A Study Of Deformed Motherhood In Toni Morrison's Beloved

As the first black woman writer-who won the Nobel Prize for Literature,Toni Momson makes immensurabie contributions to the contemporary literature, especially black women literature.Beloved is Toni Morrison's fifth novel,by which Morrison got Nobel Prize in 1993.This novel is Studied from different perspectives, such as feminism,psychoanalysis,cultural study and so on.Among all the topics the twisted motherhood is.one of the most hotly discussed.This dissertation is intented to analyze thecauses of the deformed motherhood in Beloved.Different from other previous studied,thi thesis places special emphasis on the influence of black community on motherhood.This thesis will first study black feminism and Toni Morrison's view on motherhood.Emphasis will be put on black feminism,or womanism,using Alice Walker's words.And the differences between white feminism and black feminism will be discussed Then after a detailed introduction to mother-daughter relationship in the novel,this thesis analyzes four causes for deformed motherhood in Beloved.The first three are deprivation of nurturing nature,Sethe's lack of mother love,and the slavery system.The thesis pays special attention to two different types,of mother-love—one is Sethe's mother-in-law's depressed mother-love,the other is Sethe's paradoxical, strong and "too thick" love that causes the tragedy of this story.The fourth cause—the influence of community on motherhood—is highlighted in this paper.On talking about the two-sidedness of black community,the paper probes into the reasons of the community's exclusion of Sethe,the importance of sisterhood,the relationship between men and women,and the men's influence on the development of motherhood. Through discussing the contradietions-and interdependence between black community and females,this thesis analyzes the community's influence on women's getting rid of the deformed motherhood.