Build in Greece: The Parthenon: An Embodiment of an African American Feminine Self - Term Paper Example

Toni Morrison’s Protagonist Sethe: An Embodiment of an African American Feminine Self In the novel, “Beloved”, Toni Morrison’s protagonist Sethe appears to be the embodiment of an African American feminine self who struggles hard against the ruthless and inhuman brutality of the racist white society. The way how Sethe reacts to the slave-owners’ sexual approach to her femininity endows Morrison’s novel with a feminist dimension which Alice Walker calls “womanism” (Reed 58). Simultaneously, Morison’s novel has another dimension which is called “Ecriture Feminine”. Morrison’s attempt to depict Sethe’s reaction to the white slave-owners’ sexual approach ultimately reveals two things simultaneously. First, Sethe, as a woman, perceives herself as the object of male lust and men as the repressor of female. This self-perception of Sethe transcends all ages and places. So it is universal. Secondly, Sethe, as an African-American victim of white lust, establishes the white slave owners as a community that demoralizes humanity by enslaving the black community. Morrison lets her heroine feel the repression of both masculinity and the racist white community. In both cases, she feels the repression through her body as well as her gender. Indeed, by retelling her past experiences of being raped, humiliated and tortured by the white masculinity, she rather describes the status of women in patriarchy in term of the feminine body. The most memorable moment which highlights Sethe’s helplessness as well as her rebellious nature in the hand of the white masculinity is when she kills her daughter Beloved. Indeed, the mother in Sethe kills her daughter to keep safe from physical pains and sufferings. But the feminine in her has provoked her to kill Beloved in order to keep away from the repressive masculinity. Being a member of the weaker-sex as well as of the inferior community, she experiences the humiliation of being raped and the violation of herself. For a woman, being raped is the ultimate violation of her self-respect since she no longer has the control or the possession of her own body. In a speech to Beloved, Sethe refers to the self-degrading effect of being raped as following: “Whites do not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you…dirty you bad so you can’t like yourself anymore” (Morison 251).For Sethe, to be “dirty” by the white or being sexually abused by them means losing interest in life. For her, being killed, maimed or forced to work hard is different from losing possession of her own body. It means losing womanhood and motherhood. She ardently endeavors to retreat from the pain of losing her child. Here the mother in her wants to secure a carefree future for her daughter; but since as a woman she can clearly anticipate the same fate which she has suffered in Sweet Home, with all her heart, she wants to keep Beloved away from these sufferings as the narrator says: “collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one could hurt them” (Morison 163). Sethe’s experiences of being raped and of being physically and sexually abused constitute a significant part of the novel. This obsession of Sethe with her sexual traumas necessarily reveals Morrison’s appreciation for a strain of French feminist theory. Since in a male dominated society human language is highly monopolized by the male, her novel ‘Beloved’ depicts women’s subservient and inferior status by describing the male attitude to a female body. For example, in the novel, “reason and rationality, and earthly or grounded thinking, generally [are] associated with men (Reed 63). Eventually, Morrison shows that in slavery Sethe’s body has been robbed by the Schoolteacher. She does not possess her body anymore, as if she had been driven out of her body. So, Morrison’s protagonist emerges through her experiences of the white masculinity’s torturous control over her body. Necessarily, Sethe often uses her sex to manipulate things and to achieve what she wants. She decides to marry Halle mostly because she is attracted to him by his sense of generosity proved by his act of buying his mother Baby Sugg’s freedom. Eventually, She have sex in exchange for getting the carved headstone. Though Schoolteacher attempts to dominate over her body, to a great extent, she successfully manipulates her sex. Sethe’s endeavor to establish her control over it necessarily justifies Morrison’s attempt to “write the female body” (Ecriture Feminine), as a step towards women’s emancipation. Referring to the role of Sethe’s sexual experience in constructing the feminist dimension of the novel, Sandra Mayfield comments: It is difficult to find anywhere in Toni Morrison’s Beloved the absence of writing the body. Morrison’s sensual writing commands the attention of the reader throughout the novel. The five slave men who had sex with calves while waiting for Sethe to select one of them as a husband indicates early on that this novel places a primary emphasis on corporeal existence. (6) Indeed, Sethe possesses a ‘body’ which is owned and controlled by the white masculinity. But Sethe appears to be quite aware of her possession. When the men rape her and drink her milk, she mourns for her stolen possession: “Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else—and the one time I did it was took from me—they held me down and took it. Milk that belonged to my baby...” (Morison 200) Like other slave-girls, she has to assume a breeder-status. She is meant for breeding slaves who are economically lucrative and, therefore, will be sold. Aptly, Morrison turns this practice of slave-breeding into a violation against humanity and natural law. Meanwhile, by drawing a parallel between Sethe’s helplessness in the Schoolteacher’s hand and the African-American community’s slave status, Morrison seems to argue that if the Schoolteacher can be held guilty of a crime against womanhood and motherhood, the white slaver society is also guilty of committing violence against humanity. Quite successfully Sethe as an African American heroine complies with the tradition of portraying “the victimization of black women as underpaid workers forced into the lowliest jobs and as victims of violence and sexual exploitation” (Tyson 389). But in the novel, Morrison puts forth an implied message that the past is indestructible and people cannot “get back from” it, it should not be allowed to interfere into one’s present life. The former slaves as well as the African-Americans should be engaged into making their present and future more tolerable. The exorcising of the ghost of Beloved from 124 metaphorically passes this message to the readers. Sethe appears to be the embodiment of the ‘Ecriture feminine’ self of an African-American former slave woman. There has been a striking parallel between Sethe’s helpless femininity and the African-American slave community. In the white-dominated US of the late 1800s, her subservient and abused womanhood not only depicts the most heinous and the ugliest nature of the white masculinity, but also reveals the demoralized version of the slave-owner white society. In a patriarchy, Sethe can serve as an iconic figure whose femininity or womanhood has been robbed by the extreme male monopolies. By raping female slaves and forcing them to sell their children, people like Schoolteacher violate the very natural laws of humanity, womanhood and femininity. By depicting the demoralized practice of slave-breeding through forced sex, Morison rather exhume the demoralized face of slavery. Works Cited Mayfield, Sandra. “Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Psychological Reading”. Journal of Scientific Psychology. University of Central Oklahoma, 2012. 23 June 2013. Available at http://www.psyencelab.com/images/Motherhood_in_Toni_Morrison%27s_Beloved.pdf Morrison, Toni. Beloved. First Plume Printing. Penguin Putnam Inc. New York. Print. 1998. Reed, R Roxanne. “The Restorative Power of Sound: A Case for Communal Catharsis in Toni Morrisons Beloved”. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 55-71 Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today A user- Friendly Guide. London: Routledge, 2007 Read More