Onuorah1
Slave Women in “Beloved”
Nakia Onuorah
Professor Luftig
English 102
04/26/2017
Slave Women in Beloved
Toni Morrison opens the book Beloved with the inscription “Sixty Million and more”
as a dedication to approximately sixty million people who died during the slave trade and
who never experienced slavery. Although she dedicates the book to those who died in the
slave trade, the story memorialize the slavery as it transpire in the United States. Morrison
says that, “there is a necessity for remembering the horror, but of course there’s a necessity
for remembering it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory
is not destructive. The act of writing the book, in a way, is a way of confronting it and
making it possible to remember.” (Guthrie, 248)
According to Morrison overcoming the evils of slavery constitutes remembering all
the evils of the trade instead of forgetting. She wants the readers to “re-vision and understand
African-American history through non-western eyes by re-telling history through the lives of
former African slaves.” (Ibid, 1)The essay will explore the experiences of female slaves
focusing on sexual exploitation and commodification of the bodies which led to painful
experiences of motherhood.
2
Beloved
Beloved is set in 1873, in a house in Cincinnati, Ohio. A former slave, Sethe, and her
daughter Denver are the only women living in the house, besides the ghost that haunts them.
It has been many years since Sethe run away from the farm ‘Sweet Home’ in Kentucky,
where she had lived as a slave. While pregnant, Sethe planned to run away from the farm
with her husband Halle, with the intention of fleeing across the Ohio River to Halle’s mother,
Baby Suggs, in Cincinnati. However, on the day of the escape, Halle was nowhere to be
found and Sethe was forced to flee alone. On her way to Ohio she delivered a baby girl
(Denver), and arrived safely at Baby Suggs’ house. Her freedom living with her mother–in–
law and her four children was short-lived as her master hunted her in an attempt to reclaim
his “property”. When he finally found her, Sethe attempted to kill her children to avoid their
enslavement, but she only managed to kill one daughter (Bloom 4). Through her conversation
with Paul D, it is clear that Sethe’s decision to kill her children rather than let them to be
slaves is influenced by the traumas she endured at Sweet Home, including rape at the hands
of the overseer, called “Schoolteacher” by the slaves.
Presentation of Black Slave Women
Slave women were easily harmed by their nearby interaction with their master. They
were unable to protect themselves from the physical and sexual abuse. Especially on large
properties, intercourse between white men and black women was a customary procedure. The
overseers, masters and sons used black women for nonchalant and impassive sex.
Slavery was not just not a physical toll on women but mental as well. There is a big
distinction between being physically free and mentally free from being a slave woman
sexually abused in her past. Yet many were physical free they still suffered from mental
enslavement. Toni Morrison uses descriptive scenarios to depict the memories from a
female’s perspective and create a testimony of what the women as a whole had to overcome
while being mistreated with their bodies. “He peopled my young mind with unclean images,
such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned away from him with disgust and
hatred.But he was my master.” (Morrison, 44). Beloved is a true example of how the women
actually go through it but also, mentally are affected by slavery and the word “free” is not
really as it seems and how it’s a struggle to free oneself within slavery, past and definitions.
“It was not a story to pass on” (Morrison, 274) which was repeated implying its significance
by suggesting a future free of being enslaved physically and mentally.
Before freeing to Ohio, Sethe lived on a plantation farm in Kentucky, with her
husband Halle and other people. Mr. Garner, their master, was ‘good’ to them. For instance,
he let Halle buy his mother out of slavery, after working hard for several years. However,
