Sethe is a strong woman who lives under an oppressive cultural and social
system that does not permit her to be nurtured or to nurture others reliably.
Sethe was hurt severely by her mother's inability to care for her because of
the slave environment in which they lived; taken from her mother as an infant,
she only saw her a few times in her life. As a result, she has pitifully few
bits and pieces of memory of her mother. As an adult, Sethe understands that
her mother was constrained by slavery and, therefore, literally unable to tend
to her. As a child, however, she could not understand the lack of attention she
received from her mother. She felt only abandonment and loss. Even as an adult,
Sethe still hurts from her lack of a true mother.
Sethe
responded to her own mother's abandonment by wanting to be a reliable and
nurturing mother herself. Unfortunately, slavery would not allow her to
succeed. She could not nurture her children as infants because they were taken
from her so that Sethe would be free to do slave labor. Additionally, Sethe was
separated from other women who could have advised her on caring for her
children. She knew, however, that her mother's milk was vitally important to
her children; it was the one reliable source of nurturing for them. It was also
the only thing that she could give her sons and daughters, for she had no money
of her own to buy things for them. When her milk was brutally stolen by
Schoolteacher's nephews, she felt robbed of her ability to be a mother and
nurture her child.
Sethe
understands the horrors of slavery in its most intimate violations, the
violations of family trust between mother and child. She also understands the
violation of being treated as an animal and is determined that her own children
will not endure the treatment she has received at the hands of white
slaveholders. Since she believed that the next world would be a safer place
than this one, she tried to kill all her children rather than seeing them grow
up in slavery. Even though she believed she was acting reasonably and in good
faith, she also knew that she had no right to take her baby's life. As a
result, she is haunted by guilt throughout the book.
Sethe's recovery involves her facing and dealing
with the past. When she tries to leave it behind without confronting it, the
past comes back to her as a real person and demanding in the form of Beloved.
Even then, she tries to forget the past and make up for it, instead of
grieving, accepting, and working through it. She tries to give up herself in
order to give everything to the child she injured. In the end, she is able to
accept herself and take a path toward wholeness.
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