The Obsession of Mother and Daughter....

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Morrison covers a vast range of topics from slavery, community, and memories of the past. But by far the most present topic is motherhood. Sandra Mayfield’s Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Psychological Reading also covers the meanings of mothership behind Morrison. Morrison gives a variety of characters different maternal actions and instincts. Through analyzing the mothering instincts Morrison distributed and the deeper meanings behind those choices, the role of a mother shows the importance it plays on the internal conflicts one faces as well as as how it affects the relationships with those around.

Beloved was just as obsessed with Sethe as Sethe was with Beloved. Beloved saw herself as “not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too” (249). Beloved is obsessed with Sethe, seeing Sethe as someone to follow around and be “there in the place” where Sethe is and spend time with her. According to Mayfield, one of the “grounding[s] for a child’s ego is human desire”. This desire is built on the child’s wish to be “the completing object of the mother’s desire” (4). This is what is happening with Beloved. Beloved feels the desire to be the sole object of Sethe’s desires and makes that her objective of her return. The first instance where Beloved shows her desire toward Sethe is in the emerald closet. Sethe needs comfort and Beloved tries to give it to her but ends up choking Sethe instead, "'I fixed it, didn't I? Didn't I fix her neck?'. 'After. After you choked her neck.' 'I kissed her neck. I didn't choke it. The circle of iron choked it'" (119). Beloved sees Sethe sad about Baby Suggs so she tries to comfort her but she goes a little too hard. Beloved gets so into comforting Sethe that she begins to choke Sethe. Beloved then sees Sethe in pain and tries to “fix” her bruises with kisses. Beloved’s “fixing” leads to her becoming closer to Sethe, thus closer to achieving her mission. Beloved is still a stranger to Sethe yet, there is some connection between Sethe and Beloved. Sethe doesn’t worry about Beloved’s action because she feels that there is something between them. There was lost time and Beloved desperately wants to make up for much like Sethe does. Eventually when Sethe realizes that Beloved is the child she lost 18 years earlier, Beloved becomes the sole object of her desires. Sethe wants to make up for lost time while Beloved wants to fuel her ego by achieving her mother’s desire. Sethe believes that “when [she] explain[s] it [Beloved] understand, because she understands everything already. [she]’ll tend to her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter” (236). Sethe has been reunited with her lost child and her mission is to make up for everything has missed. Sethe’s sole focus become Beloved which has been Beloved’s mission the entire time.

             

Toni Morrison’s story Beloved is an amazing novel that grips into reality which portrays scenes of rape and violence to explore just how cruel mankind is naturally as well as the affects it has on the main characters Sethe and Beloved. The main point though is just how broken it can leave a person when another human being causes them enough harm to be haunted by it on a day to day basis. All around the story Morrison uses both Sethe and Beloved to portray the effects of human cruelty and mistakes.

A character from Beloved whom is greatly affected by rape throughout the story is Beloved, one of the leading roles throughout this story and a child ghost who haunts Sethe throughout the story and gives consequence to her actions prior, as a result many believe her to be a bad spirit but in the words of Denver, “[She is] rebuked. Lonely and rebuked”. Beloved is introduced in the beginning as a character who drives others away but we later see that she is much more complex than that. Not it’s true that some of the things she does in the story can be justifications that she is only meant to drive a wedge between others such as the introduction of Paul D and Beloved how many times that she tries to scare him away. But when it was said that she she was “rebuked” it was justified in having the emotional scars left behind by a traumatic experience. Beloved seemed to be growing into a representation of Sethe as the story progresses so as Sethe’s emotions transferred into her it made sense that Beloved would be untrusting of others. How could you trust anyone so easily after having been abused by so many your entire life, and with a character like Beloved not even having lived a life because her own mother was fearful of what abuse she could have gone through in her life. Beloved could have easily changed her life around and this could have been not even a fantasy if she had lived but then perhaps she’d still be turning into Sethe with having then gone through similar experiences as her.

Yet even through her death and her haunting and her finally leaving most people at the end of the story begin to have that feeling anyways. Although this time without her, no longer do people fear passing by the house 124 and with the return of many into Sethe’s life she seems to progress herself. That’s what needed to be done all along though, because with a constant daily reminder of your own mistakes which was what Beloved was to Sethe you could never get over it, but after you get rid of it you really do get a sense of peace. Humanity seems to be the most wicked of all the creatures on earth and also the most deceptive, turning on each other at the most continuous times. It doesn’t give much for the neighbors to have turned on the Beloved family but progressively in the end they return and after a bit they act as if though they never were ignoring that family. No other species on the planet seems to have as much conflict with one another as humans do. It is those harmful effects which leave tremendous scars on a person's life and it is that in which the story conveys through the relationship of Beloved and Sethe.

