|
Looking into the self
that is no self: an examination of subjectivity in 'Beloved.'
by Jennifer L. Holden-Kirwan
In a 1989 interview with Bonnie Angelo of Time magazine, Toni Morrison
discussed the desire of our nation to repress the memory of slavery.
According to Morrison, the enslavement of Africans and African
Americans in the United States is "something that the characters [in
Beloved] don't want to remember, I don't want to remember, black people
don't want to remember, white people don't want to remember" (120). Yet
her novel forces its reader to recognize the existence and conditions
of slavery in a nation that would prefer to forget that such a crime
was ever committed. While Morrison, like Sethe and Paul D., would
prefer to repress the memory of slavery, she feels compelled to create
a space in which the "enslaved" may finally speak. As Elizabeth Abel
has pointed out, "Beloved deliberately represents captive persons as
subjects rather than objects of oppression, and does so primarily in a
discourse on the hunger, passion, and violence generated in the 'too
thick' mother-daughter bond produced by the conditions of slavery"
(199).
While the end of slavery
sought to transform objects (slaves) into subjects (free men and
women), the characters in Beloved find the passage into subjectivity
somewhat elusive. In this essay, I explore the question of Beloved's
identity and how her identity affects her own subjectivity, as well as
that of Denver and Sethe. First, I explain how Beloved's perpetual
references to a slave ship experience function as her primal scene: a
traumatic event in one's childhood which may be considered the cause of
one's adult neurosis (Freud 213-34). After interpreting the primal
scene, I discuss the complexity of Beloved's identity. As Margaret
Atwood asserts, "There's a lot more to Beloved than any one character
can see, and she manages to be many things to several people" (3). Like
the novel itself, the character of Beloved resists a singular
interpretation. However, if for a moment one were to disregard the
multiplicity of Beloved's voice and focus instead on the voice as a
single consciousness, one would find a powerful way into the novel.
This schema allows the reader to consider another possible
interpretation of Beloved's identity. Finally, I examine the
characters' desire for subjectivity and the extent to which their
desires are fulfilled.
Identifying the Primal Scene
In her article "Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who Is Not Beloved,"
Elizabeth B. House informs us that "unraveling the mystery of . . .
[Beloved's] identity depends to a great extent upon first deciphering
chapters four and five of Part II" in Beloved. House provides a
detailed explanation of the obscure references in the narrative,
pointing out "how white slave traders . . . captured the girl and her
mother" and "put them aboard an abysmally crowded slave ship" (18). Her
observation lies in contrast to that of Carol Rubens, who views this
narrative sequence as Beloved's "escape from the grave," explaining
that "the hold of a slave ship seems [only] fleetingly invoked" (1135).
To readers unfamiliar with slave ship descriptions and the events that
transpired on board these vessels, Morrison's eight-page account might
seem "fleetingly invoked" and much "too vague." Jean Wyatt argues that
the unannounced appearance of the slave ship monologue is intended to
throw readers off balance: "Since Morrison does not identify these
scattered perceptions as observations of life on a slave ship or tell
how Beloved came to be there or give any coordinates of time and place,
readers are baffled: they have no idea where they are." Wyatt goes on
to explain how the confusion that the reader experiences in this
section of the text "imitates the disorientation of the Africans who
were thrown into slave ships without explanation" (480). While I agree
with Wyatt that some readers may stumble on the initial appearance of
the sequence, I believe that the reader who is educated about the
Middle Passage will quickly recognize the details of the narrative,
finding it extremely vivid and tangible.
In Black Cargo, Richard Howard illustrates the condition and treatment
of African men, women, and children aboard a typical slave ship.
Quoting Harry Johnston, he tells how the kidnapped people were kept
"enclosed under grated hatchways, between deck. The space was so low
that they sat between each other's legs, and stowed so close together
that there was no possibility of lying down, or at all changing their
positions by night or day. As they belonged to, and Were shipped on
account of different individuals, they were all branded like sheep . .
. burnt with a red-hot iron." (47)
With this account in mind, the reader can recognize what Morrison is
referring to with phrases like "I am always crouching," "someone is
thrashing but there is no room to do it in," and especially the
repeated "a hot thing" (210). Once the sequence has been recognized as
an experience from the Middle Passage, the reader is able to translate
previously ambiguous references. The "men without skin" are clearly
white sailors who offer their urine ("morning water") and moldy
("sea-colored") bread to the dehydrated Africans (211). The "little
hill," a pile of dead bodies, is pushed from the bridge of the ship
into the ocean. Later, it appears as if one of the white sailors or
officers takes the young girl "inside" a cabin and rapes her: "I am
going to be in pieces," she says, "he hurts where I sleep he puts his
finger there I drop the food and break into pieces" (212). These and
other allusions to the treatment and condition of Africans during the
Middle Passage emerge in the narrative of Beloved.
