Deformed Maternal Love In Toni Morrison's Beloved

811 Words4 Pages

As the first black woman writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison makes immeasurable contributions to the contemporary literature, especially black woman literature. Beloved is Toni Morrison 's fifth novel, by which Morrison got Nobel Prize in 1993. This novel is studied from different perspectives by researchers, such as feminism, psychoanalysis, cultural study and so on. Among all the topics,the deformed maternal love is one of the most hotly discussed. I will analyze the causes of the deformed maternal love in Beloved.
1. The Presentation of Deformed Maternal Love in Beloved In one family, the relationship between mother and child is most significant because it plays a crucial role in the whole life of the child. The rudiment of the personality of the child has formed when she/he is five years old. How the mother treats and fosters the child will deeply affect the form of personality of the child. For each infant, the mother is the figure who is both the primary object of emotional attachment and the transmitter of cultural attitudes and values.
In the black families in Beloved, because of the pressure of slavery, there exists abnormal and deformed mother-child relationship and maternal love. Mother-daughter relationship in this novel is complex and paradoxical.
1.1 Sethe 's Love to Beloved Sethe has poured too much love to her children. This leads to destructive results. In Sethe 's mind, it is better to die in the cradle than to

Open Document