The Psychological Trauma Of The Black Women In Beloved

Beloved is a novel by the African-American writer Toni Morrison,which reflects the psychological trauma stemming from the slavery.With the black women's getting rid of their psychological trauma as its mainline,the novel aims at depicting the psychological trauma of the black women.It mainly presents the psychological trauma of the black women and the ways to recover from their psychological trauma,and reveals the real situation of the black women of the United States in history.So far,the studies of the academic fields on the novel center mainly around its postmodernism,post-colonialism,narratology,symbolism,new historical criticism,myth prototype,magical realism and feminism etc.The study on the psychological trauma of the black women in Beloved can deeply explore both the history and culture of the black people and the black women's ways to get rid of oppression and achieve freedom and equality,and thus it is of some academic significance.In view of this,the present thesis applies the trauma theory to analyzing the black women's psychological trauma and the effects of psychological trauma on their interpersonal relationships,and it explores the effective approaches to recover from their psychological trauma in Beloved.The thesis analyzes Beloved from three dimensions.Firstly,the thesis analyzes the symptoms of the main black women characters' psychological trauma under the slavery,such as Baby Suggs' s evasion,Sethe's traumatic reliving,Denver's disconnection from the outside and Beloved's intrusion into their present and future.Secondly,the thesis explores the effects of the psychological trauma on their interpersonal relationships.The traumatic events destroy their normal interpersonal relationships and affect the relationships between the mothers and daughters,between the sisters,between both sexes and between the black women and black community.Thirdly,the thesis probes into four approaches for the black women to recover from their psychological trauma in Beloved.Approach one is that remembrance of the traumatic past reconstructs the connection between the black women and past.Approach two is that mourning the loss resulting from the traumatic event releases the black women's repressed trauma and assuages the survivors' feelings of guilty.Approach three is that reconstructing the new relationship restores the psychological connection between the black women and others.Approach four is that reconstructing self-identity helps the black women to resist the intrusion of the racial stereotype.The thesis holds that the slavery is the primary root for the psychological trauma of the black women,and the psychological trauma is intensified in their interpersonal relationships.In order to recover from their psychological trauma,they need remembrance of the past and mourning of the loss by the past traumatic events to make a new connection between the past,present and future.Reconstructing the new interpersonal relationship and self-identity are beneficial for them to find senses of safety,belonging and inter-community,so as to resist the intrusion of the racial stereotype.Beloved profoundly and exquisitely presents the traumatic history of the black women in the United States,expressing Morrison's deep concerns for the black women.The novel deconstructs the racial stereotype that the black women have been regarded as the Other,objects and inferior people for a long time,and it reconstructs the self-identity of the black women,triggering the readers' deep reflection on the freedom and equality in the contemporary multicultural society.