchy is a system of social structures where men dominate, oppress, and exploit women. Women and men live together in the condition where they ruled to be in a different position. Men higher position; they are the ruler, and women in the lower one because they are the follower” (Nugraheni 13). As a race, African-American women are considered "primitive" and sexually objectified. The abuse and exploitation of enslaved African women was even more demeaning than the prejudiced exploitation of women of color as arduous workers. She claims that hierarchical white slave owners' entrenched sexism established a social structure that safeguarded African male sexuality and protected black males the degradation of sexual harassment. Nevertheless, entrenched misogyny validated black women's sexual victimization. While institutional sexism preserved black male libido, it communally solidified abuse and exploitation of black girls, according to Hooks. The woman slaves remained in continual fear of being singled out by any man, white or black, for violence and victimization.
As Morrison's speaker describes that Sethe's mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, discovered her existence governed by enslavement, she exemplifies some of the harshest situations for black females “In all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn't run off or been hanged… (Morrison, 11). Because of the unpleasantness of existence, as Baby Suggs put it, the slave system rendered intimate relationships meaningless. Sethe's situation is unique in that, as an enslaved woman, she has no say in who she sexually partners with. Sethe, on the other hand, is lucky in that she is permitted to marry Halle, the father of all of her kids. She was foolish enough to take this privilege for trust. Sethe's predicament is ironic in that her choice is conditional on raising the value of Sweet Home, with her children as the assets. Mr. Garner, Sweet Home plantation's first slave owner, grants Sethe the freedom to choose, allowing him to redefine himself as a human. Sethe has "the travel of one whole moon— of un-slaved life" (Morrison 47) after her flight through Kentucky to Cincinnati, Ohio, allowing her to flee the shackles of slavery. Sethe starts to emerge as a real human throughout those twenty-eight days, meeting and learning new people and learning new things, all of which taught her how something felt to get up at dawn and determine what to do with the day (Morrison 46). Sethe demonstrates what bell hooks perceives as a black woman establishing her value by connecting with her growing community. Schoolteacher, the white master of Sweet Home, tries to re-enslave Sethe and her kids in order to take away this fresh and liberated sensation, but he just strengthens Sethe's resolve to continue to be free. Morrison recognizes women of color as a symbol of motivation for the family, a strong representation for their communities, and soldiers over their own right to self-determination in the culture, which has been probably inevitable. The decisions made by the female protagonists, which are taken almost by necessity, are essential since they symbolize the strong female character. Morrison succeeds in portraying her female characters as heroines. Writing about a black woman's autonomy during a period when the "perfect" female was submissive, obedient, domesticated, chaste, and white might have accomplished nothing to further the enslaved woman's position. After all, the defiant slave female is seen by some as attempting to overthrow the masculinity that underpinned all of nineteenth-century western racism.
The investigation of the psychological condition of the African-American shaped by recollections of experience of slavery, refugee, or free-person is Morrison's approach to the slave story style. Morrison is able to examine the psychological drama beneath the narrative of flight, liberty, and literacy that distinguishes many of the other nineteenth-century slave narratives as a twentieth-century writer. Beloved declares itself a black feminist book, wherein the dynamics of racism, sexuality, and class collide to place women of color at the center of woman and Western culture. Beloved is a genuine portrayal of the incredible forms of defiance that black women, even the most devout enslaved mothers, could have and did conduct while still enslaved. However, Morrison's portrayal of the female slave, as symbolized by Sethe, is also a disturbing depiction of indignant motherhood gone horribly wrong. Sethe did not know her mother, and were treated cruelly when a compassionate owner died. Sethe received a violent beating for informing her incapacitated mistress that her breast-milk had been snatched by the white female's nephew. She was estranged from the men she adored for the rest of her life. Most significantly, she was a parent because opposition to enslavement was motivated by their worry for their children's future. Beloved represents the spiritual and emotional destruction of enslavement, a tragedy that commonly infects freed slaves even after they have gained their freedom. Sethe appears to be estranged from herself and full of self-hatred. As a result, she considers her kids as the greatest part of oneself. Her children, on the other hand, have insecure personalities. Denver confuses her personality with Beloved's, and Beloved begins to actually deteriorate as a result. Slavery harmed Baby Suggs' self-esteem by destroying her family and denied her the chance to be a genuine spouse, sibling, child, or caring mother. Both Baby Suggs and Paul D feel dejected and fatigued as a consequence of the fact to trust in their own presence. Paul D's tiredness is psychological, whilst Baby Suggs' is spiritual. Sethe is concerned that she will spend the rest of her days in a state of insanity. Sethe's act of assassination exemplifies the strange dynamics of captivity: in enslavement, the best way for a mother to display her love for her children and save them from enslavement is to kill them, thus rescuing them from the slower death of enslavement. According to Patricia Hill Collins, this action can be justified because black women can combat unfavorable stereotypes by developing a distinct black female perspective based on their own experiences and understandings of femininity. (Collins 7). Sethe flees with her kids to try to murder them instead of surrendering them to a life of brutal captivity. This shows her strong will to save herself and her children from the shackles of patriarchy and enslavement. The third child is the only one who dies, her neck being slit by Sethe. Sethe would not save the world, however she does manage to free one child from enslavement.
