Oppression In Morrison's Beloved

These lines from Morrison’s novel Beloved depict many dimensions of intersecting oppression of race, class and gender and the way the ‘matrix of oppression’ cripples black women’s ability to love. Morrison’s black female characters learn to craft significant identities by challenging all racial stereotypes. Collins in Black Feminist Thought discusses black feminist consciousness, she believes that “a distinctive, collective, black women’s consciousness exists.” Black women have always resisted every sort of oppression; apparently they learn to wear the mask of conformity but this mask does not destroy their inner strength and power to resist. They have always pulled together their power of resistance, sometime by denying the so-called established

Likewise, the protagonist of the novel Sethe kills her child and this murder does not become distant, each time it comes closer. In “Beloved” one can comprehend how difficult it is to be a slave woman at the hands of a slave-holder. This cannot be denied that the reasons behind Sethe’s murder of her own baby girl emerge due to the brutal sides of slavery. The violent act of Sethe has “…relation to slavery” (Kubitschek, 115). When “a cruel man called school-teacher becomes the master, the slaves attempt a group escapes” (Kubitschek, 116). During this flight some of the slaves die. “Sethe is stopped after she cuts two-year-old Beloved’s throat with a hand saw. The child dies” (Kubitschek, 117). Sethe doesn’t want “…her children to be taken back into slavery…” (Matus, 104) The memory of past, takes Sethe to the cruel white man during slavery. “Schoolteacher’s nephews brutally abuse Sethe sexually, sucking milk from her breasts and whipping her back bloody” (Kubitschek, 116). This incident affects Sethe deeply and she always remembers the viciousness of white man and the murder of her own child. She cannot endure to see her daughter nat the hands of this brutality. Therefore, she decides to kill her. “I got a tree on my back and a haunt in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in

They have not only “…been abused by white men…” (Matus, 119), but also they begin to lose their humanity. Even, the black people aren’t given permission to learn writing and reading. It is clear that “…if blacks could write they should not be treated as animals” (Rice, 103). The female characters in the novel, especially Baby Suggs is brave to mention the inhuman acts of white race in her community. “Those white things have taken all I had or dreamt, “she said, “and broke my heartstrings, too. There is no bad luck in the world but white folks” (Beloved, 104-105). Baby Suggs utterances help one to visualize the hardness of the black life in a racist surrounding

Thematic analysis

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is to make a connection between history and personal and cultural memories to participate in the formation of the Black community‘s identity. The author illustrates how the African American identity could be reconstructed through its own cultural heritage and social structure. Morrison depicts an enormous and horrific context which is the period of slavery and reconstruction. After the abolition of slavery, the psyches of the characters are filled with traumatic experiences that they faced during slavery, which have influenced their personalities and damaged their relations with