Learning about these sorts of things in history can only give someone a surface level understanding of what slave women faced. In a novel with real characters, it becomes more powerful and we see the lasting impact certain decisions have. The novel asks pressing questions about a mother's love and her boundaries and limitations. Many black mothers in this country with children around this time probably had to contemplate these things. However, these questions are not bounded by time and place. On a much smaller scale, parents make sacrifices for their children all the time so that their children don't have to suffer or live a harder life. On page 163, Sethe says "I couldn't let all that go back to where it was, and I couldn't let her nor any of them live under schoolteacher". She wants what is best for her child and is willing to do something that may make it tough for her to live with herself. On page 165, she says "I stopped him...I took my babies and put them where they would be safe. It is my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I know is terrible. I did that".
Source: The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 5, No. 6 (Mar., 1988), pp. 4-5
This was very interesting to read, because Sethe's reasoning in my mind was very flawed. However seeing how very real her reasoning was, makes me think more about my own criticism of Sethe. Her situation is representative of a lot of women, and this was very interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I liked how you managed to tie in the story, the real event it is based on, and the historical importance. It helped me realize how this novel really helped me to understand the history of slavery and its effect.
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad you brought up the fact that this book is based on a true story. Considering a real person having to make this decision, rather than just a fictional representation of it, definitely makes the judgements we make seem to have more meaning. I'm still unable to say for sure how I feel about Sethe's decision, but perhaps I have an even bigger appreciation for what Toni Morrison was trying to convey through her novel.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that actions like the one Sethe made with Beloved has been happening all over the nation at that time. I can't imagine something like that to happen to someone else, and I can't imagine someone making the decision Sethe did.
ReplyDeleteYeah and I find it truly remarkable how we don't seem to learn about this sort of stuff in history classes.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how common the specific experience of a mother killing her children to avoid having them returned to slavery actually was--given how the Garner story affected Morrison when she came across it (which she describes in her foreword to the novel), it sounds like an exceptional enough event to have merited special attention in the newspaper, and her imagination seized on the idea and used the basic facts of the case as the starting point to imagine a novel that would dramatize a person put into such a situation and what her mindset might be.
ReplyDeleteBut through Paul D's perspective, we do get a sense of widespread disarray, terror, and violence among the recently freed slave population, with atrocities happening all over the landscape. Morrison's dedication of the novel to "Sixty Million and More" seems to reflect on the fact that the true numbers of lives lost in this American Holocaust will never be known, and that "more" contains all kinds of horrific vignettes like Sethe and her children in the woodshed.