Maternal Love And Infanticide

Tony Morrison is the most spectacular superstar in today’s African-American literary circle.In1993, Tony Morrison was awarded the Noble Prize for literature, becoming the first honoredAfrican-American writer. Beloved, written in1987, is Morrison’s most influential masterpiece,which is considered as the most influential classic in American contemporary literature. Thebook takes Cincinnati, Ohio, America in1873as the context, telling the life of slave Setheescaping from slave owner’s farm and her daughter Denver; they live an almost-isolated life in ahaunted house. The novel reveals Sethe’s crazy infanticide out of maternal love.This paper attempts to analyze Beloved from psychoanalytic perspective, taking Sethe’sinfanticide as the main object and researching Sethe’s psychological mechanism from threeaspects, maternal love, infanticide and liberation. Psychoanalytic perspective always exploresthe inner world of characters, including id, ego, superego, hysteric trauma and so on. Freuddivides personality structure into three parts: id, ego and superego. Hysteria and trauma are alsoimportant content of psychoanalysis. Under the influence of trauma, maternal love of blackwomen becomes twisted and Sethe loses maternal love. Sethe’s id reflects in the pursuit offreedom, humanity and maternal love, which conflicts with social reality; however, Sethe’s egois releasing maternal love, reflecting in maternal love to daughters. Sethe’s life is deeplyinfluenced by trauma from society and history and trauma from kinship and love. The mainreason for Sethe’s infanticide is trauma from childhood and the painful experience; finally, Sethefulfills infanticide under the influence of superego. Denver’s maturity and Beloved’sdisappearance have positive effect on Sethe’s psyche liberation, making her recover from traumaand gain triumph of ego.This research applies related psychoanalytic theories to explore the essence of Sethe’smaternal love. The evil of slavery causes psychological trauma to black slaves, making themhave difficulty in finding themselves and enjoying life. Black slaves should unite, seek theirspiritual home and build their own bravely-new world.This thesis contains six chapters: Chapter One is the introduction. Tony Morrison and thenovel Beloved are introduced in this part. In addition, this part also introduces the background ofpsychoanalysis. Also this part contains the purpose and the framework of this thesis. ChapterTwo is about the literature review. It provides the supporting theory, psychoanalytic theory.Chapter Three is mainly about Sethe’s maternal love. It analyzes the loss of maternal love inSethe and her almost-crazy maternal love and compensation to Sethe from psychoanalyticperspective, mainly using the theory of id, ego and trauma. Chapter Four is mainly about Sethe’s infanticide. It analyzes Sethe’s killing of her just-crawling daughter out of control frompsychoanalytic analysis, mainly using the theory of superego and trauma. Chapter Five is mainlyabout Sethe’s liberation. It analyzes Sethe’s liberation from Beloved and the ghost with the helpof the black community from psychoanalytic perspective, mainly using the theory of traumarecovery and ego. The last part of thesis is the conclusion.By providing a new interpretation on Sethe’s psyche of maternal love from psychoanalyticperspective, this thesis hopes to contribute the academic research on the novel. The thesis is alsoexpected to broaden both readers’ and critics’ comprehension of the novel and psychoanalytictheory.