For today's Beloved meal: Psychoanalysis with Feminism on the side

For this blogpost, I decided on the article Figurations of Rape and the Supernatural in Beloved by Pamela E. Barnett. "Toni Morrison's Beloved is haunted by history, memory, and a specter that embodies both; yet it would be accurate to say that Beloved is haunted by the history and memory of rape specifically"(418). One of the first main points that Barnett addresses is the idea of how hard it is for someone to get over their past. The main event that she talks about is having sex or the act of rape. For example, she talks about several of Sethe's experiences, like how she had sex with the tomb engraver to able to engrave the word Beloved into the tombstone, and how that could be portrayed as a form of prostitution. The second point that Barnett addresses is that of Beloved, and how she is both there spiritually at the beginning, and physically for almost the rest of the book.  She also touches on how she attacked in both forms. Her next point is of "Sexual violence, Sucking, and Sustenance"(422). In this point she goes in depth to the several ways that rape and sexual intercourse is portrayed and seen throughout the book. After that, she is still exploring some ways that rape is portrayed, but focuses more on how many of the prisoners were taken advantaged of and how that affected them.
Finally, near the end of the article she constructs a relationship between male and female and how gender is important in the book in rape, but also how there could be a relationship between races.


Throughout the article, Barnett focuses on many points of the story.

One of her points that she makes a lot of emphasis on, and that she often refers to is that of the power that rape has in the book, and how Beloved, the physical character, is a representation of a "succubus"(418). What a succubus is is "a female demon and nightmare figure that sexually assaults male sleepers and drains them of semen". Another of her points that she emphasizes in her article is the idea of being stuck in the past, that is seen usually through the different memories of some form of rape that most characters experience in their past. The last point that I felt was really important to talk about that Barnett emphasizes in her article I the idea of "conflation of sexual and racial domination"(423). What that means is when two things, in this case, the concepts of sexual and racial domination, sort of merge together and people can't tell them apart.

When first reading the book, I never really imagined the possibility of Beloved as a symbol as a succubus because of events that occur in the book. She also goes on to say that it is in comparison to a vampire as well. Barnett says that this is seen in multiple occasions. One of the people that she mainly focuses on is Paul D. Throughout the book Beloved and Paul D never really had a strong relationship, from the moment where he originally exorcises her "ghost spirit" from 124(22). Later on in the story, it is implied that she forced Paul D into a sexual relation with her. I agree with the idea that it could be a form of Beloved "draining" him of his semen and how it was for her benefit because she does gain some form of strength over Paul D after this(137). We also know that it really affected Paul D, because he felt powerless, and he remembers it as something that happened in the dark which often has the connotation of evil or bad, versus the idea of it happening in the light which has the connotation power and ability. Barnett also goes on to say that although a succubus usually only feeds off of men, Beloved also feeds off of Sethe and her "vitality"(418). This is seen throughout the book when Beloved first came into the book(as her physical self, not her spiritual herself) and how Beloved had no power over Sethe but as the chapters went on, we, as the readers saw, how Beloved's presence was putting Sethe into this situation where she was losing control and that power. I think that overall this idea of Beloved being a Succubus could definitely be a possible thing on account that definitely at the end of the story, she was big and pregnant. The pregnancy could have come from the semen that she had stolen from Paul D, and the physically trait of her being big was the vitality that she had stolen from Sethe.

The way the book was setup and written was that there was constant flashbacks to the past. Barnett compares the book Beloved as a trauma story, which she goes on to say that trauma stories "[oscillate] between a crisis of death and the correlative crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable nature of its survival"(420). I understand that one of the big messages in Beloved is the idea of how the past can affect the future, that when you think about it is a denotation of what a trauma is, a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. I also agree with her on this.

One of the last points that I agree with Barnett is her idea of the conflation between sexual and racial domination. This takes place when Paul D is at the prison, and the white officers are taking advantage of the black inmates. Barnett goes on to say "the prisoners are emasculated by passive homosexuality - they are forced to 'go down' (54), to express their social subordination as desire for penetration, and to assume the 'faggot' identity (56)"(423). It is obvious that the officers feel as though they are the ones with power and that they are generally better than the prisoners. This is an ongoing theme that is in the story about racial dominance, but Morrison plays a new twist of having it mix with sexual domination. Through the psychoanalytical lens, you can see this of them believing that they are so powerful over the inmates, that they are forcing them to do something that at the time when the book takes place, was seen as a sin. This made the prisoners feel "emasculated" because they are doing something that they believe is wrong against their will.

