1、广东工业大学华立学院学期课程论文 宠儿奴隶母亲的畸形母爱The Distorted Love of Slavery Mother in Beloved论文题目 宠儿奴隶母亲的畸形母爱 学 部 外语外贸学部 专 业 英 语 班 级 学 号 学生姓名 指导教师 关键词：宠儿，女性主义，畸形的母爱The Distorted Mother Love in BelovedBeloved probes the most painful part of Africa American heritage - slavery. It penetrates the emotional and psychic co
2、nsequences of slavery. She both describes the condition of the enslavement in the external world and the repercussions in the individual internal world. Beloved explores many themes such as the black community, motherhood, and the relations between a man and a woman. Even thought all these themes ar
3、e different from one to another, the central them is motherhood. Morrison reveals the distorted influence of slavery on motherhood. As Mary Helen Washington Says, “motherhood, complicated and threatened by racism, is a special kind of motherhood”.2Motherhood in Beloved is affected by biological, psy
4、chological, and culture forces becomes an abnormal and unhealthy one. 1. Manifestations of Distorted Mother LoveMotherhood is deformed by Slavery, and the maternal love is unhealthy in Beloved. Elizabeth Fox- Genovese says, “Shaped the experiences on all women in the Old South, affecting the domesti
5、c and childbearing roles of both black and white women.”6The blacks are the properties of the slave owners. They make money by childbearing, through which they can produce more slaves for planters and as a matter of fact renewed the system of slavery. Under the social background, the motherhood is d
6、amaged by slavery system. 1.1 Abnormal MaternityMaternity is an everlasting topic in the history, especially in literature. It is the most powerful and important love in Beloved, of which all can be conquered. Toni Morrison devoted many times to writing the maternal love in her writing career. The a
7、bsence of maternity causes the abnormal psychological state of many characters in Beloved.When Sethe was a little girl, her mother was hanged by her owner. She longs for the maternal love as her daughter Beloved. She even don remember what her mother looked like. She rarely saw her mother, just reme
8、mbering the marks burned into her mothers skin. Whats more, Sethe ran to her dead mother, trying to search for the mark which is the symbol of her mothers body. The concept of maternity in Sethes mind is vague. She yearns for it; however, as a slaver, she was deprived the right to enjoy the natural
9、mater love, knowing every woman was called Maam. Having been deprived of maternal love, Sethe knows exactly its importance to a child. In Beloved, a great deal of materials is written to describe Sethes maternal love. As a mother, she makes her best to protect her children, especially protect them f
10、orm the harm at Sweet Home “got up on the wall, right on it. I flew. Snatched him just in time.smoking and I couldnt see after him well. I got a rope and tied it round his ankle.I didnt like the look of it, but what else could do. Its hard, you know what I mean? By yourself and no woman help you get
11、 through.” (Morrison, 160)Under slavery, the right to nurse ones own child is almost deprived by the whites. Their children receive milk only after the whit babies left. “Nursing Mother and Feminine Metaphysics”, Demetrakopoulos argues in her essay that many people regard the breast milk as the symb
12、ol for the essence of maternal love. In Beloved, Sethe cares about her breast milk very much, which is the symbol of maternal love for her child, because it is the food for her child. Sethe reflects upon the relationship between maternal love and nursing milk: “Nobody will ever get my milk any more
13、except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else and the one time I did it was took for me they held me down and took it. Milk belonged to my baby. Nan had to nurse white babies and me too because Maam was in the rice. The little white babies got it first and I got what was left. Or non
14、e. There was no nursing milk to call my own. I know what it is like to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight an holler for it, and to have so little left. Ill tell Beloved about that: shell understand. She my daughter. The one I managed to have milk for and get it to her even aft
15、er they stole it.” (Morrison, 200)As for Sethe, nursing milk also means the essence of maternal love. Through her own orphan experience, Sethe knows the feeling lack of mother love for a baby and not to have her own mothers milk. It is why schoolteachers nephews stealing the milk her body is storing
16、 for her infant daughter when violate her, which is one of the painful memories of Sethe. Her “stolen milk” suggests the maternal love which is denied to her as a slave mother. When she tells what has happened to her to Paul D, she emphasizes on the loss of her babys nursing milk, but not the pain o
17、f beating:“They used cowhide on you？”“And they took my milk.”“They beat you and you were pregnant?”“And they took my milk.” (Morrison, 17)Her milk not only presents the cruel experience of a slave woman, but also her potential failure to nurse her children. Sethes love for her children is selfless.
