Revealing the Past - A Close Reading by Lindsey Bogott

“By the time I woke up in the morning, she was in line. If the moon was bright they worked by its light. Sunday she slept like a stick. She must have nursed me two or three weeks-that’s the way the others did. Then she went back in rice and I sucked from another woman whose job it was. So to answer you, no. I reckon not. She never fixed my hair nor nothing. She didn’t even sleep in the cabin most nights I remember” (Morrison 72).

This passage from chapter six of Beloved is when Sethe is speaking to Beloved and Denver about her mother and childhood, briefly. Beloved, the sick girl the mother and daughter are taking care of, asks Sethe if her mother had ever styled her hair. Because of the ages of Beloved and Denver, both have been raised immune to the lifestyle of slavery and have parents that would rather not pass down their hardship stories to their children because they want them to be happy. This is also in parallelism to Toni Morrison and her upbringing. Like Denver and Beloved, she grew up not fully experiencing discrimination because of how her parents moved away from the segregated South to Ohio in pursuit of a happier life. So as the two girls are inquiring on Sethe’s childhood, Morrison can identify with the curiosity of the two girls, wanting to learn more about the past.

So Sethe goes into what she recalls from her early childhood on the plantation she was raised on. As she tells her story about how her mother worked and never had time for her, the reader can tell that she is not exaggerating the loss of the motherly bond because it is historically accurate. Slaves worked six days a week, sun up to sun down. The only day slaves got off was Sunday, the day of rest. Slave families were not treated with the same rights as white families. Relationships between parents and the children were often tarnished and the plantation owners would not allow them to even sleep in the same cabin most nights. Yet in contrast, slave owners did allow mothers one to two weeks off to nourish their child, however that ended as soon as the owner saw that the baby was healthy enough, therefore diminishing the mother-child bond.

By not having a traditional bond between mother and daughter left Sethe feeling not completely loved, even though she understands the slave life. This can be seen through her tone because she feels the need to defend her mother as she speaks to Beloved and Denver. She wants them to realize how lucky they are to have a woman like her to be able to take care and love them.

This passage, in my opinion, illuminates why Sethe acts the way she does. She wants to be caring, nourishing, and sheltering towards her daughter from the evils of the past and to take advantage of the future.This is the same with Morrison’s parents as they had to endure the hardships of oppression and discrimination in the South, which is why they fled to Ohio for safety, raising Morrison in a state where she can be free from the physical and emotional hardships. As a result this passages reveals that all minorities want the best for their children and to forget the past hardships. They also hope that their children do not have to endure the same burden, as seen with Sethe and Toni Morrison’s parents.