The nineteen- or twenty-year-old woman who arrives at Sethe's house
possesses the subjectivity of the African girl held captive on the
slave ship in Part II. Nearly every reference the young woman makes, or
question that she asks, derives from either her experience in Africa
before being captured or her experience on the slave ship during the
Middle Passage. The intensity of her memory indicates that the events
of and surrounding the slave ship represent her primal scene.(1) In his
article" 'Rememory': Primal Scenes and Constructions in Toni Morrison's
Novels," Ashraf H. A. Rushdy redefines Freud's notion of the primal
scene "as the critical event (or events) whose significance to the
narrated life becomes manifest only at a secondary event, when by a
preconscious association the primal scene is recalled" (303). At times,
when recounting the primal scene, Beloved experiences visual and
auditory hallucinations which seem to transport her back to the ship.
At other times, an external "event" or sensation recalls the primal
scene. For example, at one point, Beloved and Denver are in the cold
house when Beloved "sits down on the pallet and, laughing, lies back
looking at the cracklights above" (123). The light seeping through the
roof triggers a memory from the slave ship ("daylight comes through the
cracks" [201]), and Beloved begins to hallucinate, saying," 'I'm like
this'" as she "bends over, curls up and rocks. Her eyes go no place;
her moaning is so small Denver can hardly hear it" (124). The chapter
ends with Beloved pointing to an invisible face which she says is her
own.
On another occasion, Denver
asks Beloved to describe the place she stayed in before coming to 124.
Beloved describes the place as "dark" and "hot. Nothing to breathe down
there and no room to move in." She proceeds to lie down on her side and
curl up, explaining to Denver," 'I'm small in that place. I'm like this
here.'" Having already presumed that Beloved is her dead sister brought
back to life, Denver believes that Beloved is describing some form of
afterlife and asks her who she was able to see while "'over there.'"
Beloved does not know their names, but she does recall seeing "'heaps.
A lot of people is down there. Some is dead'" (75). Beloved's
references to" 'down there' "may apply to the hull of the slave ship
where she is "not big" and "cannot fall because there is no room to"
(210-11). When Denver questions the origin of Beloved's name, the young
woman replies," 'In the dark my name is Beloved'" (75). Again, Denver
associates darkness with another world. However, Beloved could also be
referring to the darkness of the slave ship where "ghosts without skin
stuck their fingers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in
the light" (241).
Beloved's
references to the primal scene continue to arise and be interpreted in
various ways by the other characters throughout the novel. When Beloved
asks Sethe," 'Where your diamonds?' "Sethe assumes that she is asking
about Mrs. Garner's crystal earrings. However, Beloved may be seeking
her mother's "shining," "sharp earrings" that the "men without skin"
stole on the slave ship (211-12). When Denver accuses Beloved of
choking Sethe in the Clearing, Beloved innocently replies," 'I kissed
her neck. I didn't choke it. The circle of iron choked it'" (101). In
the primal scene, Beloved views the "circle around her [mother's] neck"
and wishes that she could "bite" it off (211). On another occasion,
Beloved is humming an African song (175), which is most likely the tune
she hears through the teeth of "the dying man" on the ship: "his
singing was soft . . . of the place where a woman takes flowers away
from their leaves and puts them in a round basket" (211). When Beloved
explains how she "got on the bridge" and searched for her mother's
face, Denver assumes that she is referring to a bridge in the woods
(75). However, Beloved is most likely referring to the bridge of the
slave ship (House 20).
Near the
end of the novel, Beloved becomes almost solely preoccupied with the
primal scene: "Sometimes she screamed, 'Rain! Rain!' and clawed her
throat . . . . Other times Beloved curled up on the floor, her wrists
between her knees, and stayed there for hours.... she would go to
Sethe, run her fingers over the woman's teeth while tears slid from her
wide black eyes" (250). When Beloved cries out" 'Rain!' "she appears to
be remembering "standing in the rain falling . . . falling like the
rain is," while observing the death of her mother from the ship's
bridge (212). In curling up on the floor, Beloved seems to be
illustrating the incessant "crouching" in the hull of the slave ship
(210). Running her fingers over Sethe's teeth and crying, Beloved seems
to be envisioning the "pretty little teeth" of the dead man on her face
and mourning his absence (212).
When the primal scene leaves the realm of hallucination for Beloved and
appears to repeat itself in the historical present, Beloved suddenly
vanishes. As she sees Sethe "running away from her" and "feels the
emptiness in [her] hand," Beloved knows that she is being left "alone.
Again" (262). The scene directly parallels Beloved's loss of her
African mother on the slave ship. Standing on the ship's bridge,
Beloved helplessly watches as the slave traders amass a pile of dead
bodies and push them into the sea. Beloved's horror is intensified when
she discovers that her mother has willfully joined the mound of people:
"the men without skin . . . push my own man through they do not push
her she goes in the little hill is gone" (212). Her mother's suicide
causes Beloved to feel abandoned and betrayed. As Beloved stands on the
porch of 124, she once again experiences the abandonment of her mother
(whom she considers Sethe to be): ". . . she is running into the faces
of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind . . .
. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling" (262).
The imagined re-enactment of her mother's suicide and the ensuing
feelings of loss, emptiness, and betrayal overwhelm Beloved to such an
extent that she instantaneously disappears. When Freud and one of his
patients uncovered the primal scene, where the patient's disorder
originated, the discovery enabled the patient to overcome his or her
illness. By encouraging the patient to confront his/her primal scene
instead of turning away from it, Freud believed that the recovery
process was expedited. Beloved does not retract from previous
encounters with her primal scene, since in those instances she is able
to control the memory. In the final scene, however, Beloved is
confronted with the traumatic experience and possesses no control over
what is happening. It is at this moment of loss of all control that
Beloved flees the primal scene.
Unraveling Beloved's Identity
Since the publication of Morrison's novel in 1987, the identity of
Beloved has perplexed some readers, annoyed others, and intrigued the
majority. Most readers and critics share Thomas R. Edwards's
perspective that Beloved "is unquestionably the dead daughter's spirit
in human form" (18). However, Walter Clemons argues that, since the
murdered baby could not have remembered passage on a slave ship,
"Beloved is also a ghost from the slave ships of Sethe's ancestry"
(75). Deborah Horvitz expands upon Clemons's assertion, concluding that
Beloved "is not only Sethe's two-year-old daughter, whom she murdered
eighteen years ago; she is also Sethe's African mother" (158). House
contradicts all prior critics by contending that Beloved "is not a
supernatural being of any kind but simply a young woman who has herself
suffered the horrors of slavery" (17). The many interpretations of
Beloved's identity reveal the complexity of Morrison's character. Not
only is she read differently by different characters in the novel but
also by different readers of the novel. Each new interpretation of
Beloved adds another layer to her already thick identity.
My reading of Beloved differs from the interpretations cited above.
Since the child that Sethe murders is born in America and never travels
the Middle Passage, the proposal that Beloved is solely the
reincarnated baby seems highly unlikely, if not impossible. Horvitz's
assertion that Sethe's murdered daughter and slave mother share
identities in the character of Beloved seems equally problematic.
Horvitz explains that at certain times in the novel the dead child
speaks, at other times Sethe's mother speaks, and in some cases the
identities are conflated. For example, "Beloved responds to Sethe's
entreaties not only in the language of the murdered daughter but also
in the tortured language of the 'woman from the sea.' "In Horvitz's
perspective, "Death and the Middle Passage evoke the same language"
(162). I find this comparison somewhat disturbing, as it seems to
discount the horror of the Middle Passage by equating a factual
historical experience with a conjectural otherworldly state. Morrison's
depiction contains factual details regarding the physical and mental
condition of captive Africans. When Horvitz regards the sequence as
both an account of a slave ship and an otherworldly experience, she
allows readers (herself included) to disbelieve part or all of the
sequence.
House argues that
"several years" pass between the time Beloved leaves the slave ship and
"arrives at the creek behind Sethe's house" (20). To account for this
gap, she looks to Sethe's initial assumption that "Beloved had been
locked up by some whiteman for his own purposes, and never let out the
door" (119). Home utilizes this conclusion to explain the smoothness of
Beloved's skin, the scar under her chin, and the source of her name. If
Beloved had been held captive by a white man in the 1870s, the
probability of her skin's being like "new" and her only bodily injury
being a small scar under her chin seems rather slight. In recalling her
captivity by two white men that lasted over a year, Ella informs
Sethe," 'You couldn't think up... what them two done to me'" (119).
Based upon Ella's unspeakable horror, which she "remembered every bit
of," Beloved would most likely have endured the same type of treatment.
Yet House neglects either to notice or to address the fact that Beloved
makes no references to that period in her life- a period that she
surely would have had memory of (as does Ella) if it had occurred. It
is interesting that, while House points out the rape of Beloved that
occurs on the slave vessel, she appears to misrecognize Beloved's
reference to the attack later on in the novel. House assumes that the
"ghosts without skin" who "stuck their fingers in her and said beloved
in the dark and bitch in the light" are the white men/man who held her
captive in a house. However, as I have previously explained, this
reference most likely applies to Beloved's rape on the slave ship.
While I disagree with Horvitz's assertion that Beloved shares both the
identity of the two-year-old baby and Sethe's mother, I do agree with
the part of her argument which asserts that Beloved possesses the
identity of Sethe's slave mother. I will argue that the African girl in
the Middle Passage sequence is Sethe's mother before she reaches
America and gives birth to Sethe, the only baby she did not throw away
(62).
