Critical Lens Expert 2 Weber

Welcome back everyone. Once again I am doing the second Critical Lens Experts blog. The Critical Lens Essay that I read this time is “The Bonds of Love and the Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Barbara Schapiro. In this essay, Barbara talks about how Beloved penetrates more deeply into the nature of self and the relations of love than any other books that have been written before.

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another”(page 95, Beloved)

Barbara continues to talk about how the ability to be able to recognize yourself as a true human and the need to be recognized by others as a true human are closely intertwined. Throughout the majority of the essay Barbara focuses more on the relations between mother and child. She says that if the mother cannot recognize herself, the child cannot recognize its mother as a “human subject”, and the mother cannot recognize her child as a “subject” then it leads to the child believing that they do not have a self to claim as theirs. This can then lead to “the emotional hunger...obsessive and terrifying narcissistic fantasies.” (Barbara Schapiro)

I highly agree with this argument that Barbara has said. Humans can’t live entirely alone, we are a herd/pack race that depends on each other combined with our own strengths to survive. If a human child was raised among animals by animals then the child would never know what it is to be human. Most of the meanings that come with being human are created by human society. So you could say we have created the common definition of self because we recognize the self of each other. If there was no one to recognize and accept our self then it would be just like having been raised by the animals.

But in Barbara’s paper she focuses more on the relations between mother and child. She says that being denied the right to see their self and to have a self by the slave master society created a hunger so deep and powerful that they are terrified that they will destroy the other person that they seek that recognition and love from. Barbara states that a child is denied the closeness, intimacy, and love that is needed to form a notion of who you are in the world. I believe that love you get from your mother is your first notion of self that you get when you enter the world, that you are your mother’s child. Then from that first notion you build up more and more as you learn about yourself and how others view you to determine who you truly are. This is why Sethe asked to have the brand mark that was on her mother so that she could be closer to her mother and be her daughter, beforehand Sethe had to have a girl point out her mother to her so that she knew who she was. But growing up in slavery took her mother from her and took away her first inclination of herself. Sethe was denied the right to be her mother’s daughter.

So I would have to say that this paper is pretty accurate on what the interrelations of mother and child in Beloved. I can vouch for this personally, having been neglected by my birth mother until I was adopted at 5 years old.

Critical Lens Experts Weber

In the critical lens paper “Figurations of Rape and the Supernatural in Beloved” by Pamela E Barnett she talks about how Beloved is a symbol of rape and is a succubus. She continues to say how Toni Morrison used the story of her characters of Beloved to portray how they are “haunted by history, memories, and a specter that embodies them both. Pamela E. Barnett specifies that the “memory” that Paul D. Garner and Sethe are haunted by the most is the memory of their rape and the dehumanization they faced during slavery. Pamela Barnett introduces the idea that rape is the biggest issue that Beloved alluded to. Sethe  being held down and having her milk stolen from her by the boys with mossy teeth, Paul D’s imprisonment is the Chain Gang where he was forced to preform oral sex on the white prison guards, Baby Sugg’s rape, and Ella’s imprisonment by the white father and son for sexual pleasure.

In this critical lens essay Pamela Barnett says that Beloved is a succubus. A mythological female demon of lust that drains the sperm and life force of men, conjugates with an Incubus that then goes and impregnates women. She continues that as Beloved is a Succubus she drains Sethe of her vitality and thrives off of Sethe’s misery and traumatic memories, “memories”. And she drains Paul D of his sperm, literally, and breaks open his “tobacco tin” heart. Pamela continues on more to talk about the succubus Beloved affects the other characters in Beloved and many more things.