18、She sees her children as her best thing: “The best thing she was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing the part of her that was clean.” (Morrison, 251) In whites eyes, they were degraded to animals, which make Sethe suffer much. Com
19、pared to let her children be threatened by schoolteacher, Sethe prefer to kill them than have them dirtied by the whites. As a result, Sethes abnormal maternal love and infanticide becomes normal under the system of slavery. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Sethe, Halle, Sethes husband, is watching from a
20、loft above her, when she is violated and stolen the milk by schoolteachers nephews. Afterward, Halle goes mad and never comes back, which left Sethe along with the children. Halles absence gives Sethe a heavy hit. She has no choice but to nurse the children by her own. It is this single parent famil
21、y that results in an unhealthy relationship between children and mother.1.2 Unhealthy Relationship Between Daughter and MotherThe daughter- mother relationship is always an eternal topic of mankind, so it is unavoidable to become the enduring theme in literature. An outpouring of scholarship on rela
22、tions between mother and daughter has been seen since the mid-1970s, including in todays literature.As described in Adrienne Richs masterpiece Of Woman Born: “The daughter views her mother both as herself and as the other from whom she must split to define her own sense of self. Despite this antipat
23、hy for her mother, though, the strong pre-oedipal bonds, her need for nurture, draw the daughter to her mother, making it much more difficult for her to break away than for the son. The result is a life long tension, a shifting back and forth from love to matrophobia, a rejection of the mother.” 9,
24、mother- daughter relation sometimes is antagonistic an antipathetic for some feminist theorists. Therefore, it seems challenging for both mother and daughter to handle the relationship properly. Or it will do a lot of harm to them. Under the slavery, daughter- mother relationship is seriously affect
25、ed and interrupted by it, which is an omnipresent force in the text. As a matter of face, in Beloved, there are as much about the mother-daughter relation as crimes of slavery, and is causes the tragic infanticide in Beloved. In slavery system, the slave women are regarded and valued as “breeders”.
26、Barbara Christian claims that one of the most salient elements of American slavery is that women are valued “not for themselves but for the capacity to breed, which is to produce workers for the society in Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers.3Whats more, according to the sl
27、avery, the mother has no right to charge her own childrens fate because they dont belong to her, just the products to the whites. In Beloved, the some tragedy happens to Sethe. As a slavery mother, she belongs to the Sweet Home, without any individuality or subjectivity. So do her children. Beloved
28、in Beloved is like a real character but not a ghost or the metaphor. The relation between Beloved and her mother, Sethe, is analyzed as an actual mother- daughter relationship, which is unhealthy and abnormal. Beloved comes back for maternal love, while her desire is insatiable. All the pay of Sethe
29、 is not enough. In other word, Beloveds desire even threats her mothers life, because in order to satisfy Beloveds need, Sethe becomes thinner and thinner; more and more lethargic. The description of the daughter- mother relation between Sethe and Beloved seems to verify the psychoanalytic conclusio
30、n which the bond between mother and daughter is dangerous, devouring and destructive. In the novel, Beloved says: “I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop” and Sethe says: “You are my face; I am you” As the novel tells us, the mother and daughter are “locked in a love that wore eve
31、rybody out”. Except for the abnormal relation between Sethe and Beloved, the relation between Sethe and Denver is also unhealthy. According to the following dialogue, we can find the depth and Sethe devotion to, and protection of Denver. “Excuse me, but I cant hear a word against her. Ill chastise h
32、er. You leave her alone.”“Why you think you have to take up for her? .”“I dont care what she is. Grown dont mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They are bigger, older”“It means she has to take it if she acts up. You cant protect her every minute. Whats going to happen when you die?”“Nothin
33、g! Ill protect her while Im alive and Ill protect her when aint” (Morrison, 45)Denver accepts to much love form her mother, so she must fight for out of the bond to be herself. Due to the excessive love from her mother, Denver keeps the quality of native, infantile and self-centered. Even though she