"Of that place where she was
born (Carolina maybe? or was it Louisiana?)" Sethe remembers singing
and dancing, but close to nothing about her mother (30). Upon Beloved's
arrival, however, Sethe's repressed memories of her mother slowly begin
to re-emerge. When Sethe sees the young woman's face for the first
time, she has an uncontrollable need to urinate. Sethe recalls having
not "had an emergency that unmanageable . . . since she was a baby
girl, being cared for by the eight-year-old girl who pointed out her
mother to her"(51). Sethe's reaction of the appearance of Beloved may
be viewed in Freudian terms as" 'das Unheimliche' ": an uncanny
experience which "is in reality nothing new or alien, but something
which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become
alienated from it only through the process of repression" (241). The
sight of Beloved causes Sethe to reenact a childhood experience- one
that she specifically relates to her mother. In his essay entitled "The
'Uncanny,' "Freud reveals how the source of uncanny feelings in an
adult may be either an "infantile fear" or "an infantile wish or even
merely an infantile belief" (233). Since Beloved's uncanniness arouses
neither fear nor particular pleasure in Sethe, one may view the uncanny
feeling as mere recognition of a repressed figure from her childhood.
While Sethe initially makes the connection between the present and the
past experience, she later attributes her weak bladder to a
subconscious recognition of her dead daughter, eliding all possible
connections of Beloved to her mother.
Sethe reveals more details about her mother as the novel progresses. In
one instance, Sethe recalls Nan telling her that she and Sethe's mother
"were together from the sea" and "taken up many times by the crew"
(62). Nan and Sethe's mother were on the same slave ship during the
Middle Passage and were both raped by white sailors. Their experiences
aboard the vessel parallel the experience that Beloved relates in
section II. The "language" that Nan and Sethe's mother spoke differs
from the language Sethe uses now. The pronunciation of her mother's
words also differs, as illustrated and emphasized on page 31 when her
Ma'am calls her "Seth- thuh" instead of "Sethe." Beloved's "gravelly
voice . . . with a cadence not like" Sethe's or Denver's and her
peculiar expressions, like "my woman" instead of "mother," parallel
Sethe's memory of her mother's unfamiliar language and unusual accent
(60). Of course, the language and accent that pervade Beloved's and
Sethe's mother's speech are residually African.
The "song and dance" that Sethe remembers from her childhood also
originate in Africa (30). In particular, Sethe recalls how
. . . sometimes they danced the antelope. The men as well as the
ma'ams, one of whom was certainly her own. They shifted shapes and
became something other. Some unchained, demanding others whose feet
knew her pulse better than she did. (31)
When dancing for Denver, Beloved does "a little two-step, two-step,
make-a-new-step, slide, slide and strut on down." Although her dance is
untitled, it is possible that Beloved's movements emulate some kind of
African dance. The exhilaration that Sethe recalls seeing in the men
and women who danced the "antelope" is mirrored in Beloved's dance, as
she and Denver move "round and round the tiny room," swinging "to and
fro, to and fro, until exhausted" (74).
The "song" that Sethe claims to have invented to sing to her children
appears to be of partly African origin as well. When Beloved begins
humming a particular melody, Sethe assumes that the young woman is her
dead child, since she is confident that "nobody knows that song but me
and my children" (176). Beloved does not sing any of the song's lyrics;
she only hums the song's tune. As an adult, Sethe made up the words to
the song, but the melody of the song most likely derives from the place
"before Sweet Home" (62). Since she "could neither recall nor repeat"
the language spoken in that place, it would be impossible for Sethe to
recreate the words to any African songs. However, the melody of a
specific song may very well have been subconsciously retained and
revived later on in her adult life. As pointed out earlier, the origin
of the song for Beloved is on the slave ship, where she listens to the
"song" of the man who lies above her (211). Apparently, the melody that
Beloved hears in the Middle Passage and recites in Sethe's home is the
same melody that Sethe hears as a child while in the presence of her
mother and/or her mother's people.
In describing her mother's appearance, Sethe remarks that "she'd had
the bit so many times she smiled. When she wasn't smiling she smiled,
and I never saw her own smile" (203). Beloved is frequently described
as wearing a perpetual smile. When she emerges from the stream, she is
described as an unusual sight, causing people who may have seen her to
hesitate "before approaching her. Not because she was wet, or dozing or
had what sounded like asthma, but because amid all that she was
smiling" (50). When the thirty singing women assemble in Sethe's front
yard to chase away the "devil-child," Beloved remains standing on the
porch "naked and smiling" (261). Even after Sethe races across the yard
to attack Edward Bodwin, leaving Beloved "alone," she continues to
smile (262). People had informed Sethe that "it was the bit that made
her [mother] smile when she didn't want to" (203). While Beloved shows
no physical indications of ever having worn a bit, she occasionally
illustrates the uncontrollable smile of a woman who has.
