Beloved Essay, Research Paper

“It is the ultimate gesture of a loving mother. It is the outrageous claim of a

slave”(Morrison 1987). These are the words that Toni Morrison used to describe

the actions of the central character within the novel, Beloved. That character,

Sethe, is presented as a former slave woman who chooses to kill her baby girl

rather than allowing her to be exposed to the physically, emotionally, and spiritually

oppressive horrors of a life spent in slavery. Sethe’s action is indisputable: She has

killed her child. Sethe’s motivation is not so clearly defined. By killing her

“Beloved” child, has Sethe acted out of true love or selfish pride? The fact that

Sethe’s act is irrational can easily be decided upon. Does Sethe kill her baby girl

because she wants to save the baby from slavery or does Sethe end her daughter’s

life because of a selfish refusal to reenter a life of slavery? By examining the

complexities of Sethe’s character it can be said that she is a woman who chooses to

love her children but not herself. Sethe kills her baby because, in Sethe’s mind, her

children are the only good and pure part of who she is and must be protected from

the cruelty and the “dirtiness” of slavery(Morrison 251). In this respect, her act is

that of love for her children. The selfishness of Sethe’s act lies in her refusal to

accept personal responsibility for her baby’s death. Sethe’s motivation is

dichotomous in that she displays her love by mercifully sparing her daughter from a

horrific life, yet Sethe refuses to acknowledge that her show of mercy is also

murder.

Throughout Beloved, Sethe’s character consistently displays the duplistic nature of

her actions. Not long after Sethe’s reunion with Paul D. she describes her reaction

to School Teacher’s arrival: “Oh, no. I wasn’t going back there[Sweet Home]. I

went to jail instead”(Morrison 42). Sethe’s words suggest that she has made a moral

stand by her refusal to allow herself and her children to be dragged back into the

evil of slavery. From the beginning, it is clear that Sethe believes that her actions

were morally justified. The peculiarity of her statement lies in her omission of the

horrifying fact that her moral stand was based upon the murder of her child. By not

even approaching the subject of her daughter’s death, it is also made clear that

Sethe has detached herself from the act.

Even when Paul D. learns of what Sethe has done and confronts her with it, Sethe

still skirts the reality of her past. Sethe describes her reasoning to Paul D., “… So

when I got here, even before they let me get out of bed, I stitched her a little

something from a piece of cloth Baby Suggs had. Well, all I’m saying is that’s a

selfish pleasure I never had before. I couldn’t let all that go back to where it was,

and I couldn’t let her or any of em live under School Teacher. That was out”(163).

Sethe’s love for her children is apparent, yet she still shifts the burden of

responsibility away from herself. She acknowledges that it was a “selfish pleasure”

to make something for her daughter, yet Sethe refuses to admit any selfishness in

her act of murder. She is indignant and frustrated with Paul D. confronting her:

Sethe knew that the circle she was making around

the room, him, the subject, would remain one.

That she could never close in, pin it down for

anybody who had to ask. If they didn’t get it right

off– she could never explain. Because the truth

was simple, not a long-drawn-out record of

flowered shifts, tree cages, selfishness, ankle

ropes and wells. Simple: she was squatting in the

garden and when she saw them coming and

recognized schoolteacher’s hat, she heard wings.

Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right

through her headcloth into her hair and beat their

wings. And if she thought anything, it was No.

No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew.

Collected every bit of life she had made, all the

parts of her that were precious and fine and

beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them

thought the veil, out, away, over there where no

one could hurt them”(163).

Sethe’s frustration is a product of her contradictory reasoning. She views her

children as an extension of her life that needed to be protected, at any cost. Sethe’s

concept of loving and protecting her children becomes synonymous with her killing

Beloved and attempting to kill the rest. Sethe can see no wrong here. Placing her

children outside the horror of slavery, even if it meant taking their lives, was in her

mind a justified act of love, nothing more.

