Mother-Daughter Relationships
Also, in the novel The Color Purple, the theme of mother-daughter relationships was also present. The novel portrayed how living without a mother effected the character, Celie. Life was not easy for Celie, losing her mother at the age of fourteen. She grew up not knowing how to give love and not knowing how to receive it. The novel portrays how the absence of a mother affects a child growing up.
In the novel Beloved, Sethe grew up without a mother on a plantation and the childhood has made it hard for her to give and receive love. "On plantations slaves worked in groups of about 20 to 25 men and women and children. Slaves performed backbreaking work, often for more than 14 hours a day"(Mason 135). The reason for Sethe not being able to have a good relationship between her daughter Denver and also Beloved is a direct result of the relationship that she and her mother endured. "Although Sethe physically survives, she remains emotionally subjugated, and her desire to give and receive love becomes a destructive force."(Matuz 194) This 'destructive force' tears at the relationship Sethe has between her daughters. Sethe learns to over come her pain and suffering of not having a mother and she strives to become a mother.
Sethe often refers to her past throughout the novel. The author uses the technique of flashbacks to show how Sethe's relationship with her mother was not strong.
"She picked me up and carried me behind the smokehouse... On her rib was a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. She said, 'This is your Ma'am. This,' and she pointed. If something happens to me and you can't tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark.' 'But how will you know me? How will you know me? Mark me, too,' I said. 'Mark the mark on me too.' Sethe chuckled"(Morrison 61).
Through this flashback Sethe displays her feelings of "Not [being] marked and she thinks that she has no link with her mother." That missing link between mother and daughter teaches Sethe that if her daughter is dead then they have no emotional tie. "Sethe firmly believes that because of Ma'am is physically dead, they are not emotionally tied. When her mother was hanged, Sethe did not know why. Probably...trying to escape from the plantation. ...It would mean that she left Sethe behind, emphasizing in this generation the continuous pattern of severed mother-daughter relationships"(Horvitz).
When the author introduces a the new character "Beloved", she depicts Beloved as being the spirit of Sethe's dead daughter returning in the flesh. Morrison, raised with folklore, explains why she wrote about a ghost story, "as a child she became well acquainted with the myths and folklore which figure prominently in her works. Her parents frequently told her of ghost stories"(Gale DISCovering Authors on-line). The author introduces Beloved to the novel to provoke memories of the death of Sethe's child and for Sethe to confront and confess the experiences of slavery, and why Sethe chose to kill her daughter. "Morrison based this scenario on an article she read in a nineteenth-century magazine, according to the article, Margaret Garner was a runaway slave who was tracked by her owner to Cincinnati. Faced with imminent capture, Garner attempted to murder her four children but only succeeded in killing one"(Major). Morrison uses the character Beloved to bring Sethe's past out. When Beloved asks about Sethe's past, "she found herself wanting to, liking it [telling about her past]. Perhaps it was Beloved's distance from the events itself, or her thirst for hearing it-in any case it was an unexpected pleasure"(Morrison 58). Sethe tries to explain why she killed her third daughter and how it was the right thing to do. Morrison chose to show the abandonment between Sethe and Beloved to depict how the abandonment between Sethe and her mother connected to the choice of Sethe to kill her daughter and abandon her. "[Sethe's memory] of her Ma'am are buried not only because their relationship was vague and their contact prohibited but also because those recollections are inextricably woven with feelings of painful abandonment. If Sethe remembers her mother, she must remember that she believes her mother deserted her"(Horvitz). If Sethe has to remember the choice she made to kill her daughter, Sethe has to remember that she abandoned her daughter and deserted her. She must remember the pain of losing a child and also the pain of not having a mother. "Mother-daughter bonding and bondage suffuses Morrison's text. Sethe's nameless mother is among the African slaves who experience the Middle Passage and, late in the text, she related that ordeal through a coded message from the ship revealing that she too is a Beloved who, like Sethe, has been cruelly separated from her own mother"(Horvitz). Since Sethe has been abandoned from her mother she believes that the right thing to do is to kill her own daughter. Sethe chose to kill her daughter rather than have her live a life in bondage, where a mother-daughter relationship would never exist. Like in the novel Beloved, the separation of mothers and daughters are also present in the novel The Color Purple. In The Color Purple, Walker has Celie take the place of a mother who just died. Celie, not knowing how to act with children and not knowing how to act like a mother, is forced to bridge the gap of losing her own mother and becoming one. "I spent my wedding day running from the oldest boy. He twelve. His mama died in his arms and he don't want to hear nothing bout no new one"(Walker 13).