Article that is mentioned Figurations of Rape and the Supernatural in Beloved by Pamela E. Barnett

Article vs. My Arguments about “Beloved”

Based on the article that I have read I want to argue about 3 points that appeared in that article. First is about the theme of Toni Morrison’s Beloved novel. Second is about why Toni Morrison chose those theme and the last is the relation between the theme and psychoanalytical lens. I want to argue about those 3 points wether I agree or disagree and before I write my arguments I will write an analysis about those 3 points that I have mentioned before.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved novel is kind of novel which is not following the order of the events because it starts from the middle event and turn into the past. That is why the theme of the Toni Morrison’s Beloved novel is about someone who can not runaway from her past, about someone who can not move on from her past and about someone who always keep thinking of her past. I think it is because the character had a bad experience in the past which caused her always thinking about it and caused her memories of her bad experience is still attached in her brain. For Sethe, once a thing happens it always exists in her brain. Beloved is the only reason for Sethe proven by " '. . . nothing ever dies,' " (36) that is why Sethe could not runaway from her past, the memory will always lives and turns into a fear which continues to haunt her. Whenever she discussed something new that related to her daughter “Beloved” she always caught on into flashback, take the past memories again and it makes this novel is more complicated because after the story is flash forward it will turn into flashback in sudden. To support this theme Toni Marrison was never explained directly every single events that caused something happened. The reader is need to be patient and keep reading every single pages until the reader find what actually causes something to happen in the past. The porposes are to make the reader curious about what going to happen in the next, also want to make the reader does not getting bored easily with the story and the last is Toni Morrison want to make the reader want to read until the end. Thus, the reader will find any causes that was arise on the story based on the character’s experiences in the past. For example, Sethe initially tells Paul D that her daughter died but does not tell him (or us) how (10), the second example is when Sethe first tells Paul D about schoolteacher's arrival at 124 Bluestone (42), she mentions that she was going to jail but she does not tell him (or us) why. I’m agree with the theme that Toni Morrison used in this novel because it makes the novel is more challenging to read and makes me always curious with what will be happen on the next pages.

Based on the theme that I have already mentioned before, Toni Morrison was made this novel is little bit complicated. She does not want to make the readers being confused and make the readers have a really hard time to understand her novel. Eventhough this novel is lil bit complicated but I agree with the way of Toni Morrison wrote her story because I think she did this because she wanted to make this novel more detail, clarify every single events and make sure that every single events that the character had ever experienced is including to the story so the reader can feel what the character felt at that time and also Toni Morrison used flashback and flash forward to tell all of the details of the story so there will be no any stories that is not conveyed and nothing to be missed. It makes easier to deliver the story to the reader because the story is very detail.

Relating the theme that I already mentioned before with psychoanalytical lens that I have observed recently is Sethe used her inner thoughts whenever Sethe remembered her past. When Sethe want to tell the truth about what actually was going to Paul D she used her inner thoughts wether she is ready or not to tell him everything because she knows that she will be remembered her past. Sethe used her id and ego before she killed Beloved and she used her superego when she decided to kill Beloved. Beloved also used her inner thoughts when she decided to go back to her family as a ghost. “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water” (60) from this passage I can estimate that Beloved used her inner thoughts, id, ego and superego before she walked out of the water. I find it easy to analyse my lens based on the theme and the way of Toni Morrison wrote her story. I agree with everything that she already done in this novel because it makes me easier to find everything about my lens.

I read an article of Pihilip Page about Beloved novel. In this article, Philip Page more focused on what is in the mind in every characters through psychoanalytical lens and analyze the passage with the inner thoughts based psychoanalytical lens. This article is also more detail because Philip Page give an evidence by the sentences that prove from the novel "Beloved". So in every single analysis that he made is reliable. Compared with my article's argument that I have made is I was more focused on the theme analysis supported by an evidence of each passage. I think my article's argument is also quite reliable.

Denver's longing for a sister....

Are the characters struggling with any internal conflicts? Can this explain why they make certain decisions or subconscious choices?

Beloved is filled with many complex, unique characters that have a lot going on in their mind. One of the most most prominent characters, Denver, must deal with major interior conflicts like finding support and purpose for herself.

Denver is the only child left in her family. Her brothers ran away and she was left by herself with her mother, Sethe. Denver and her mother are also excluded from the community because of Sethe’s past. Because of their exclusion from the community Denver must find companionship from Beloved, the baby ghost. Denver has never had any real friends and finds happiness in having the ghost. When Paul D scares the ghost away, it left “Denver’s world flat” she was once again lonely.  Denver is struggling to find support and feels alone. Sethe has been unstable for the majority of Denver’s life and Denver has felt excluded yet trapped by the world around her. It isn’t until Beloved is reincarnated when Denver begins to feel support again.