Ironically, it is Paul D. who reveals the contradictions that Sethe refuses to see in

her own logic: “This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked

about baby clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the

bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here Sethe didn’t

know where the world stopped and she began. Suddenly he saw what Stamp Paid

wanted him to see: more important than what Sethe had done was what she had

claimed. It scared him”(164). Paul D.’s character suggests that although the killing

act might have been committed out of a irrational, hysterical, loving mother’s need

to “protect” her children, Sethe’s “claim” that she was and is justified in those

actions can not be accepted. Paul D. recognizes what Sethe can not; her act of

supreme love is also an act of insurmountable selfishness. When Paul D. calls into

question her thinking, Sethe still refuses to see her own role in what has come to

pass:

‘What you did was wrong, Sethe.’

‘I should have gone on back there? Taken my

babies back there?’

‘There could have been a way. Some other way.’

‘What way?’

‘You got two feet, Sethe, not four…’ (165)

Sethe’s problem is rooted in her inability to recognize the boundaries between

herself and her children. Paul D. stabs at the heart of this problem by suggesting

that Sethe had overstepped her boundaries by killing her child.

The concept that Sethe equates her life and self-worth with her connection to her

children is most graphically illustrated in her mad ravings to the reincarnation of

“Beloved”. Sethe details a defense for killing her baby to the woman she believes is

her reincarnated, murdered daughter. Within this defense, Sethe explains in the

greatest detail her reasoning for cutting her child’s throat. Sethe pronounces that the

worst thing in life was:

That anybody white could take your whole self

for anything that came to mind. Not just work,

kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad

you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so

bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it

up. And though she and others lived through and

got over it, she could never let it happen to her

own. The best thing she was, 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.(251)

Sethe’s words suggest that the only part of herself that she cares for is her children.

Indeed, the only reason that she killed her daughter is because Sethe refused to let

School Teacher or any other white person “dirty” her children as Sethe herself had

been dirtied. Sethe’s nobility, however irrationally predicated, is apparent. She loves

her children to much to let them be tarnished by slavery. Unfortunately, Sethe’s

nobility is tainted by the fact that she can not recognize absurdity of the murderous

act she has committed. Even in her shameful defense, Sethe is proud. Sethe’s

undaunted pride is illustrated by her words, “And no one, nobody on this earth,

would list her daughter’s characteristics on the animal side of the paper. No. Oh no.

Maybe Baby Suggs could worry about it, live with the likelihood of it; Sethe

refused- and refused still”(251). Toni Morrison, in an effort to describe the

motivation and pride of Sethe’s character, made the statement, “To kill my children

is preferable to having them die”(Morrison 1987). Saving her children from slavery

and the promise of spiritual and emotional death that such an institution imposes is

the rational of love that Sethe’s character clings to. The truth that Sethe’s character

selfishly avoids is the actual physical death that she has inflicted upon her child.

Understanding why a woman would kill any child, let alone her own baby, is at best

an enigma. Sethe’s character is no exception. Sethe’s motivation does not fit into a

simple schematic. Sethe is presented as a woman who loves her children so much

that she is willing to kill them rather than allow them to be broken by an evil

institution. Love is, then, Sethe’s primary motivation for killing her baby. However,

Sethe’s love for her children does not preclude her responsibility for Beloved’s

death. Indeed, Sethe’s selfish fault lies in the fact that she has shifted the locus of

responsibility from herself to the institution that has spawned her. Ultimately, it is

Sethe who is responsible for her child’s death, not slavery. Sethe kills her daughter

to demonstrate her love. Sethe exhibits her selfish pride by repudiating her own

guilt. Does Sethe realize her fault? Perhaps. When presented the notion that Sethe,

and not her children, is her own “best thing”, her reply takes the form of a question,

“Me? Me?”(273). Morrison leaves the reader with the sense that Sethe might realize

that she has loved her children too much, and herself not enough.