Bonds of Slavery and Chains of Motherhood

In “Slavery and Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” by Terry Paul Caesar, the author is explicit in how she means to analyze feminism in Beloved. Caesar begins by saying that the “infanticide” depicted in Beloved is a product of the “fundamental concerns of contemporary feminism, such as abortion and abuse.” This angle to look at Beloved is one that the reader does not usually think about when analyzing from the feminist lens; a reader uses just thinks about gender roles and how they impact the theme. Caesar looking at Beloved from this perspective not only opens this perspective to the readers, but introduces a whole new component of feminism: motherhood.

Caesar writes a lot to compare motherhood with slavery. In Beloved, Sethe is never truly “free” from the chains of slavery; as a reader we infer that is because she killed her child and has that pain and despair looming over her head. In this analytical piece, Caesar continually compares Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the equivalence of motherhood and slavery made in that novel, to this same comparison made in Beloved. Caesar writes, “If motherhood and slavery are equatable, then a mother can feel she is, exactly, a slave to her daughter, just as a daughter can to her mother.” Caesar then writes that this is part of the justification for Sethe killing her child because it not only save the child, but would free Sethe herself. 

Caesar then makes the point that there are “profound differences between being a woman and being a mother” in Beloved. She highlights that when Paul D asks Sethe to bear another child, she is scared and thinks “motherlove was a killer.” (Morrison 132) This is yet another instance where being a mother is equivalent to being a slave. Caesar writes that being a slave “contaminates” being a mother so the two are inseparable. In Beloved, Sethe is never freed from the wrath of the baby that she killed, and therefore is never freed from neither the chains of slavery nor the chains of motherhood.