Analysis Of The Mother In 'Nameless Possesession In Beloved'

During the era in which this short story was written, southern authors had a major influence on the way the culture was going to grow with racism, and also the way people loved each other. Kate Chopin, a traditional author who believed in southern ways, exemplifies how race and the characteristics of conditional love played a role in her story. In “Desiree’s Baby,” the author, Kate Chopin, provides an illustration of conditional love exemplified by the character, Armand, towards his wife and child; furthermore, Chopin provides instances of irony, elements of surprise, foreshadowing, and symbolism to prove that Armand’s love for both of them was not the unconditional love typically felt and portrayed by women, such as Desiree, during this era.

The Devil’s Arithmetic, a novel by Jane Yolen, is very inspiring to me. It explains the feelings of not only just Hannah, but many others. It lets me know that in any situation, you can always persevere. Although this book can be sad, the sadness is powerful. It takes you to a whole new perspective of the Holocaust, not just through facts, but actually living it. Hannah has to remember anything and everything. Why? Remembering is a huge part of this story and is represented largeley in many different ways.

A mammy, as defined by Mirriam-Webster University, is “a black woman serving as a nurse to white children especially formerly in the southern United States.” However, in modern viewpoints, the title of “Mammy” is considered a racial slur.

Motherhood is a major theme of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, as multiple characters often lament the futile extent to which they can be mothers. In Chapter 5 Beloved, the reader is introduced to two new motherhood dynamics, both relating to the mysterious Beloved. Wherever motherhood is mentioned, water imagery—with its established connections to birth, healing, and life—used as well. Because it factors into Beloved’s symbolic “birth” and nurturing, water is an important image that relates to giving and sustaining life and motherhood in Beloved.

Just like the societies that exist in the world today, the way that a given society within the bounds of a fictional story controls the attitudes, environment, and mores of that society has a direct impact on the characters of that story and its outcome. Typically, society has a way of manipulating a community into making harsh judgements based often on superficial or nearly unchangeable aspects of a person's physicality; these such judgements are able to create a world of harm, both physically and emotionally. In both the story, ¨Désirée's Baby,¨ by Kate Chopin and, ¨The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the authors express how their control over the attitudes, environment, and mores of the story directly affect the characters within the story along with its eventual end.

The way African American women are judged is starting to become ridiculous and the list of the names that these women are being called is steady growing. I decided to focus on what is going on in the world today that has happened in the past. Out of all of the women that exist in the world African American women are the targets of American. It is hard to even walk in a store without being labeled as “ghetto, ratchet, a baby mama, gold diggers, or angry.” The world does not view us as successful women who are doing great things. During this semester we have covered many topics that addressed how women were treated during the slavery days. One particular story that we read was “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar

Morrison’s authorship elucidates the conditions of motherhood showing how black women’s existence is warped by severing conditions of slavery. In this novel, it becomes apparent how in a patriarchal society a woman can feel guilty when choosing interests, career and self-development before motherhood. The sacrifice that has to be made by a mother is evident and natural, but equality in a relationship means shared responsibility and with that, the sacrifices are less on both part. Although motherhood can be a wonderful experience many women fear it in view of the tamming of the other and the obligation that eventually lies on the mother. Training alludes to how the female is situated in the home and how the nurturing of the child and additional local errands has now turned into her circle and obligation. This is exactly the situation for Sethe in Morrison’s Beloved. Sethe questions the very conventions of maternal narrative. A runaway slave of the later half of 19th century, she possesses a world in which “good mothering” is extremely valued, but only for a certain class of women: white, wealthy, outsourcing. Sethe’s role is to be aloof: deliver flesh, produce milk, but no matter what happens, she cannot love. During the short space of time (which is 28 days) Sethe embraces the dominant values of idealised maternity. Sethe’s fantasy is

In Beloved by Toni Morrison, the author often utilizes many different writing techniques to emphasize the story’s main idea that one cannot let past mistakes dictate one’s life and future.

