Arising from this is another paradox surrounding Mr. Garner and his treatment of slaves. From the introduction of his character, the reader is meant to see him in a good light because he calls his slaves "Sweet Home Men" and provides them with opportunities that would not be provided elsewhere, like being able to marry each other and live together. However, this practice of allowing them to love can be seen in the long run as an important factor as to why Sethe made her decision. Because Sethe was taught to love and learned to be a mother, she was put into a situation that no other slave would be put in. Even Paul D mentions how dangerous it is for a slave to love and not be able to give people up. Again the reader is put into a predicament. Could Garner's good treatment of his slaves have led to the horrific decisions they would later have to make? Is Paul D actually the most stable character due to his ability to close off his emotions? Lastly, is Sethe's powerful and nearly irrational love her greatest strength or her weakness?
Thursday, November 21, 2019
The Paradoxes of Beloved
While reading Beloved, one of the most thought-provoking aspects for me was the idea of paradox within Sethe's world. The story takes place in a setting with slavery as a normal practice, which already makes the reader uncomfortable and makes it difficult for the reader to understand characters' motives. Out of all the crazy paradoxes within the ghosts, reincarnation, and rememory, the most important paradox for me was the idea of mother's love and Sethe's murder of her children. From a completely outside perspective, Sethe's murder of her children seems monstrous and it does not seem like it can be morally justified in any way. However, after providing the reader with around 100 pages of background to Sethe's situation and the horrors of slavery that she faced, the reader is faced with a complex dilemma. Is Sethe's action justifiable? Arguably, this question has no answer and in my opinion, I feel that Morrison purposefully made this an impossible question to answer. How could one side with a mother who murders her own children and shows no shame or regret? Yet how could one fully criticize the actions of someone who has lived through hell and knows the results that would come out of giving her children up freely?
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Your "hot take" on these paradoxes brings up a really good point. Is Morrison saying that having too many feelings is a bad thing, or a good thing? Or can she only speak from the perspective of being a slave? What I mean is that while you can argue that Sethe's unconditional love for her children is her major flaw- as it ends up being her rationality for killing Beloved- we see Paul D struggle with the problems of not being able to love enough. He mentions how he puts all of his emotions away, leaving the woman who helped him heal after his prison break because he could not stay connected long enough to anybody. I think it is fair to say that she is criticizing both situations in a way- but I would also argue that inherently a large amount of love is seen as a good thing. So I do think that while she is saying that "too much love" might be a bad thing, there is an emphasis on MIGHT. (as Sethe was totally right in her justification for killing Beloved and trying to kill her kids- the slave catcher and schoolteacher would have enslaved them)
ReplyDeleteCriticizing a mother for loving her children "too much" just *feels* wrong, which is why this is such a compelling paradox. Because Paul D's questions about "manhood" and the limitations of being a "Sweet Home Man" do potentially apply to Sethe as well--has Garner done some "damage" to her by giving her expectations that she can be a mother and have a family, even when the institution of slavery is fundamentally opposed to granting any such freedom. She can be a "mother" on Sweet Home, as long as Garner allows, but the moment she leaves Sweet Home--or the moment Garner is no longer in charge--that privilege evaporates. We see that Morrison shows other enslaved mothers having strong feelings for their children (Sethe's mother, Baby Suggs), but having the ability to express that love severely curtailed by the institution. Sethe gets something like a domestic life for 6 years, and this desire to continue to be a mother is behind her desire to escape ("while the children are young," before they fully become *Garner's*). Maternal love is the force that drives these children to freedom, but it also (paradoxically) is the force that kills or nearly kills them.
ReplyDeleteAdding to what makes this such a hard question to answer is the fact that Sethe brings up: she never learns how to truly mother. She never watched her own mother raise children, or any other mother for that matter. Mrs. Garner never had children to raise, and there certainly weren't any "motherhood" books laying around, nor could she read them had they been. Thus she had to figure out what mothering meant to herself, combined with being allowed to love, means she never was taught that there might be a line that she couldn't cross. She was just doing what she felt was right as a mother, which is what she had been doing all along.
ReplyDeleteYeah! It's impossible to judge anything because everything's insanely complicated. Sethe's reaction was at least part panic, and we as readers judge her harder because with rational minds we can consider other options she might have had. Your last sentence was striking. I was reading something about how people often struggle really hard with something, whether it be addiction, "laziness", being an asshole (for lack of better word), etc. and how they wish they could get rid of that "demon" which causes them so much pain. Sethe's overwhelming love becomes her demon of overwhelming guilt (and holds her back for years of her life, not to mention almost killing her when beloved surfaces), and that's something we consider bad--wouldn't it be better if Sethe could just fight of beloved or never let her in at all and could have moved on years ago? But what people don't realize is their "demon" is also their greatest strength. Like, your harsh critic of your "laziness" is what makes you alternatively be super ambitious. It's weird. Without sethe's extreme, she wouldn't love in the same extraordinary extent that is so beautiful. So I think her love is both her greatest strength and weakness. In the end of the novel I have hope that what she has overcome has set her up for the final period of her life in which her love can shine instead of holding her back anymore.
ReplyDeleteI think the institution of slavery inherently creates these contradictions, because the cruel treatment of slaves pushed them to their physical and mental limits. Such an extreme environment only engenders more extreme reactions and coping mechanisms, where loving someone enough to kill them becomes a real-life situation and not a hypothetical thought experiment. Context is everything in this narrative, and the context of slavery forced Sethe and Paul to make impossible decisions that no one should ever have to make.
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought to connect Sethe's actions back to Mr. Garner's treatment of his slaves, but it does make a lot of sense. Sethe was only really put in a situation where she was able to have children and be an actual mother to them because Mr. Garner provided his slaves with an oasis of superficial freedom. The problem is that this was exclusive to Mr. Garner. Other slave masters didn't all choose to make this decision, and so when Mr. Garner passes away, Sethe is left with a problem of having experienced the joy of having children and being a mother and now being in a situation where it is no longer safe to love them.
ReplyDeleteYour question at the end about Paul D's stability, and his closing off of his emotions is a very interesting one, in the context of the "rememories" that keep popping up, haunting Sethe. His actions seem to work, at first. He yells at Beloved, and the ghost seems to go away. When Beloved comes back, however, he starts to slip into rememory, he loses control over his own body. When he starts to realize this, he has to leave, to maintain his stability. His great fear of ending up like how Baby Suggs did, locked in her room and haunted by her own memories, leads to him locking him self in a different room, forcing it all back.
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