Personally, when I read this critical lens essay I could not help but think, “what the hell is up with this woman’s obsession with rape?” I truly do believe that rape is the worst crime that can be committed on another human being. As is Sethe with her reasoning for killing her daughter to save her from being soiled and “dirtied” by the white masters. But part of it is that Palema never tries to give a down side or a counter of some sorts to Sethe’s reasoning for why she tried to kill all of her children when the school teacher went to Connecticut to bring her back into slavery. Throughout the entirety of the essay the topic is “raperaperape”. This leads me to believe that Plema Barnett believes that one of the main meanings of Beloved is to tell how horrible slavery was due to the rape. Later on in her essay she seems to zero in on Paul D’s experience to try and advocate for why his experiences are just as bad as anyone else. She specifically points out how other writers have commented on Paul D’s experiences as a saddening but not as horrible as the experiences of Sethe and Baby Suggs. Later on Palema presents that Paul D’s main dilemma was that he was trying to assert his manhood and make sure he has his masculinity as it was lost while he was dehumanized on the chain gang.

Overall I agree with Palema that these are important and significant parts of the story and that they do add to the story but I do not think that it is the main theme of the story. Instead of rape is the most hideous offence there is being the main theme, although it is the most hideous offence second to none. I believe that the main purpose of Beloved is to tell the horrendous and unspeakable story of slavery in all its darkness and horror. I believe that the purpose of this book is to say that even when slavery has been ended, the effects of it will never disappear and it will always enslave people in their hearts and always have a form of presence in some way or the other. Such as a deep deep rooted racism and discrimination against differences. It’s still there and always will be. Just like how Sethe and Paul D are haunted by the memories and trauma of their enslavement. But as they begin to come to terms with themselves it alludes to the fact that the effects of slavery will always be there, but depending on how we confront it, it will hopefully get better so that we accept it instead of letting it haunt us.

Responding and Reflecting Weber 2

Hello everyone. Thanks again for reading my second Responding and Reflecting blog.

Last time I talked about how Toni Morrison used her characters in Beloved to show how not everyone fits into the gender stereotypes.

Like last time, this time I have to talk about something that the book Beloved taught me through the Feminist Lens. This time around I will talk about how Beloved taught me the difference between desire for someone and an obsession over someone.

Formally, the definition of Desire is “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.” (google definitions, no real website to site) Desire can be defined through a wish to achieve something, but in the case of Beloved desire is mostly used as a sexual want for someone. Obsession is “an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind.” (google definitions)

If you were to describe the characters of Beloved I would describe Sethe as desperate and enslaved by her own mind, Paul D as in self denial and submissive, Denver as growing and lonely, and Beloved as obsessive and manipulative.

A lot of the book Beloved is based off of the desires of humans. The desire of men to have control over others, the desire of the slave masters to use the female slaves as toys for their sexual pleasure, the desire to be free, the desire to be healed, the desire to be looked at with love and the desire to be with someone and to not be so alone. For those that have read the book I am pretty sure that they would agree with me in this.

Now back to how there’s a fine line between desire and obsession. And the character that shows that difference the best is Beloved. Many would agree that one of the main themes of the book Beloved is about desire. But Beloved herself is a figure to show how you can take your desires and wishes too far, and that is how she crosses over to being obsessive. Now if she just had a desire for Sethe it would have been healthy, but Beloved shoved Denver away and manipulated Paul D into having sex with her. Beloved’s every day was taken up by Sethe. Everything Sethe has and was is what Beloved had to have and to be. She wanted to take everything that Sethe held dear and make her live through all of the pain that she had in her life. Beloved thrived off of Sethe’s misery and became healthier as Sethe became weaker. This is to show the readers where your desire for something becomes unhealthy. Desire becomes an unhealthy obsessiveness. When every single thought of yours is taken up by the want for that person. When you choose to take everything that is theirs. It’s unhealthy when it affects your own health, like gets you pregnant. It’s also unhealthy when it affects the lives of others, like taking a mother away from a daughter that needs her. And finally, when your object of desire takes a turn for the worst, like Sethe’s life force being drained from her and her drowning in depression at being forced to relive her traumatic experiences. This is what you call obsessive and the book Beloved shows that it is not healthy to be obsessive but desire is perfectly natural.

Critical Lens Close Reading Weber 2

Hello everyone. Thanks for reading a second critical lens close reading blog of mine for Beloved.