The recollections of life as slaves in Beloved are so painful that nobody ever wishes to relive them hence the women of the story have to free themselves without any help from the society. Even visualizing it in one's head causes pain. It's everything but the "simpler days" that other books frequently portray in order to elicit happiness through reminiscence. Not just Sethe, but every character would rather forget about it than expose it to someone else. They dwell virtually as they are adamant about keeping the past hidden. Morrison exemplifies the process of uncovering and confronting the past, as well as the merging of the past and the present. Beloved and Sethe are depicted as representations of the past, bringing history back to life by remembering the history of colonialism through liberating themselves and their emancipation. Beloved's personality embodies the past and present interwoven in a conscience. In terms of actions, she is indeed an infant, but her body resembles that of the lady she might have become if she hadn't been murdered. Her paranormal appearances are the outcome of unsolved tensions in Sethe and Beloved's mother-child relationship, and their very presence is due to her awareness' non-continuity. Sethe murder of her child strikes as a desperate act of a mother seeking to defend her kids from slavery. Black women display their love via enormous self-sacrifice; consequently, Sethe felt that there would be nothing she could have done. Sethe's sacrifice, like that of all heroes, is significant, the loss of her two-year-old daughter. Morrison's reworking of the slave woman tale is significant since it persistently probes the mind of a person who paid the highest price for her freedom. It is indeed important because the story has the ability to propose an option or cure to the constraints of the indignant mother's emotional identification. The figure of Denver is created by Morrison to function as a link here between ex-slave persona and the free African personality to make their voices heard. Denver, in particular, offers significant potential of reconciliation among her enraged mother Sethe and the society because Sethe's role as a loving mother and consequently defender of her children drives her to take command and become a strong mother. Against any and all circumstances, she fights enslavement by imagining a decent future for them and then claiming it by fleeing.
In Morrison's writings, there is always a character searching for his or her true identity. Sethe tries to come to grips with her history as a slave in Beloved in order to restore herself and her authenticity. Morrison wants to restore Sethe's voice and identity, as well as the voices and personalities of all the female slaves who were unable to speak their experiences. She also wishes to emphasize the significance of the African-American experience in shaping American culture. Morrison is showing a state that eroded, but did not eliminate, the collective and individual history and traditions of Afro-Americans. Morrison is hoping to recreate the substance of what it implies to be a slave, an African female, and a human being in such a situation. In Beloved, Morrison is seeking to convince us that Sethe's act of defiance is more than just a psychotic act of a distraught slave mother. Slavery as a socioeconomic, racial, and cultural form of exploitation and oppression is challenged in Sethe's act of revolt.
