Sethe Is A Victim Of Slavery

Not only Sethe was the victim of the brutal white society, but also the victim of her husband. She suffered a lot because of her husband who was supposed to be her protector from the external world. Hence, Halle who was the husband of Sethe mistreated her because he was hiding in the barn loft when the Schoolteacher’s nephew sucked out her breast milk. Traumatized by his wife’s suffering, Halle eventually lost his mind. Being a victim of slavery, Sethe was deprived even from a natural right as a living human being when she naively requested a marriage service to honor her union with Halle. Here, it is worth mentioning that slaves do not have the same type of marital conventions as white. Finally, she enjoyed her brief honeymoon in Mr. Garner’s corn

For example, sometimes a female slave could not take care of her own children because she was forced to nurse the children of her master. Here, Sethe also had the same critical situation because she saw her mother hanged in front of her. Sethe longed for her mother’s love because as an infant she did not stay with her mother. Another woman named Nan who was the friend of Sethe’s mother took care of her. Sethe was angry because her mother did not take Sethe with her, but she let Sethe live when she died. Sethe was also vexed because her mother ran away from the plantation. Sethe felt abandoned and she was disappointed that her mother left her even though Nan tried to comfort her by saying that her mother loved her very much. Nan even told Sethe that her mother threw her other children from a ship in a sea because those children were her master’s and she did not consider them exclusively hers. Sethe was the only daughter kept alive. Sethe felt that her mother failed to act like a mother for her and also she felt obligated to fill the void existing in her own relationship with her