The strongest piece of evidence identifying Beloved as Sethe's mother
can be observed in the final chapter of the novel. "When once or twice
Sethe tried to assert herself--be the unquestioned mother whose word
was law and who knew what was best- Beloved slammed things," rejecting
Sethe's role as mother (242). Eventually, Sethe relinquishes her
position as Beloved's mother altogether and falls into the position of
Beloved's daughter:
Beloved
bending over Sethe looked the mother, Sethe the teething child, for
other than those times when Beloved needed her, Sethe confined herself
to a corner chair. The bigger Beloved got, the smaller Sethe became . .
. . (250)
This reversal of roles
seems to function as the unveiling of an alternate identity for each
woman, even though none of the characters in the novel seem to
recognize the significance of the transformation.
Beloved's inability to recognize Sethe's other identity and the other
characters' inability to recognize Beloved's other identity can be
explained through the Lacanian concept of meconnaissance or
misrecognition. In her article "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration
of Gaze, Look and Image," Kaja Silverman describes meconnaissance as
the "inevitable outcome" in the Lacanian diagram of the formation of
identity (78). Silverman reveals that, while the gaze of the other
"confirms and sustains the subject's identity," it does not determine
the "form which that identity assumes" (72). Rather, the gaze serves to
project what is called the "screen onto the object," and it is at the
level of the screen, and not the gaze, that identity is formed (75).
Therefore, the identity of the characters in the novel is established
through the screen which each character projects upon the other. An
example of this projection of the screen can be seen early in the novel
when Sethe, Paul D., and Denver describe the ghost of Sethe's baby.
Sethe refers to the temperamental ghost as "mad," not evil, whereas
Denver considers the ghost "lonely and rebuked" (13). When Paul D.
enters the red light emitted from the ghost, "a wave of grief soaked
him so thoroughly he wanted to cry" (9). All characters posit the
identity of the ghost as the murdered two-year-old child; however, each
character perceives a different attitude in the ghost.
According to Silverman, Lacan's characterization of the screen
"suggest[s] that it is no more possible to be seen than to see
ourselves without the intervention of representation" (74). The screen
that is projected onto the object functions as a representation of the
object, and there is no limit as to the number of representations a
single object may possess. Since the subject "cannot see the object
without the intervention of the image/screen," the object that the
subject sees is always misperceived (78). In other words, the subject
can never see beyond the representation of the object- the
representation that the subject creates him/herself.
In realizing the inevitability of meconnaissance, the reader may
comprehend Sethe's and Denver's perception of Beloved as the embodiment
of Sethe's dead child. Moreover, the reader may understand Sethe's and
Denver's inability to perceive the subjectivity of Beloved as that of
the African girl on the slave ship and the identity of Beloved as
Sethe's slave mother. Understanding the concept of meconnaissance also
enables the reader to account for Beloved's recognition of Sethe as her
mother. When Beloved opens her eyes for the first time in front of 124,
she believes that Sethe's face is the "face I lost Sethe's is the face
that left me [on board the slave ship]" (213). The screen that Beloved
projects onto Sethe and the screen that Sethe and Denver project onto
Beloved lead to "instance[s] of misunderstanding" throughout the novel:
". . . as the three women talk to each other, each person's
understanding of what she hears is slanted by what she expects to hear"
(House 22-23). As Lacan reveals, "The relation between the gaze and
what one wishes to see involves a lure. The subject is presented as
other than he is, and what one shows him is not what he wishes to see"
(104). Here, meconnaissance determines the relationship of Beloved to
Denver and Sethe as well as the relationship of Sethe to Beloved.
Searching for Subjectivity
When Beloved accuses Sethe of "leaving her behind. Of not being nice to
her, not smiling at her," she seems to be referring to her mother, who
left her behind on the slave ship. Sethe responds by "saying she had to
get them out, away, that she had the milk all the time . . . [t]hat her
plan was always that they would all be together on the other side,
forever." Sethe hears what she expects her daughter would say and fails
to comprehend the details of Beloved's accusations; Sethe assumes that
Beloved's descriptions of starvation, rape, "dead men," and "ghosts
without skin" apply to hell, purgatory, or some form of afterlife
beyond Sethe's understanding and control (241). When Sethe relates to
Beloved how she took care of her as a baby, Beloved denies her
devotion. No matter what Sethe says, Beloved sits in a chair,
"uncomprehending everything except that Sethe was the woman who took
her face away, leaving her crouching in a dark, dark place, forgetting
to smile" (252). The scene is tragic, as Sethe pleads for forgiveness
from a woman who may not be her child, and Beloved begs for an
explanation from a woman who may not be her mother. Each woman's desire
can be read as a demand for recognition from the other. According to
Barbara Shapiro, "The craving for mutual recognition- for
simultaneously 'seeing' the beloved other and being 'seen' by her-
propels the central characters in the novel" (201). Sethe and Beloved
need to be recognized by the other in order to become subjects of the
symbolic order.
