Dasha Bukovskaya
Beloved In Class Essay Toni Morrison’s text Beloved takes a matriarchal stance because the men of the story are well surpassed by women, specifically Sethe, in terms of decision making and speaks against unavoidable violence and abuse as well. Morrison gives value to men and yet Sethe becomes a more powerful character by exhibiting her own “masculine” characteristics. Paul D has an effortless power right from the beginning, “There was something blessed in his manner” (11). But Sethe saw him eighteen years after their time at Sweet Home, they talk openly and she easily invites him into her home, and he dims under her shine. Paul D was proud of her escape but annoyed that she did not need the help of her husband Halle or himself.…show more content… Any ex-slave becomes dangerously vulnerable to love anything too much because at any time they could be separated from it in a matter of time. Sethe takes fate in her own hands and kills Beloved because she does not want her to die, and she struggles with loving “too thick” (115). Motherhood as a slave is especially terrible because the children are oftentimes conceived by rape and if the child is fortunate enough to survive, their mother is forced to see them sold off to experience slavery. Sethe is without fault an unfit mother because she is a slave and therefore just property. Furthermore, no normal mother would kill her child under any circumstances. Morrison shows the unfairness that Sethe must endure means that she has to decide the fate of her own child and then literally be haunted for her decision. Tormented living was the case for Sethe until it was made clear that she chooses Beloved’s spirit over her body, and Beloved’s return is redemption or a validation that the choice her mother made was the right one. The act of loving is discriminatory for the time period, and a motherly title is the only one that Sethe can hold as a slave but even this is impossible. Morrison shows how it is out of the question for strong women to live a good life, or in the least, a normal