“Four days she slept, waking and sitting up only for water. Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness that charged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence. She rinsed the sheets secretly, after Sethe went to the restaurant and Paul D went scrounging for barges to help unload. She boiled the underwear and soaked it in bluing, praying the fever would pass without damage” (64).

When Beloved arrived Denver took it as her mission to take care of Beloved. Subconsciously, Denver felt obligated to take care of Beloved because she felt like her own mother never really took care of her. Sethe was very unstable when raising Denver, thus making Sethe struggle to be a good mother. Denver compensates for this by taking tending to Beloved. Denver “watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing”. The act of listening to someone sleep is an action typically taken on by a mother. Sleeping is a very intimate moment where the person sleeping is very weak position. By taking care of Beloved in that state and listening to her “labored breathing”. Denver is taking a moment to take care of Beloved while she is in that weak state. Denver “rinsed sheets” and “boiled underwear” for Beloved. Doing some one’s laundry is not an easy task, especially back in the late 1800s. Washing Beloved’s underwear also shows how much Denver is dedicated to Beloved. Underwear is a very intimate piece of clothing and by washing them for Beloved, Denver is showing she feels a special connection with Beloved. Beloved is a complete stranger to Denver but she still felt a motherly obligation to take care of Beloved because of her weak state.

Denver puts all her energy into helping Beloved because she wants to take care of someone to fulfil her internal hole that Sethe left her. Denver wants to feel useful and overall wants a friend. Denver has lived her entire life by herself and desperately wants companionship. Denver sees Beloved as her friend and wants to take care of her. Denver also sees Beloved as a daughter. Beloved acts like a child and Denver wants to be close to her unlike how she feels about how her mom wants to be with her. Eventually when Beloved fully heals, Denver learns that Beloved only came back for Sethe and once again feels abandoned.

Beauty In Hell the Psychoanalytical Aspect

From “Beloved” by Toni Morrison

There had been a simple place, one in which on the outside appeared to be a quaint farm with only farm troubles at the most. It was when you went inside that the true horrors of slavery unraveled.  As Sethe looked back at her life there was always an image that could never escape her mind as hard as she tried. She remember and “there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream” in front of her, “it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too” (7.1).  A simple thought in the back of Sethe’s head, one in which haunted her for she knew that it could have been true if a place such as Sweet home where so many horrible things happened could look as magnificent as it was. It seemed interesting how many people claim the devil to be handsome, that being how he gets people. As if it’s only the  things that cause us harm in which are the prettiest and what humans are naturally attracted to. It’s important to acknowledge the fact that these farms no matter how beautiful the scenery was that many African Americans had worked the land a few years prior before the ending of the Civil War. Sethe struggles with letting go of the past, she knows some of the decisions she had to make were for the right reasons but with negative consequences. It might explain why the ghost of Beloved is even still around. It is obvious that after such a horrible past in Sweet Home that there would be resentment towards it, but all it is doing is hurting herself more than she is to anyone else.

When Morrison writes “there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream” she’s using a hyperbole, obviously not every leaf actually made her scream. But the pain within her made it seem that way. When the quote writes “it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty” it seemed as if though it creeped up on her. The same way that hell and demons might enter shamelessly and without warning into another person's life. It was a bit ironic that it was always the beautiful things in life that made our pasts dismal. It may not have looked bad on the outside but once you got past the first layer things would go bad. Sethe seems to be controlled mostly by her Id in the Freudian aspect always acting upon an impulse because of the situation present. Throughout this quote she might not seem to be acting upon anything harshly but her judgement sure is quick. The reasoning behind all that’s been done whether here or in a different part of the book seems to be “whatever feels right, you must do it”.

Why I Chose This Lens–Psychoanalytic Lens

The Psychoanalytic Lens and Why It Is So Interesting

 

Of all the possible lens choices the most interesting was the Psychoanalytical lens. While the Gender/Feminist lens and Racial lens are more prominent, I felt the analysis of the physiological aspects of the story would be more interesting.

I actually don’t have a lot of experience with this lens but sociology really interests me. The brain is the most complex muscle in the body and it never stops working until the day you die. I also got super interested in the idea of our subconscious after reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. The book explored the idea of how we do things and think things without realizing it. There are so many things that our mind can do without us knowing or trying to do.

I personally believe the mind is so amazing and no two persons mind is the same. Every person on earth has their own individual thoughts and own individual consciences. I'm excited to learn about the minds of the characters in Beloved and see how they relate to each other and others outside the novel.