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Motherhood Wrought By Slavery In Toni Morrison's Beloved

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Motherhood Annihilation Wrought by Slavery: An Elucidation of Toni Morrison’s Beloved

P J GIFTLIN,
Assistant Professor of English,
Nesamony Memorial Christian College,
Marthandam.

Abstract

Toni Morrison is s famous contemporary black female author who admirably succeeds in creating a ‘penetrating view of black motherhood’. There are several relationships that Morrison links together to show the aftereffects of the civil war from the Afro Americans point of view. The novel Beloved deals with the forgotten era of slavery and the sufferings of black slaves. Sethe, the protagonist suffers the most inhumane treatment at the plantation by the white masters. The literature produced after the Civil War concentrate on the lives of African Americans during and after slavery. Beloved deals exclusively with the distorted love of a mother for her child under the oppression of slavery. Due to the horror of slavery Sethe 's murder of Beloved is renovated into what Morrison controversially considers 'the ultimate gesture of a …show more content…

Sethe is the female protagonist in Beloved. She lost her mother at a very early age and she too is a slave. She was brought to the Sweet Home Plantation as a slave where she marries Halle Suggs and bears four children from him. She as a slave suffers a lot inhumane treatment at the plantation by the white masters. She is thrashed hardheartedly and milked like a cow. She was not even considered as a woman. The whites, “…sucked her lactating breasts” (109). This incident disturbs Sethe to a great extent and so she decides to run away from the plantation. She congregates all her courage and flees to take refuge in the house of her mother-in-law at 124 Bluestone Road. She is soon traced and was forced to be back as a slave. On finding no hopes for freedom Sethe takes the most horrific step of killing her own daughter to show resistance towards slavery. She is imprisoned for seven years for her crime and later secluded by the community and declared an

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