The idea of love in "Beloved" is more of an unspoken, ostracized emotion unlike today's prospective. Now, love is something that most people are on the hunt for and some people envy others who are in relationships for example if they are not currently involved in one. With "Beloved", love is forbidden among slaves and is dealt with by punishment as we have heard from Baby Suggs and Sethe. The slaves at sweet home were beaten for being accused of feeling or displaying affection which could condition people to lack the ability to love by result. Another way love was dealt with at sweet home was to split up families, making them just a distant memory. Sethe does not allow herself to be told what to feel and with that, places all of her love into her four children, Howard, Buglar, Denver, and Beloved.
Sethe takes her love to the extreme by attempting to murder all four of her children before they can be taken turned into slaves. She believes that this is the only way to "save" them. I think that her actions are more than overprotective. Paul D. even says that "your love is too thick". By killing them she would clearly render them of experiencing life for themselves since their life would be no more. By holding on so tightly Sethe has almost done what she had not planned to do. Howard and Buglar left her while Beloved was dead, for the time being, and Denver was the only one left. I think Sethe wanted to show them how much they meant to her, but in reality, she has only drove them away, except for Denver. If Sethe had not been so attached and close-minded, would she have had the perfect, loving, happy family that she desires?
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I like that you mentioned that love was an unspoken thing for the characters in "Beloved". Now that I look back, I don't recall any of the characters ever SAYING that they loved another character. Sethe's reason for choosing Halle was not because she loved him, but because he was the nicest of the Sweet Home Men. Mothers to children, and children to mother, we never hear a word of affection uttered from anyone. I think maybe, in a way, they are all hiding from it: love. If they admit they have become so emotionally attached to something, it will hurt more to lose it, so they don't.
ReplyDeleteI think you mentioned the same thing that Steve did in his post, about the whiteman beating the love, or capasity to love, out of the slaves. I think it was more that they beat the willingness to try to love out of the slaves because they take everything from them that they could possibly take. In the chapter about Paul D., when he is on the chain gang, he is talking about loving the little things like the moon and the sun and the stars. Things that they are not in danger of losing, something the whiteman, no matter how hard he beats, can not take away from them. So, after all the abuse and mistreatment, the slaves didn't lose their capasity to love, they were just afraid to love.
I think that in a way Sethe has also pushed Denver away from being close to her because she has over-sheltered her from the rest of the town. I think it is not until Sethe becomes so obsessed with pleasing Beloved and puts herself in danger that Denver "comes back" to her, and cares about her again. Sethe's isolation that she has imposed on Denver has led to Denver resenting her. In the chapter in which it is narated using first person naration from Denver's perspective, we learn that she just wants to know Halle and she doesn't care if Sethe stays with them or not. Sethe's decision to try to kill her children in order to "save" them from slavery has separated her from her children.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that affection is present in this novel. For instance, when Baby Suggs talks about men she shows bitterness to most men except for Halle, her son that freed her from slavery. "A man ain't nothing but a man...But a son? Well now, thats somebody"(23). In this quote Baby Suggs is showing her affection and appreciation towards Halle for working extra in order to buy her freedom. Affection is showed very scarcely in "Beloved" because it is considered dangerous for them to actually love someone or something, but it is present.
I see what Tess mentioned about the likeness to my post- the fact that the slave owners time and time again ripped the capability to love out of the slaves and had it so that they became numb to the feeling. Granted, they probably can feel love and feel attached to soemthing, but they've had it so beaten out of them that any attempt on expression would be looked at by that very slave and would be completely unrecognizeable as to what it is. This one fact, and talking to Baby Suggs, is probably what sparked Sethe into being so hell-bent into keeping her family together as much as possible. Toboot, she had all intentions on running off WITH Hale; after running, she hopes, along with Baby Sugs, that Hale will soon follow day in day out. She would have loved to have the whole family together, and who knows what Hale's take on Sethe's actions to their children were. But because of what Slaves ultimately experienced when it came down to love, real families were not entirely possible unless started outside of the system.
ReplyDeleteBut, as you asked, if Sethe was not as closed minded and did something else to protect her children instead of trying to smash their brains out and decapitate them, would she have achieved the perfect loving family? I think, on this one, that any unfortunate attempt on Sethe's part to retaliate and protect her children by buying them time -or- successfuly fighting off the white men (highly unlikely, though), what would have happened is that it would have became an unredeemed sacrifice. I say that the white men would just simply throw her aside, or the guy on horseback with the rifle would shoot near or at her feet in an attempt to disable her, and then go straight to the boys considering male slaves were worth more back in that time frame. Any attempt to kill one of the men would still ersult in her still loosing her children regardless of the outcome she makes, and that the white men would not really care if Denver or Beloved died out due to starvation- They arent worth much, cannot survive without special means (If they still had Sethe's milk, for example), and more-over, this is still an era where females are still unfortunately highly devalued; these guys are just out to get a proffit and would not care any about Sethe's family intentions. As a bonus for attempting to run, if the condition existed that Sethe & kids were returned to Sweethome, the boys would be sold off, Sethe loosing a foot, Denver and Beloved being brought up and sold off.