Like Water for Chocolate is a radical novel which illustrates how male and female characteristics are interchangeable in a time period and culture where gender roles are all encompassing. The female characters depict characteristics typical of men such as authority, masculinity, and sensuality. While the male characters portray more feminine roles, therefore accentuating the way gender is presented. Through the reversal of gender roles traditionally represented as masculine and feminine, the author is able to show how gender roles are exchangeable and should not be based off of physical sexual orientation to directly define the personality of the individual.

Names have always held power in literature; whether it is the defeated giant Polyphemus cursing Odysseus due to him pridefully announcing his name or how the true name of the Hebrew god was considered so potent that the word was forbidden. In fact, names were given power in tales dating all the way back to the 24th century B.C.E. when the goddess Isis became as strong as the sun god Ra after tricking him into revealing his true name. And in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, names have a much stronger cultural significance; and in the case of the character known as “Beloved”, her name is essentially her whole existence. Morrison shows the true power a name holds in African American literature through the character known as “Beloved”, as her role in the story becomes defined by the name she is given and changes in the final moments of the chapter.

“Desiree’s Baby”, is a short story written by Kate Chopin. This short story is about a woman named Desiree, abandoned at a very young age, who grew up to fall in love with Armand Aubigny. Armand was born into a very wealthy family, who fell in love easily, very strict and owners of slaves. Desiree then conceived Armand’s child, who instantly changed the way he thought once the child was born. Desiree’s mother, Madame Valmonde, was scheduled to see the baby in L’Abri since she had not seen it in four weeks. When she finally saw the baby, she felt odd about the child’s appearance. Soon, things took a turn and the people of L’Abri started to think differently about the child. Armand did not like the fact that the child looked at though it was from African American ancestry and shunned both the infant and Desiree. After things become too much to handle for Desiree, Armand banished her and the baby to never be seen again in the town.

Kate Chopin is best known for her ability to express her feelings of the time and is well known feminist of her time. She has wrote many inspiring novels about women having little to no voice in the Antebellum era. Kate hated being a mother and a wife because she felt like she had no power . Thus, she wrote one of her greatest novels Desiree’s Baby. In Kate Chopin’s Desiree's Baby she introduces a theme of male supremacy by her execution of literary devices such as symbolism and irony to prove that it is more important to be male than white in the Antebellum era.

As a former slave, Sethe has a past abounded with hardships and work. She did not have time to “stop and smell the roses,” especially after a rose worth her time died and she “lost her milk” in the shed. After she ran away, she finally was able to look

Sethe and her daughter are isolated from the community due to Sethe’s killing of her youngest child, an action Sethe justifies as “put[ting] my babies where they’d be safe” but one which Paul D sees as a love “too thick” (Morrison 193). Her misjudgment fits Aristotle’s description of the fatal flaw. The trauma she experienced as a slave made her justifiably determined to not let her children return to slavery, but her panicked actions resulted in her isolation the community. As her isolation is caused by herself rather than an external force such as slavery, she is a fitting model for a Greek tragedy protagonist. Sethe’s “thick love” continues to linger after the killing, as she says she wanted to die alongside her youngest child after she killed her so she can continue to take care of her daughter, and states “[Beloved] is mine” after her realization that Beloved is her daughter (Morrison 241). Her flaw is not a temporary misjudgment, but a chronic issue of her single-minded goal to nurse her child regardless of her

Images of women healing ill or injured women, or of women healing themselves, have become one of the central tropes in contemporary African American women’s novels. Authors such as Gayl Jones, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Toni Morrison utilise the trope of healing to measure past and present oppressions of women of color and to discuss what can and what cannot be healed, forgotten and forgiven. Much focus is put on how healing could be accomplished. Some hurt, they say, is so distant that it cannot be reached; other hurt goes so deep that there may be no possibility of healing...some pain can only be healed through a reconnection to the African American community and culture (Gunilla T. Kester 114)