Black Feminism and Womanhood in Toni Morrison's Beloved (PDF)

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: This essay is about how the roles of black women as enslaved persons are portrayed. Women have been socially and politically oppressed for centuries, even to this day in some parts of the world. They were deprived of (or denied) rights and social roles were imposed on them, which were mainly limited to their own home as wife and mother. As problematic as this
situation was or still is in some cases and areas, it becomes more problematic when not only gender poses obstacles, but also origin or race. In the early 19th century, but especially after the Civil War, women in the USA came together and founded organizations and associations concerned with social welfare (especially for women) (Banner 100).

Over the decades, more movements, organizations, and associations followed, working for political and social equality and equal rights for women, as well as fighting for rights, and mostly successfully from today's point of view (at least in the Western world). Despite these feminist movements fighting for equality, there were inequalities in the movements, namely race. A distinction must therefore be made between white feminism and black feminism. Toni Morrison contributed to drawing attention to black feminism with her novels or with the help of her female protagonists. This is also the case in her fifth novel Beloved published in 1987, in which, in addition to the main motif of slavery, other motifs such as trauma and memory, but also black feminism and womanhood are included.

The protagonist Sethe lives together with her daughter Denver and with the ghost Beloved, who is her killed daughter. With the help of memories, flashbacks, and dreams (or nightmares), the story tells what the protagonist experiences during her time as an enslaved woman among other things, how she is able to escape slavery, what happens (also immediately) after her escape and how she deals with her memories and her past. In this process, (sexual) abuse, oppression of the enslaved females, and the difficulties of motherhood - always in addition to the agonies of slavery and racism - can be found in the novel.