Morrison depicts gender prejudice between men and women captives in Beloved. She underlines, notably, the heinous sort of double oppression that black women face as a result of their gender and race. Male and female responsibilities, acts, attitudes, and characteristics are approved by community, resulting in sexual inequities. To challenge this disparity, feminist philosophy relating to gender politics, gender issues, power concerns, and sexual identity is embedded in this novel. Beloved powerfully depicts gender prejudice. The female slaves, suffer in two ways. Not only are they stigmatized because of their color of skin, but they are also rejected because of their sexuality. Women were mistreated not only by white oppressors, as well as by members of their very own society. The society's jealousy of Baby Suggs, their inability to appreciate life and resentment of her kindness reveal their concerns, insecurities, and disgusts with a slave woman who attempts to describe herself as an individual identity in community. Sethe's murder was also partly the fault of the society, which, out of jealousy, failed to inform baby Suggs of the Schoolteacher's approach to apprehend Sethe and her children. Sethe and Denver were forced to live in loneliness for many years due to their disdain of Sethe, a woman slave who attempted to defy the social convention. They had to fend for themselves and did not go to the community for almost anything.
Sethe has learned through her life that women are victims of male society's sexual violence, as she is constantly confronted with this at Sweet Home, where " two boys with mossy teeth,” (Morrison 35) pull her down and drink her breast milk. Sethe, as a female and a slave, must convert her body into a product in order to give her body to a white male's sexual inscriptions. "She flies...the ice pick is in her hand" (Morrison 130) as a schoolteacher intrudes on her family. Despite the fact that it is a cruel manner, the cruel male-oriented culture prevents her from finding another means to do this work that does not include killing them, because she exposes to Paul D that this hazardous and homicidal society fractures her two feet into numerous feet. Her courageous act of defiance and her will to survive alone without aid of everyone else turn her become a lone warrior against the entire world after this incident as “revolting on their traditions and values symbolizes the black woman's search for self- affirmation in the patriarchal society” (Mankhi 41) She is regarded as an outsider by the community at large. She has become a prisoner of masculine surroundings' past and current horrors, school teacher, imprisonment, and other white barbarity must declare her subjectivity to her society, despite her determination and wanted freedom, as well as her inventiveness in cultivating her autonomy and independence.
Female unity assists women in preventing and combating the impacts of gender and racial discrimination. Black women form bonds with one another because of female solidarity for reasons of ease, protection, and the power to turn to her own sexual identity for support and love because “black female alliances is the main theme in Morrison’s writing and how the racist discourse penetrates the social fabric (in)visibly while materially sustaining hierarchical powers which derive in new forms of slavery” (Benavente 11). Women of color who practice female unity are free to exit together in peace and successfully connect with one another in order to learn more of themselves and their personalities in the society. Female unity amongst Black women is an important component of the process of re-framing the African woman's role in culture and society. Female support is usually accomplished in Beloved through mother-daughter connections. Sethe and Beloved 's mother-daughter connection is at the heart of the work, however there are other instances of woman connecting and unity, such as Sethe's relationship with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and her friendship to her other child, Denver. Furthermore, the circle of women that assist Sethe's family trigger attention and consideration of female solidarity in the ending. As Morrison depicts the terrible impact of slavery on these women's identities, she also demonstrates how the females' bonds help them survive and recover.
Morrison presents a message about what framework of individuality a black woman should build and how she should endeavor for a meaningful pursuit for self through the personalities Sethe and the other women. She has produced ladies with various modes of thought and almost contradictory paradigms of adherence and non-conformity in Beloved, and to identify their personas is to characterize half of one individual. According to Benevente, “this means that considering past and present as mutually influenced, she is enacting changes in the future. Thus, she is not rescuing from the past, neither is she denying it” (Benevente 8). The concept of option against no options in the era of Sethe is accompanied by a network of hidden racist and misogynistic transgressions in Beloved. Frequently, black female protagonists are crushed before they even start, or they face resistance with every decision they make. In essence, black women are limited in their options. The solution to what black women must do to have choice is not offered until the final episode. Ella and the other black women who have gathered to defend Sethe have made a decision that connects them. Their womanhood and blackness, which had kept separate them for 18 years, are now the characteristics that bind them around each other.
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- Quote paper
- Oumaima El Kaouidi (Author), 2022, Afro-American Women's Voice Against Sexism and Oppression in Toni Morrison’s "Beloved", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1313559
