A Feminist Approach to Toni Morisson's Beloved
A feminist approach to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
When hearing about Toni Morrison’s novel, “Beloved”, one may imagine it as being another story about a slave’s life. And this is not wrong. “Beloved” does tell the tales of many slaves. It tells of whippings, rape, hard work and escape. But, while drawing this image of the historical aspect of enslavement and black culture, Morrison also tells the personal story of a very strong female slave. Morrison’s novel focuses mainly on the female characters – Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver, Beloved – and their relationships. If feminism may be defined as a major movement in western thinking in western thinking since the 1960s, which puts particular emphasis upon the importance of women’s experience, then “Beloved” can be regarded through a feminist perspective. Even though “Beloved” tells the story of many slaves, because of its focus on the proactive and independent women in the novel, it also makes a feminist statement. Morrison has a particular way of writing the female body into the discourse of slavery, motherhood, human rights and morality. She presents the exploitation of the female body in both a sensory and psychological way. There are many examples in the novel that illustrate this aspect. In the case of Sethe, one of the major characters, we can observe both ways of exploitation of the human body. The stealing of her milk during the rape she suffered writes her experience as a woman slave who has no right to her body and also her experience as a slave mother with no defense, who is used to the violation of her own body, but cannot bear the forcible extraction of her milk meant for the child in her womb. The psychological trauma left behind this experience is felt by the mother who is symbolically separated from her child. The earliest need that a child has is mother’s milk. Sethe is traumatized by the experience of having her milk stolen because it means she cannot form the symbolic bond between herself and her
When hearing about Toni Morrison’s novel, “Beloved”, one may imagine it as being another story about a slave’s life. And this is not wrong. “Beloved” does tell the tales of many slaves. It tells of whippings, rape, hard work and escape. But, while drawing this image of the historical aspect of enslavement and black culture, Morrison also tells the personal story of a very strong female slave. Morrison’s novel focuses mainly on the female characters – Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver, Beloved – and their relationships. If feminism may be defined as a major movement in western thinking in western thinking since the 1960s, which puts particular emphasis upon the importance of women’s experience, then “Beloved” can be regarded through a feminist perspective. Even though “Beloved” tells the story of many slaves, because of its focus on the proactive and independent women in the novel, it also makes a feminist statement. Morrison has a particular way of writing the female body into the discourse of slavery, motherhood, human rights and morality. She presents the exploitation of the female body in both a sensory and psychological way. There are many examples in the novel that illustrate this aspect. In the case of Sethe, one of the major characters, we can observe both ways of exploitation of the human body. The stealing of her milk during the rape she suffered writes her experience as a woman slave who has no right to her body and also her experience as a slave mother with no defense, who is used to the violation of her own body, but cannot bear the forcible extraction of her milk meant for the child in her womb. The psychological trauma left behind this experience is felt by the mother who is symbolically separated from her child. The earliest need that a child has is mother’s milk. Sethe is traumatized by the experience of having her milk stolen because it means she cannot form the symbolic bond between herself and her