The most important moment that Sethe ever has with her mother is when she shows Sethe the slave’s mark upon her body, “the cross in the circle burned into the skin under her breast, by which Sethe will be able to identify her if the need should ever come.”(61) As a result of her motherless childhood, Sethe wishes to be the woman and the mother who has “milk love enough for all.”(100) As Paul D informs Sethe, this kind of love is unhealthy for a former slave woman, who might have anyone or anything taken from her at a moment’s notice. She is considered overprotective, over obsessed and too prideful because of her attitude about her mothering. Even though Sethe lacks a real knowledge of her mother when she was a child, she is still able to claim some information about her from Nan, who was assigned to care for Sethe and the other slave children. Her memory of the
Sethe is the female protagonist in Beloved. She lost her mother at a very early age and she too is a slave. She was brought to the Sweet Home Plantation as a slave where she marries Halle Suggs and bears four children from him. She as a slave suffers a lot inhumane treatment at the plantation by the white masters. She is thrashed hardheartedly and milked like a cow.
Through the deviation from the assumed expectations of mothering, Sethe pursues an identity that will enable her to reaffirm her ownership over her children. The voiceless position of the black woman, traditionally unrepresented because of her gender, class and ethnicity, finds a way to speak through murder. Her subjectivity cannot be represented through words, as Hélène Cixous suggests in The Laugh of Medusa, because language is the owner’s instrument. Therefore, she can only enter the world of discourse by performing a violent act, which undermines the basis of a slave system whose weakest part is Sethe herself. In a desperate attempt to hurt those who hurt her more, the woman affirms her desire to put her children ‘where they could be safe’
Hester chose to isolate she and Pearl to create a wave of self-improvement. Because of Hester’s mysterious, seductive, and rebellious actions, she demonstrated the characteristics of a byronic hero. Hester Prynne was eventually able to overcome her rebellion by maturing and accepting herself for who she is as a person. After the events of being humiliated in front of the townspeople, Hester isolated herself in a small cottage in order to overcome her “monster.” The Scarlet Letter led Hester to change and become the person she was at the end of the book and, “...was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude!
Leah was the first one of the Price sister to notice their sister being bitten by seeing “Ruth May’s bare left shoulder, where two rd puncture wounds stood out.” (Kingsolver 364) Rachel’s reaction to the death of her sister says a lot about the character she developed into here in the Congos. When her sister passed, she thought about what would happen when she got home. The only thing that really got her feelings in a twist is how she believes she will be seen as the “girl they’d duck their eyes from and whisper about as tragic.” (Kingsolver 367) She was sad at first but just cared about what others back home thought of home. Selfishness is in full force in Rachel at this moment. When a kid dies in Congo, the mother and whole
The fully dressed woman that walks out of a stream is the reincarnation of Sethe's dead child or an actual living human who is inhabited by the spirit of her dead daughter. Although the human figure appeared to be a woman, she has characteristics of a baby such as she, “had new skin, lineless and smooth” (61), meaning that the girls skin was as smooth as a baby’s, and the girl moving by “holding on to furniture” (67) while she was walking portraying something that baby’s do to keep them balanced when they are learning how to walk. Beloved appears out of nowhere at 124 and appears to have travelled a long way to get there. Then she introduces herself and immediately Sethe starts thinking about the headstone of her dead child, “Engraved in her baby’s thumb
Hester used her sin as a lesson to her daughter to learn from your mistakes, but not to let them define who you are. Throughout all of Hester’s difficulties in life, she persisted through them and used them to better herself. Hester was bold and embellished her scarlet “A” that was forced upon her chest. Instead of wearing the letter with shame and deep regret like everyone in the town wished she would, Hester shocked everybody and instead wore it proudly without the remorse attached all the way from the prison to the scaffold in the center of the village. When Hester exited the prison, “she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed” (Hawthorne 50-51).
The killing of her daughter was the way to express this possessive love. So Sethe was possessed by the past and she did not even think of escaping from it. Sethe was trapped in a house with the ghost of her dead baby. She lived in her past and she never moved forward. Nothing can be changed because Sethe did not want anything to change.
The biblical example of Sarah, Abraham’s wife amazes me the depth of loyalty she had to Abraham and faith in God’s sovereignty. Sarah was in a difficult situation with physical and emotional needs. Sarah barrenness produced emotional needs of loneliness, grief, disappointment, feelings of inferiority, rejection, envy and anger. But God saw and heard her broken heart, and answered her needs. God bound Sarah’s wounds both within her lifetime, as well as her life testimony throughout time making her the mother of nations.
Hester, even after her punishment and the town forgiving her, she still kept the scarlet letter “A” on her chest. The letter became apart of her, and it is a reminder for herself that she is strong. In the Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne endures heinous punishment due to the strict beliefs of the town, her husband, and the puritan religion. Firstly, Hester has to face the consequences from the townspeople. Hawthorne writes, “Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of