Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Literature review
Beloved is the centerpiece of Morrison's novel. The book was an instant shockto American literature. Critics highly praised the novel, calling it "a history, athunderbolt, a lightning bolt" and "a milestone in the history of American literature".It is "impossible to understand American literature" without reading it. (Preface ofBeloved) In 1988, Beloved won the Pulitzer prize, the highest prize in Americanliterature. Since Morrison won the Nobel Prize in literature, her novels have attractedextensive attention from western readers and critics. Beloved is the focus of attention;the related comments continue to be published in many newspapers and magazines.In 2006, the New York times book review organized 100 writers and editors tochoose the best American novel in 25 years, and Beloved topped the list.
1.1.1 Related research on Beloved abroad
From the late 1970s till now, Morrison and her literary works have attracted theattention of critics, and there are more and more monographs and papers written byvarious critical theories and research methods. Since the 1980s, especially afterMorrison won the Nobel Prize of Literature, researches towards Morrison andMorrison’s novel Beloved abroad stepped into new period. At present, the study ofMorrison in western English-speaking countries is developing in depth and thetheoretical horizon is expanding. To sum up, the researches were focused on thefollowing aspects.
Some were studied through the lens of feminism and black feminism. Many criticsanalyzed the Toni Morrison’s novels from Morrison’s feminist thought, femalecharacters of her novels and female experience, combining ethnicity and rank, suchas Carole B. Davis’ “Black women: Writing Identity” and Oy Mori’s “Toni Morrisonand Womanish Discourse”. Researchers from the perspective of feminism usuallycombine the experience of black women with critical perspectives such as race andclass, and use other analytical methods, such as deconstruction theory andpost-colonial theory, to present perse characteristics of the study. Among them, themost influential one is Barbara Hill Rigney's Hagar’s mirror: Self and Identity inMorrison’s Fiction. The analysis of Beloved in this paper is to combine feminismwith deconstruction to discuss the self-identity and identity of black women, andexplain the positive significance of the work to the construction of black subjectivity.
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1.2 Research purpose, significance and the structure of the thesis
1.2.1 Research purpose and significance of the thesis
Above all the research abroad and domestic, critics seldom study the motherand daughter relationship in Beloved and study from the perspective of thecombination of black female feminism, new historicism and psychoanalytic theory.As a subject of social ethics, mother-daughter relationship has been neglected for along time. The focus on mother-daughter relationships is associated with women'sstruggle for liberation. The struggle has given women a sense of self, anunderstanding of their relationship with their mother, and a chance to listen to eachother and talk about their conflicts with their mother. The mother-daughterrelationship in the novel Beloved differs from other works, as it is about blackmother-daughter relationship during the period between black slaver and post-slavery.In fact, the novel Beloved was created based on a true story in which the relationshipof a black mother and a black daughter was severed because of the mother’sinfanticide of her daughter out of protection of her daughter from becoming a blackslave as her. Therefore, the black mother-daughter relationship which should not beneglected runs throughout the novel. What’s more, the novel is a typical newhistoricist novel which was created based on a true historical story and was thicklydescribed as a novel of black mothers and daughters’ miserable sufferings. Thickdescription is a term originated from new historicism which was relatively seldomused to study Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The feminism presented in Beloved isdemanding black women to unit their inpidual behaviors with ethnic culture in theprocess of seeking inpidual emancipation and self-realization, and setting excellenttraditions of black race as benchmark to bring female power into full play. In order toenrich the research achievements of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this thesis will befocused on research of separation, conflicts and salvation of black mother-daughterrelationship from a relatively new perspective of new historicism and psychoanalytictheory. It can not only make up for the deficiency in theoretical research, but alsoprovide certain reference and reflection for the African-American mother anddaughter to correctly understand the history and deal with each other, knowthemselves and construct their own identity.
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Chapter Two Separation between black mothers anddaughters under slavery
2.1 Separation between black mothers and daughters under slavery
2.1.1 Separation between Baby Suggs and her daughters
In addition to be a new historian, Toni Morrison is a writer who lives in thespirit world of characters and writes with her heart. She writes with her heart about“the plight of African Americans in American society, their pain, turmoil and desire”.(Song Zhaolin, 332) American playwright Shaquille O’Neal says that writers are infact psychoanalysts, and they were deep psychoanalysts before the creation ofpsychology. （Focker，24）In each of Morrison's works, there is an undercurrent ofresentment and deep exposure to black discrimination in American society, but noneis better than Beloved. Critics described that the slavery in Beloved traumatized blackslaves as “irresistible”, “mesmerizing” and “extraordinary” (Wang Shouren, 127).The female reader, on the other hand, “holds the book to her chest like a treasure.”(Elizabeth Kastor, 127) In order to construct the black women’ misery history underslavery, Toni Morrison vividly described a female slave named Baby Suggs, themother-in-law of Sethe who committed infanticide. Baby Suggs is the representativeof the female black slaves’ first generation in America, she experienced the deepcruelty of the slavery. Under the slavery, she was oppressed by the slaveholders withheavy and endless work which ruined her health and made her walk like“three-legged dog” because of the hurt hip. What’s worse, like most female blackslaves, Baby Suggs was also sexually tormented, raped frequently by the slaveholderor forced to have sex with unknown black slaves brought “to her cabin withdirections ‘lay down with her’” (Beloved,165) to reproduce baby slaves for theslaveholders. In such conditions, the new-born black babies were the slaveholders’private property, so inevitably the black slave mother did not have the opportunity tonurse and did not have the rights to possess their babies by themselves. Baby Suggswas deprived of all the human rights of being a mother, daughter, and wife. She gavebirth to eight children with six different men. All her children except the last oneHalle were taken away soon after their birth. She had little memory of her takenchildren, only remembering that the first one loved the burned bottom of the bread,as she told Sethe:
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2.2 Causes of the separation
The separation between black mothers and black daughters happened frequentlyin the slavery period, because there were three common causes: the oppression ofcolonization, the oppression of racism, the oppression of patriarchy.
