Abnormal Motherhood In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye And Beloved

Toni Morrison, an outstanding writer in the contemporary literary world, is the first black female to win the Nobel Prize for literature. The reason why she could gain laurels of literature and became the"Beloved"of every one, in my opinion, in addition to her profound insight and poetic language, is that she is possessed with strong female and ethnic consciousness.For Toni Morrison, as a black female, she is able to enter the wide range of feelings that does only belong to the blacks and women. Thus, she shows great concern for the marginalized groups, especially black women, and motherhood, without any doubt, becomes a repeated theme in her works. In her fantastic but realistic works, Morrison vividly demonstrates the vulnerability of a group of complicated mothers, who bear the crushing burden of history and the destruction of dominant culture on their bodies and psyche.Many western feminists have seen motherhood as an oppression of women's identity, which is sharply different from that of Morrison's. For her, motherhood is a source of power for black mothers and empowerment of children. Therefore, it's vital for the blacks to enjoy healthy and complete motherhood and culturally based maternal love. Morrison's works underline the importance of motherhood not through its achievement but through detailing sufferings of absence of culturally-based maternal love in a racist world. Influenced by powerful biological, psychological, race and cultural forces, different from those traditional great mothers, her mothers are often possessed with disturbing negative qualities. They are lovable, nurturing, and even murderous. Though not being romanticized, they are still flesh-and-blood with passion, tear and fear.Chapter one discusses the denial of motherhood by slavery and its aftermath. As slave mothers, they are only the property of their owners and are required to produce more children for their plantation. They are forced to live apart with their would-be-sold children, whose maternal experience is pervaded with fear, wrench and powerlessness. In Beloved, Sethe would rather kill her children by herself than allow them to be taken back as slaves. At her early age, Sethe has lost her mother, which results in her lack of maternal love and then incomplete personality. Under such circumstances, she takes her children as her"best thing"and her desire to love her children turns into a dangerous obsession. This too-close love also suffocates her little girl--Denver, who needs to break this bond to be her self.Almost everyone suffers aphasia after the inhumane slavery. With failure to remember or to forget, they are trapped into distressed mire. Powerless to speak out her sufferings in language, Sethe is motivated to speak with her body—to kill her own daughter.Chapter two discusses the distorted mother—Pauline in The Bluest Eye. The first part tells the distorted life of Pauline. Pauline's motherhood is damaged greatly by dominant culture, physical disability, and unhappy marriage. Her slight limp and lost front tooth make her inferior and self-humiliate. She dedicatedly attends on her white employer and is obsessed with films. After brainwashed by white culture, Pauline believes that"whiteness is beautiful and blackness is ugly". The second part is about the indifference from the black community. In a traditional sense, each black woman is either a biological mother or an othermother. However, in The Bluest Eye, the black community is blind to Pecola's tragedy and even pushes her far away. The third part is about the disastrous consequence on little Pecola. In a wasteland of love, Pecola is thirsty for love and prays for a pair of blue eyes which are believed to bring happiness and acceptance. She is a scapegoat of this violated motherhood.In chapter three, the author suggests some solutions. To develop healthy and complete motherhood, the black mothers should not only love their images and black culture but also cooperate with the whites for a bright future.In a word, Morrison has illustrated how and why motherhood is affected and distorted by slavery, racism and dominant culture. Through her call for reclamation and healing of maternal love and black culture as foundation, Morrison establishes a distinct theory of motherhood, which sets an inspiring example for all racial ethnic women all over the world to value high and impart their own traditional culture to their children.