Throughout the novel, Sethe recollects things that have happened in the past. The novel Beloved takes place during the reconstruction era, twelve years after the Civil War. "Most southern states abolished slavery and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which guaranteed freedom of their former slaves, but blacks still struggled, their efforts hindered by lack of education and inexperience"(Mason 399). Through a flash back technique the author shows how Sethe remembers her mother and their relationship. Morrison has the main character relive the past in order for the reader to pick up on Sethe's feelings of abandonment. "Although Sethe has forgotten the words of her mother's language, they continue to exist inside of her as feelings and images that repeatedly emerge as a code that she relives and without realizing it, this code holds the most painful fact of Sethe's life: her mother's absence"(Horvitz). Through another technique the author uses another character to bring about memories of Sethe's past. Toni Morrison, uses the character Beloved as the key to unlock the mystery of Sethe's past. "What Beloved demands is that Sethe reveal her memory and story about her life before Sweet Home... because they share identities, the ghost child's fascination lies in the 'joined' union between Sethe's mother and herself... Sethe is forced to remember about her own mother"(Horvitz).
The author, Toni Morrison uses the character Sethe to display the effects slavery has on a mother-daughter relationship. How relationships between mothers and daughters were prohibited and how the memory of not having a mother effects future relationships. Sethe is trying to survive every day and trying to be a mother for her daughter, Denver. "'When I say that Beloved is not about slavery, I mean that the story is not about slavery... I deal with five years of terror in a pathological society, living in a bedlam where nothing makes sense. ...But these people are living in that situation and they survive it-and they are trying desperately to be parents, husbands, and a mother with children'"(Morrison). Beloved goes beyond the aspects of slavery and touches upon how people can over-come obstacles and survive. Like Sethe, Celie over-comes many obstacles like the lose of her mother, sister and children. With the help of blues singer, Shung Avery, Celie gains courage, laughter, and love. Although slaves, such as Sethe and Garner have endured so much hardship, they can survive. "They are like a group of survivors waiting on a rock in the middle of the ocean: not exactly without hope, but hard enough and realistic enough not to get too excited about what tomorrow may bring"(Major). The novel depicts mother-daughter relationships as something to treasure and how the role of a mother shapes who one becomes. The author shows that "the novel is about matrilineal ancestry and the relationships among enslaved, freed, alive and dead mothers and daughters. Equally it is about the meaning of time and memory and how remembering either destroys or saves a future"(Horvitz). In The Color Purple, The author shows how the love of a sister gives hope for the future. Celie remembers the times she had with her sister and those times helped her survive through the days with Albert. "I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time. And you alive and be home soon. With our children"(Walker 222).
When Sethe first realizes that Beloved is the ghost of her third child, she wants desperately for Beloved to understand that the reason for killing her baby is so that they would be protected from captivity forever. Sethe tries to impress upon her how slavery made it impossible for her to be the mother she wanted to be. Slavery tears at the relationships between mothers and daughters, destroying them and leaving painful memories. Beloved is a novel about how one over comes the pain of not just slavery, but of the memories and pain of lost relationships. Like Beloved, the novel The Color Purple shows pain of broken relationships and how memories can tear apart a person or make them stronger. Celie keeps the memory of her sister alive and through the letters from Nettie, her sister she survives her abusive relationship. Like Celie, Sethe is able to open her mind to the past. In doing this she remembers the pain of losing her mother and her daughter, Sethe is finally able to give the love necessary to her daughter, but also receive love from others. Sethe has not only survived slavery but she has succeeded.
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"Beloved." Gale DISCovering Authors. http://galenet.gale.com/
Horvitzh, Deborah. "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in Beloved," in Studies in American Fiction, vel. 17, no. 2, Autumn, 1989, p. 157-67.
Major, Clarence. "In the Name of Memory," in The American Book Review, vo. 9, no. 6, HJanuary-February, 1988, p.17.
Mason, Lorna, Jesus Garcia, Frances Powell, and C. Fredrick Risinger. America's Past and Promise. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995: 135, 399.
Matuz, Roger, ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1989: vol. 55, p. 194-213.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: The Penguin Group, 1987: 58, 61.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. San Diego, CA.: Pocket Books, 1982: 13, 222.