A Study Of The Black Female Body In Toni Morrison's Beloved

Toni Morrison(1931 —)is an outstanding and important contemporary African-American writers as well as a distinguished representative of the African-American female writers who got a high reputation all over the world.Beloved is one of her most famous novels which establishes her literary reputation in American history.In the year of 1988,Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.From then on,Morrison and her novel — Beloved has attracted more attention and become more popular among critics and readers all over the world.Scholars have made thorough research on the novel's theme and artistic features,such as the theme of maternal love and unique artistic features.However,study on the black female body has not been widely noticed.As a representative of black female writers in the 20 th century,Morrison's novels is much concerned about the living status of blacks,the cruelty of slavery and the persecution oppressed on the black race,especially on the black females in American society.In Beloved,the black female body is much talked.Morrison concerns about black female deeply,especially concerns about their physical condition.The bodies do not belong to themselves and do not belong to pleasantness.The black female body is materialized.It endures double oppression of the black male.On one hand,the black female body is taken as working machine to work hard on the plantation.On the other hand,it is taken as productive tool to produce more free hands for the slave masters in order to keep the slavery going.The black female body is suppressed by violence.So it is normal for them to be whipped,sexually abused and traded as commodity.The black females have no rights on the own body — even their reproductive right is firmly held in their masters' hands.At the same time,because of their identity as slaves,their children become slaves as soon as they are born and they are sold at will by the master.So separation of their family is very normal for them.Therefore,from the perspective of black female body,this thesis attempts to show the racial oppression and spiritual destruction that the slavery commits on the black race.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part is an introduction which introduces the significance of Beloved as well as analyzes literature reviews from different perspectives.Chapter one is a brief analysis of the relative theories.Chapter two analyzes the black female body as site of racial persecution.It gets physical punished and sexual abuse as well as taken as commodity for sale.Chapter three analyzes the black female body as carrier of black history through depicting the ghostly body of Beloved which reminds the black community of their miserable past and make them face up to it.The last part is conclusion.It summarizes thepersecution that the black slavery commits on the black female body as well as on the whole black race.It illustrates that only when the blacks face up to their history,would they walk out of the shadow of it.