In her article
"Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," Hortense
Spillers describes how African people in slavery were "removed from the
indigenous land and culture"; denied their African names, rituals, and
kinship; and reduced to "quantities" and commodities instead of being
subjects (72-73). Morrison explores this deprivation of subjectivity
and the difficulty in reclaiming a selfhood in nearly all of the
characters in Beloved. In a passage that illustrates the annihilation
of slave subjectivity, Baby Suggs wonders,
Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was
she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful
wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me
would she like me? (140)
The
opportunity to possess subjectivity is squelched at every possible
venue as slavery denies Baby Suggs friendship, motherhood, wifehood,
sisterhood, and daughterhood. While she gives birth to seven children,
she is only allowed to "mother" her youngest son, Halle. "Under
conditions of captivity, the offspring of the female does not 'belong'
to the Mother, nor is s/he 'related' to the 'owner,' though the latter
'possesses' it" (Spillers 74). Even the name she is called by the
Garners, Jenny Whitlow, is not her own name but rather the name that
was inscribed on her sales ticket (142). In captivity, Baby Suggs knows
nothing about her self- not even "what she looks like" (141).
Therefore, when Halle succeeds in purchasing her freedom, she must go
through a process of acquainting herself with a "self that was no self"
(140).
The slave mother's absence
greatly impairs the development of the child's subjectivity Sethe
"didn't see her [own mother] but a few times out in the fields and once
when she was working indigo." What she seems to remember most about her
mother is the woman's absence. Without explicitly saying so, Sethe
feels personally affronted by her missing mother "She never fixed my
hair nor nothing," Sethe tells Denver and Beloved "She didn't even
sleep in the same cabin most nights I remember." Sethe "guess[es]" that
her mother had to sleep closer to the "line-up"; however, she suspects
that her mother had merely wanted to sleep elsewhere and intentionally
deserted her daughter at night (60-61). Even though Sethe is familiar
with the conditions of slavery, she cannot help but resent her mother's
incessant unavailability.
When
Denver asks Sethe what had happened to her mother, Sethe suddenly
remembers "something she had forgotten she knew. Something privately
shameful that had seeped into a slit in her mind" (61). John Bowlby
defines a form of repression in which "certain information of
significance to the individual being [is] systematically excluded from
further processing" as "'defensive exclusion'" (45). Sethe had
defensively excluded the memory of her mother and, in particular, the
events surrounding her mother's death. "When fragments of the
information defensively excluded seep through, fragments of the
behavior defensively deactivated become visible" (Bowlby 65). In
recalling the fate of her mother, Sethe brings to the surface feelings
of anger, bitterness, and sorrow. What she remembers is that, while
trying to escape slavery, her mother had been captured, returned to the
plantation, and hanged before the rest of the slaves. In order to
reclaim her freedom, Sethe's mother had been willing to leave her child
behind. Sethe finds it difficult to accept the fact that her "ma'am
would run off and leave her daughter" (203). When Nan tells her that
she was the only child her mother kept, Sethe initially feels
"unimpressed" and later feels "angry" (62). Sethe infers that Nan
wanted her to know how much her mother had cared about her, that she
was loved because she had been the only child not thrown away. However,
being allowed to live and being loved are not equivalent in Sethe's
eyes. To Sethe, love means being "willing to die" for someone and being
willing to "give [one's] privates to a stranger in return for a
carving" (203). She would never consider deserting one's child an act
of love.
Because of her mother's
daily inaccessibility and subsequent death, Sethe is denied
daughterhood. If her "ma'am had been able to get out of the rice long
enough before they hanged her," Sethe would have been a "daughter[,]
which is what [she] wanted to be" (203). Deprived of a mother, however,
Sethe can never be a daughter and thus never achieve subjectivity
through daughterhood; furthermore, the absence of the maternal look as
a child continues to deprive Sethe of subjectivity as an adult. After
attempting to ice-skate in the frozen creek with Denver and Beloved,
Sethe falls into laughter, then tears. As Shapiro argues, "Her weeping
. . . suggests a child's aching sense of loss or absence, specifically
the absence of the confirming, legitimizing gaze of the other"
(203-04). The "other" in this case is clearly Sethe's mother.
The look of the mother plays a critical role in the development of the
child's identity. Silverman explains the importance of the mother's
look in Lacan's account of the mirror stage: "What Lacan designates the
'gaze' also manifests itself initially within a space external to the
subject, first through the mother's look as it facilitates the 'join'
of infant and mirror image, and later through all of the many 'actual'
looks with which it is confused" (56). Recalling that "the gaze [of the
other] is that which confirms identity," the loss or denial of the
mother's gaze (which is here conflated with the look) leads to the
child's loss of identity.(2)
As a
child, Sethe is denied access to the maternal look. In giving birth to
her own children, she attempts to achieve subjectivity through
motherhood. However, maternal subjectivity for Sethe is problematized
by "a social order that systematically denied the subject position to
those it defined as objects of exchange" (Wyatt 478). In other words,
how could Sethe assert motherhood in a system that denied her that
right? How could she attempt to be a subject when "anybody white could
take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work,
kill, or maim you, but dirty you?" (251). Sethe realizes that as a
slave her children would never belong to her but, as a free woman, her
children would finally be hers "to love" (162).