Another passage in Beloved that shows something about the Feminist Lens that I have chosen is when Sethe tried to kill her children when Sweet Home men went to Cincinnati and found Sethe and her children. When they were about to be brought back Sethe tried to kill her kids so that they didn’t have to live through slavery. And this happened chapter 16.

I find this passage and chapter to be related to the feminist lens because stereotypically mothers are “supposed” to be nurturing, kind, loving, and motherly. But then when Sethe goes to try and kill her children to save them from slavery she went against what the motherly and “womanly” thing to do was. She managed to kill her daughter Beloved who later comes back to haunt her. She wounded her two sons. And she was threatening to kill Denver while swinging her baby by her ankles. Beloved was buried and the boys were taken from Sethe at first but she brought Denver to jail with her. Later on the boys leave home and it is my suspicion that they left because they her scared of their mother more than they were scared of the ghost of baby Beloved.

I find this whole act of Sethe’s to be extremely disturbing but in some ways I see it is somehow motherly and caring for their mother to try to kill them in order to save them from the experiences of slavery. I see how she tried to save her boys from the experiences of being treated like cattle and from being lashed. And she tried to save her daughters from the experiences of being raped and sullied by the white masters and being impregnated by them.

In a way Sethe is trying to save her children from something that is worse than death by killing them herself. In that way I can see how Sethe is acting on her motherly instincts but this example of motherly instincts is rather far fetched and shows how slavery dehumanizes the slaves to the point that mothers can’t really even seem like mothers!

Critical lens

Text: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Critical lens: Feminist

Impressively enough “Slavery and Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’” by Terry Paul Caesar is being seen in the Feminist lens. This Lens is able to give a more meaning to what women rather than their skin color. These authors were able to conclude that the reason why She acted the way she did towards her kids was due to fear. They beloved Morrisons view was going more towards human dignity and freedom.

Terry mentions that the only reason why She killed Beloved was because she didn't want her children to like a slave life. He starts “a mother can conceivably kill a child in order to protect her own self-possession because she feels enslave…. and not only because she would save the child from slavery.” From reading beloved Sethe didn't mean to kill Beloved purposely but because of the fact that she saw the white men coming she got frightened and did was she believed was right. Terry also expands on how there is a big difference between “being a women” and “being a mother”. A women is just a female who follows what they are told to do. However a mother has more responsibility they have to deal with guilt, fear, and weak. Terry put a great example. He said that when Paul D asked Sethe to have a baby with him, She freaked and just thought about how of a mother she was. In fact I do not agree with her being a bad mother. I feel like she did was she felt was right and that was protecting her kids. She also had 2 kids that ran away, and did not want her 2 other kids to be taken away. What Terry came to conclude was that being a Slave mother, makes a mother react a different way due to the fact they want to protect them. He disagrees with what Morrison and how much she dramatize what a mother is.

In beloved  we can not really see how Morrison made Sethe look like a bad mother. Yet if we pay really close attention to how much repetition she put on Sethe when killing Beloved. Terry’s image of what a mother is, gives a true understanding that a mother will protect her kids. A mother will try to do their very best to not let anything awful happen to their children. A mother is like a Lion, they will fight and kill their cubs and if it means hurting one then it was for a good cause. Being a mom is not easy especially if you have a ugly history behind you.

Responding and Reflecting Weber

Hello readers of this blog. In this blog I will talk about the things that I have learned from Beloved. Or in this case what was reconfirmed for me.

The thing that Beloved reconfirmed for me is that stereotypes are not absolute. Sure many people may go along with the stereotypes but a lot of that seems to be caused by things such as their upbringing, personal experiences, and society. I bet that there are multiple things that contribute to whether people follow gender stereotypes or not, like sexuality and multiple other things, but upbringings, experiences, and society are the things that have stood out to me the most in Beloved.

In Beloved you see the history of the US during the 1850s and 1860s. Throughout history of many cultures and to the present stereotypes have labeled people to be and act a certain way and follow certain norms just because they are of a certain gender.

Men have been stereotyped to always be masculine, be the "man of the house", hold control in relationships, be the one working, to not cry, to like sports and beers, the decision makers of all important matters, and to be savage sexual beasts and predators.

