The Love of a Mother - Critical Lens #2 by Gennesis Ayala

Slavery and Motherhood in Toni Morrison's Beloved is an article written by Terry Paul Caesar. In the article, Caesar compares a slave and a mother. According to Caesar, Sethe is like a slave to Beloved. The writer also compares Beloved to another novel by the name Uncle Tom’s Cabin. To compare the two books, Caesar brings up that fact that in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a character by the name Cassy, kills her youngest child to “spare him from slavery.” In Beloved, Sethe killed Beloved, her eldest daughter, in order to spare her from slavery. Caesar continues to compare the two novels by saying that in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Cassy was “enslaved by little Eliza… Similarly, so is Sethe by Beloved.” By using the connections in both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Beloved, Caesar is proving his point, that mothers can be seen as slaves to their daughters.

Due to the connections he made between both novels, I agree with Caesar. I too believe that mothers can be slaves to their daughters, even without any of them realizing. The relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest relationships of all. Being women, mothers and daughters understand each other and help each other, but in Beloved, I don’t see the mother and daughter relationship in this way. In Beloved, we can see where Caesar sees Beloved enslaving her mother. An example of Beloved enslaving Sethe is when Sethe is becoming very thin while Beloved is becoming thick, this is because Sethe is giving Beloved her food portion. Sethe is barely eating so that her daughter can have more food than she actually needs. Sethe wants to be a good mother but instead is seen as a slave to her daughter. Sethe does what she does because she feels guilty of killing Beloved when she was only a small child. The love of a mother can sometimes go too far that a mother ends up doing things for their child that don’t have to be done and in this case, guilt is blinding Sethe from seeing the reality of her relationship with Beloved.