In discussing motherhood in slavery, Barbara Christian reveals that
"the African emphasis on woman as mother was drastically affected by
the institution of slavery, since slave women and men were denied their
natural right to their children" (219). She goes on to explain that
"some slave women were so disturbed by the prospect of bearing children
who could only be slaves that they did whatever they could to remain
childless" (220). When faced with the decision of whether to kill her
children or relinquish them to a life of slavery, Sethe races her
children into the shed and quickly slices open her two-year-old's
throat with a handsaw. According to Wyatt, Sethe's maternal
subjectivity "is so embedded in her children that it . . . allows her
to take the life of one of them" (476). In killing her own child, Sethe
insists upon her subjectivity.
While Sethe attempts to locate her subjectivity in the maternal, Denver
and Beloved attempt to legitimize their subjectivity through the gaze
of the other. Upon Paul D.'s arrival, Denver fears losing Sethe's
attention. Her brothers had run away, her grandmother had died, the
children in town had alienated her, yet "none of that had mattered as
long as her mother did not look away as she was doing now" (12). When
Beloved appears, Denver no longer requires the attention of her mother,
as Beloved's gaze "fulfills [her] desire to be acknowledged and
recognized, to be a somebody rather than a nobody" (Devlin 891). For
Denver, "it was lovely. Not to be stared at, not seen, but being pulled
into view by the interested, uncritical eyes of the other." Being
"stared at" by the other is seen as a threatening, castrating gaze.
Being "seen" is merely being glimpsed at by the other but not
acknowledged, whereas being viewed by the "interested, uncritical"
other provides Denver with subjectivity. "Under that gaze"- the gaze of
Beloved- Denver finds herself "needing nothing" (118). "At the scopic
level," explains Lacan, "we are no longer at the level of demand, but
of desire, of the desire of the Other" (104). Denver believes that her
existence depends upon being visually "claimed" by the other (274).
When she and Beloved go into the cold house for cider and Beloved
suddenly disappears, Denver collapses into tears,
crying because she has no self. Death is a skipped meal compared to
this. She can feel her thickness thinning, dissolving into nothing. She
grabs at the hair at her temples to get enough to uproot it and halt
the melting for a while. (123)
With the disappearance of Beloved's gaze, Denver believes that she too
will disappear.
Because Beloved appears to consider Sethe her mother from the Middle
Passage, Sethe's gaze is the only one that can restore Beloved's
identity. In the slave ship sequence, Beloved believes that she and her
mother share a single identity: "I am not separate from her there is no
place where I stop" (210). The young girl engages in transitivism,
viewing her mother as a mere extension of herself rather than as a
separate subject. When the man above her "locks his eyes and dies on
[her] face," she says that she is able to see her mother. However, what
Beloved probably sees is her own face in the reflection of the dead
man's glassed-over eyes. Beloved's loss of identity occurs when her
mother "goes in" the sea. Since she is unable to distinguish between
her mother's face and her own, Beloved's identity is cast into the
water along with her mother's body. Without her mother, she has no
"name," no "face," and "no one to want" her (212). When Beloved sees
Sethe's face, she believes that Sethe's "is the one. She is the one I
need" (76).
Sethe's mother Beloved
comes back from the dead hoping to receive the attention, affection,
and recognition from her mother that she had lost when her mother
committed suicide on the slave ship. Shapiro accounts for Beloved's
behavior in the following description:
If from the earliest years on, one's fundamental need to be recognized
and affirmed as a human subject is denied, that need can take on
fantastic and destructive proportions in the inner world: the intense
hunger, the fantasized fear of either being swallowed or exploding, can
tyrannize one's life even when one is freed from the external bonds of
oppression. (209)
Because Beloved
is not recognized as Sethe's mother, her need to establish her identity
and regain her subjectivity remains unfulfilled. "Although she has
claim, she is not claimed," and without being "claimed," Beloved
"erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing
laughter to swallow her all away" (Morrison 274).
For Sethe, Beloved's disappearance means the dissolution of her own
subjectivity. When Paul D. finally resolves to see her, he finds her in
Baby Suggs's bed apparently awaiting her death. He tells Sethe of his
intention to bathe and massage her feet, and she thinks to herself:
"There's nothing to rub now and no reason to. Nothing left to bathe,
assuming he even knows how" (272). Without Beloved, Sethe believes that
her body, like her sell no longer exists. Only Paul D. can begin to
convince her that she has access to subjectivity outside of the
maternal, as he insists, "'You your best thing, Sethe. You are.'