Whereas women have been stereotyped as weak, unintelligent, reserved, modest, lesser than men, mothers, cooks, not fit to be working outside of the house and raising children, feminine, gentle, insecure, and caring. There is also the stereotype that society has put on women by the men. These are that women are objects of desire and lust to be coveted, women are belongings, and they are all submissive. Then there is the thought that it is women who lead and seduce men into corruption. There have been times where men have cheated on their wives and the wives blamed the other women as if it was all their fault for seducing their husbands.

These are all stereotypes put on the genders by our society all over the world. It is my presumption that these stereotypes were formed because there are men and women that are very much like those descriptions and I have personally met a handful that do fit those descriptions. Then that leads to society as a whole accepting those stereotypes as the norm of what men and women should be. When that happens you find others who are expected, manipulated, and coerced into fitting those norms out of fear of ridicule. That fear came from the people who "fit" the norm to be scared of something that is different than their own "perfect" little world, and fear from those who are different that they will be ridiculed, hated, and in olden days or, in less developed countries, beaten for being who they are.

Now I have gone on about this for a while now, but you can clearly see how Sethe does not fit the typical stereotype for women. She is strong and independent. Then there’s Paul D who was beaten into submission while he was imprisoned with the chain gang. Sethe fit the more masculine type while Paul D was broken into being submissive while he desperately tried to hold on to his masculinity that society expects men to have. When Beloved went to request Paul D to have sex with her he gave in without much resistance. It wasn’t that he wanted to have sex with her but more that he was too scared to disobey her. These are just two examples but you can see how they don’t fit the “norm”, their entire personalities disrupt it.

But it goes to show that no one is born with these traits that match the stereotypes completely. Everyone is born equally different and equal as a human being, but it is society that forms us to fit the stereotypes chosen for us based on what gender we are. In the 1850s and the 3 centuries of slavery before then the whites subjected themselves to the stereotypes but then held the slaves to even worse standards. Female slaves were subjected to the position of sex slaves and breeders, and male slaves were made into cattle for manual labor, and as Paul D experienced, sometimes male slaves were also made to be sex slaves.

The history of the world shows these stereotypes and subjects the people to it but everyone knows people who are different and luckily, having men and women who don’t fit the stereotypes have come to be more commonly accepted by society. And Beloved shows that through its characters.

Blog Post #7- Denver

After Sethe discovers that Beloved is her daughter, the relationship between Sethe, Beloved, and Denver becomes incredibly unhealthy. Sethe and Beloved become addicted to each other, and ignore Denver completely. Sethe and Beloved walk together, switch beds, exchange clothes, and even garden together. Then the relationship takes a turn and Beloved becomes emotionally abusive towards her mother. Beloved makes Sethe feel guilty for killing her, depriving Sethe of food and ordering Sethe to do things for her. The whole time Denver is watching her mother get tortured by Beloved. Finally Denver decides that she need to leave to get help. Based off what I have read in Beloved, it is the role of the child to leave unhealthy child and parent situations.

For instance, after describing how her mother is getting increasingly skinner because she is deprived of food, she describes how the job went from protect Beloved from her mother, to protecting Sethe from Beloved. Denver describes how she knew “She would have to leave the yard; step of the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask someone for help”(pg. 286). Denver showed incredible strength in leaving that relationship and getting help. By saying “She would have to leave the yard” Denver shows incredible strength. Furthermore, Denver shows incredibly amounts of responsibility in knowing that the situation that she is living in is not healthy and going to get help.

Denver has taught me, that when their is an unhealthy relationship between a parent and child, it is the job of the child to leave the situation. It was incredibly difficult for Denver to leave that situation and get help, but she did it. Denver is an incredibly strong and responsible person, who, I feel is very modern for the time. Denver does not fit the role of a woman during that time period. The strength and responsibility that Denver shows by leaving the relationship makes her more of a 21st century woman. She is able to identify when something is wrong, and knows that it is okay to ask for help.