S2E5: Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

In so many ways, Toni Morrison expanded the reaches of our cultural imagination both in terms of understanding our history and exploring the intricate landscape of the human psyche through language.  Beloved, Morrison’s 1987 masterpiece, alternates settings between 1850’s Kentucky and 1870’s Ohio, depicting Sethe, protagonist and former slave, isolated and dealing with trying to live on after the scarring trauma of slavery.  She finds herself feeling, for instance, the complicated nostalgia for the beautiful trees of the plantation where she grew up…while those very trees were used to hang black men she knew.  The reader recognizes the truth of this feeling, while reeling at the profoundly unresolvable conflict it creates for Sethe. Morrison takes on these painful paradoxes, including the desire of a mother to protect her children…at any cost.  And then, that same mother has to live with the cost as a personal regret, when the faceless structures of an evil institution made her choice necessary. 

Sonja and Vanessa consider how Morrison puts a mother, Sethe, at the center of her meditation on historical shadows, collective trauma, grief, memory, regret, and loss of self through Sethe’s story.  Sonja offers clear, helpful historical context for the American prewar period of the 1850’s and also Reconstruction, in the 1870’s.  Vanessa gives an overview of the plot, and there are spoilers, but nothing can detract from the immersive experience it is to read Morrison’s lyrical prose, so–even after listening to this episode– readers can absolutely enjoy the novel for the first time or the fiftieth.

Please be advised  that Morrison’s novel deals with violence, including infanticide, and the episode discusses these aspects of the novel, so it might not be a good fit for all listeners.

REFERENCES:

The Black Book, Edited by Toni Morrison

Text of The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Yale Law School Library

12 Years a Slave, Publisher's Website

Dred Scott Case / National Archives

Text of the 13th Amendment,  Congress.gov

Text of the 14th Amendment, Congress.gov

Text of the 15th Amendment, Congress.gove

Historical Context of the film, Birth of a Nation

Info on 1989 film Field of Dreams

Information on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, HBStowe Foundation Site

Uncle Tom's Cabin, novel for purchase

Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer, novel for purchase

Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic, novel for purchase

Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, play for purchase in English

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, novel for purchase