34、 grows up, she is the same as before. Whats worse, without any friends, she feels very lonely and is afraid of her mother and the world outside her yard. Luckily, she realizes that she has no self, so she decides to leave the yard. In short, either an inappropriate, over-close or too loose daughter-
35、 mother relationship is doing harm do both of them.2. Reasons of Distorted Mother Love In the novel, there are many reasons causing the deformed motherhood. This theme will focus on the truth experience of slaves, disruption of the motherhood and the exclusion of communitys. 2.1 The Black Slavers Tr
36、ue ExperienceIn Beloved, Morrison tells us the wrenching influence on the motherhood of slaves. Under slavery, the life of slaves is absolutely a nightmare, and it is the part of national amnesia. Morrison makes a conclusion that the limitations imposed on the 19th century writer of the slave narrat
37、ive. Morrison knows how painful to remember the nightmarish horrors in her novel. However, she chooses to remember it. By doing that, Beloved can help to reveal and honor the symbolic spirit of the black girl. It also presents the hope of a future where Afro-Americans can respect and honor themselve
38、s and their ancestors. It aims to tell a truth about Afro- Americans life, which has been either whitewashed or forgotten, such a horrible truth that it makes a mother kill her own child.The history of Afro Americans can date back to the middle passage that is a part of the Atlantic slave trade. Tho
39、se ships departed from Europe to African markets with commercial goods. However, in return, they were trade for kidnapped Africans who were transported as slaves. Many of the slaves were sold as the commercial goods for raw materials. Many slaves were imprisoned, enslaved and removed from their home
40、lands and their relatives in the process of capturing and transporting. “Some historians told me 200 million died. The smallest number I got from anybody was 60 million” Morrison once said in an interview. It seems that Morrison ground her fictional work in this historical reality. According to the
41、experience of Beloved, the slave ship was a horrible place in which the dead remained next to the living for long periods, in which the white men pushed the hill of dead people into the see. Many Africans who were caught by whites, like Beloveds mother, chose to committed suicide by jumping into the
42、 sea rather than live cruelly. Under slavery, the slaves are treated as animals than human beings. They are just the property of their owners. According to Paul Ds description in Beloved, we can clearly know the brutality of slavery. “During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned,
43、or hungry, or tied or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, has hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, patrollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers.(Morrison, 6
44、6)Morrison reveals the whit owners brutality and obscenity. After they failed to escape from Sweet Home, Paul D is sent to work on the gang sleep chained together in separate wooden cages. The misery memories of Paul D break his spirit, which is said following: “A man aint a goddamn ax. Chopping, ha
45、cking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he cant chop down because theyre inside.” (Morrison, 69) the male slaves are suffering from the cruel fate, so do the female. Female slaves not only were forced to endure the sexual advances of white males but also were mated
46、with white male slaves to increase their property. Seethe is the representative, as the Schoolteacher said to his nephew in Beloved “No, no. thats not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones o the right. And dont forget to line them up.” (Morrison, 193) The
47、whites degrade the black slaves to the rank of animals. Under the cruel slavery, many children are deprived the mother love. Meanwhile, the mothers have to experience the cruel alienation form their children. Sweet Home, under the dominant of Garners, is practiced a comparatively benevolent kind of
48、slavery. However, when Garners died, everything in Sweet Home is changed. After run the farm by Mrs. Garners sadistic, the oppressive presence makes the slaves life on the plantation even more unbearable than it had been before. So they decide to run away from Sweet Home. In Beloved, when Schoolteacher decides to sell him, Paul D realizes the sense of his identity. He understands that in many peoples eyes, he is at the same place with the animals. The description of Halle, who is Sethes husband, finally goes mad after watching his w
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