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.