"Sethe's closing response," 'Me? Me?' "seems to imply that she may in
time come to recognize and claim her own subjectivity (273).
While Beloved never attains subjectivity and Sethe only approaches it,
Denver firmly asserts her subjectivity at the end of the novel. Denver
knew that the only way to protect her mother from Beloved was "to leave
the yard; step off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go
ask somebody for help" (243). However, she cannot find the strength to
leave 124 without the encouragement of her deceased grandmother. Baby
Suggs had once told Denver that "there was no defense" against white
people. Now, she instructs her granddaughter to" 'know it, and go on
out the yard. Go on'" (244). Realizing that not only Sethe's but her
own well-being depended on her finding a job, Denver begins to regard
herself as having a self: "It was a new thought, having a self to look
out for and preserve" (252). She soon begins to work nights for the
Bodwins and seeks a day job in a shirt factory as well. Denver's
assertion of subjectivity is accentuated when Paul D. offers her his
opinion on Beloved and she abruptly defines, saying," 'I have my own'"
opinion (267). She acknowledges her own self and requires neither the
look of her mother nor Beloved to attain subjectivity.
Through Beloved, Morrison reveals how slavery and the period of
Reconstruction failed to grant subjectivity to many African Americans.
Those who did gain subjectivity did so by their own assertion, as
American society was reluctant legally and socially to acknowledge
African Americans as valid citizens. For the characters in the novel,
the transition from object to subject presents many obstacles; however,
with the support and encouragement from voices of the past (Baby Suggs
for Denver, Paul D. for Sethe), subjectivity becomes attainable.
Notes
1. The concept of the slave ship sequence as Beloved's primal scene was
first pointed out to me by Kimberly J. Devlin.
2. The Lacanian description of the mirror stage explains the
significance of the mother's look in the development of the infant. If
the mother and infant are both slaves, however, their joining becomes
problematic, as the experience of slavery challenges rather than
facilitates the joining of the infant and its mirror image. Rather than
disregarding the concept of the mirror stage altogether, I suggest
utilizing Lacan's theory while keeping in mind that his psychological
perspective is European-based. For further examples of the use of
Western theorists in the study of Beloved, see Rushdy, Shapiro, and
Wyatt.
Works Cited
Abel, Elizabeth. "Race, Class, and Psychoanalysis? Opening Questions."
Conflicts in Feminism. Ed. Marianne Hirsh. New York: Routledge, 1990.
184-204.
Atwood, Margaret. "Haunted by Their Nightmares." New York Times Book
Review 13 Sep. 1987: 1-3.
Bowlby, John. Loss: Sadness and Depression. New York: Basic Books,
1980.
Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black
Women Writers. New York: Pergamon P, 1985.
Clemons, Walter. "A Gravestone of Memories." Newsweek 28 Sep. 1987:
74-75.
Devlin, Kimberly J. "'See ourselves as others see us': Joyce's Look at
the Eye of the Other." PMLA 104 (1989): 882-93.
Edwards, Thomas. "Ghost Story." New York Review of Books 5 Nov. 1987:
18-19.
Freud, Sigmund. Three Case Histories. New York: Macmillian, 1963.
-----.
"The 'Uncanny.'" 1919. The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1955. 219-52.
Horvitz, Deborah. "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in
Beloved." Studies in American Fiction 17.2 (1989): 157-67.
House, Elizabeth B. "Toni Morrison's Ghost: The Beloved Who Is Not
Beloved." Studies in American Fiction 18.1 (1990): 17-25.
Howard, Richard. Black Cargo. London: Wayland, 1972.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of PsychoAnalysis. 1973.
Trans. Alan Sheridan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1981.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.
-----, "The Pain of Being Black." With Bonnnie Angelo. Time 22 May 1989:
120-22.
Ruben, Merle. "Morrison's Novel of Slavery, Memory, and Human
Kindness." Christian Science Monitor 5 Oct. 1987: 20.
Rumens, Carol. "Shades of the Prison House." Times Literary, Supplement
16-22 Oct. 1987:1135.
Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. "'Rememory': Primal Scenes and Constructions in
Toni Morrison's Novels." Contemporary, Literature 31.3 (1990): 300-23.
Shapiro, Barbara. "The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni
Morrison's Beloved." Contemporary Literature 32.2 (1991): 194-209.
Silverman, Kaja. "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Reconsideration of the Gaze,
Look and image." Camera Obscura 15 (1989): 54-85.
Spillers, Hortense. "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammer
Book." Diacritics 17 (1987): 65-81.
Wyatt, Jean. "Giving Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic in Toni
Morrison's Beloved." PMLA 108 (1993): 474-88.
Jennifer L. Holden-Kirwan is a lecturer at the University of
California, Riverside. She would like to express her sincere
appreciation to Kimberly J. Devlin and Carole-Anne Tyler for their
assistance in the research of this paper.
-1-
|
|