2.2.1 The oppression of colonization
Beloved was written by famous American black women writers, asking for theexpression of black feminism. Black feminism is the product of American feminism,whose development and progress play an important role in promoting thedevelopment of American history. Throughout the history of the United States, blackfeminism was first proposed in the work of black female writer Alice Walker,looking for the garden of motherhood -- feminist prose. In this case, black feminismmeans that feminism includes black women or other women of color who love theculture, emotion and power of women. Feminists need to respect each other, not onlythat, but also to devote themselves to the national cause of the black people andprotect their own nation. Also, as a writer of black feminism, Morrison portrayed thestory of the black women who fought hard against the discrimination and racism inBeloved, which also reflected the cruel reality of America. The whole book is acrusade against slavery in the United States. The blood, violence and killing ofslavery is enough for the whole world to face it and prevent the recurrence oftragedy.
Of all the mothers and daughters in Beloved, they had a common identity, slaves.The colonists from Spain, Portugal, Holland, French and England set up mines,plantations and livestock farms at the land of Indians deracinated by the colonists. Inorder to hunt for cheap labor force suitable for what they need, they reached out toAfrica. The reason why the colonists chose black people instead of Indians wasbecause that on one hand, the black people could adapt the tropical climate andmastered agricultural techniques; on the other hand, the black people did not haveoriginal tribes as backup force like the Indians captured as slaves. In 1502, the firstslaves to be shipped from Africa landed in Santo Domingo. Since then, in thefollowing four centuries, thousands of black people were continuously“transplanted” to America. In the West Indians, the black people soon outnumberedthe white people. Between 1680 and 1786, the number of imported slaves in theBritish American colonies had 2 million and by 1860 the number of American slavesincreased to 4 million. However, during the same period African’s lost populationwas up to sixty million, which was directly caused by slavery and slavery trade.
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3.1 Conflicts between the black mother and daughters in the post-slaveryperiod.........................31
3.1.1 Conflicts between Sethe and Beloved after the infanticide................32
3.1.2 Conflicts between Sethe and Denver...............37
Chapter Four Salvation of black mothers and daughters..................44
4.1 Salvation of the mothers.................................46
4.1.1 Salvation of Baby Suggs..................................46
4.1.2 Salvation of Sethe’s mother.........................51
Chapter Four Salvation of black mothers and daughters
4.1 Salvation of the mothers
During the relationship of black mothers and daughters, obviously the motherssuffered a lot, as they had to endure the pain of losing their daughters and losing theright of maternal love under the brutal slavery. However, neither Baby Suggs andSethe’s mother nor Sethe stopped the effort to save themselves and resist thecolonization, racism and patriarchy in their unique ways.
4.1.1 Salvation of Baby Suggs
As Homi Bhabha once pointed out, “the important feature of colonial discourselies in the ideological construction of others.” (Homi Bhabha,53) Cultural hegemonyrefers to that one class controls the content of cultural communication with its owneconomic or social advantages and establishes important customs to dominate theculture and ideology of another class, and finally realizes its dominant purpose inculture. In the slavery era of the United States, white Americans, by virtue of theireconomic and social status and other factors, as the dominant class of the society atthat time, used powerful propaganda means to publicize their so-called “correct”value orientation and forced the black race to accept their ideas. This culturalinvasion put black racial culture into survival crisis. Culture is the soul of a race, andculture influences the direction of a race. Once the race culture is violated, the racewill lose its direction like a ship loses its compass. Under the oppression of whitecultural hegemony, the black race was turned into an inferior race, and the black racebegan to self-doubt and self-negate the racial culture. They accept the aesthetic viewof white people, believing that white skin is glorious, while black skin is shameful,despicable, unscrupulous. They would do anything to get rid of their skin color andto get recognition from white people. As a result, the black race was not onlyphysically enslaved, but also culturally invaded. Morrison does not want the blackrace to be bleached and she wants the black race to look for light in the dark. Sheunderstood the importance of culture to a race. In order to realize self-redemptionand racial liberation, the black race must rebuild the race culture. Abandoning theirown ethnic culture and blindly believing in white culture will certainly lead totragedy. The revival of culture must start from inpiduals. Every inpidual is a partof the whole ethnic culture. Only when every inpidual strives for it, can the ethnicculture have the possibility of reconstruction and the hope of revival. Morrisonemphasized that only by identifying with the ancestors and loving the collective canthe inpidual spirit of the black race be liberated and redeemed. Morrison believesthat there is a very special connection between black women and black racial culture.“When I think,” she once told reporters, “my brain seems to be dominated bywomen's issues. They are the heirs of culture, what their children should do and howthey should do it.” In Morrison’s opinion, the reconstruction of black racial cultureshould be based on the self-awakening of black women, and the reconstructionprocess of black racial culture should be promoted by combining the self-trial andexperience of black women with the awareness of awakening racial culture.
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Conclusion
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