Sexism In Beloved

Being around people can affect you physically and mentally: these changes can be beneficial or destructive. Toni Morrison was born in 1931 into a world dealing with segregation and discrimination. Although never personally a slave, she writes about slavery, along with many other issues and their effect on others in the majority of her books. In her multi-award winning novel, Beloved, Morrison allows her reader to see a different point of view of American history. After reading this historical fiction novel, one can more clearly understand how all African Americans felt and still feel when racism is present. Morrison’s main character, Sethe, a slave that killed one of her children to prevent them from becoming a slave, experiences joy when her …show more content…
One way that sexism adds to the harm racism insinuates is through physical means including rape. One instance of violence against women is when Sethe’s owners take her milk. As she shares this story with Paul D. she continuously repeats “and they stole my milk” paralleling how the memory keeps replaying in her mind, leaving her traumatized (Morrison 19). After this experience and many others she is “emotionally [dissociated]” from her body (Horvitz). One instance where her lack of respect to herself is displayed is when Sethe wants to bury Beloved properly, so she “barters her body [with the stonemason] for the one word” to be written on the baby’s tombstone (Wolfe). This demonstrates how she has no issue giving away her body by prostituting for a single word to be written. This lack of regard is consequently due to the men taking advantage of her. Additionally, the abuse to her body by the white men makes affects her trust in all the men, including those who want to have a relationship with her. The white men scarred her, but it did not help when ‘Sethe is abandoned by her husband Halle” after he watched her milk get stolen (Ochoa). The stealing of Sethe’s milk not only hurt her, but it harmed Halle as well because “whatever he saw…broke him like a twig” (Morrison 81). Through this simile Morrison shows “the depth of the pain experienced by black …show more content…
However, in the novel, instead of helping others, the characters often decide to only help themselves at the expense of the community. If people treated each other differently then Beloved would not have died. Even if the white people treated the African Americans poorly because of slavery, and sexism did not exist, Beloved still could have been saved. Sethe’s neighborhood could have functioned as a community and helped her as needed, which could have prevented Beloved’s death. When the slave hunters came after Sethe’s family, people could have warned Sethe so she could have run away or hid which would have prevented the split second decision of killing her baby. Since Sethe is new to the North she is very “isolated” and is “uncivilized in the woman sense of the word” so she does not know what to do when the slave hunters show up at her house and they are face to face. Had someone came and helped her she could have ‘been advised” on what to do. There was in fact a community they just made the judgment not to help Sethe and once she has killed Beloved they “they reject her” (Carabi). She was completely “ostracized by the vicinity of the black” so Sethe and Denver, her daughter, are forced to live in “sheer isolation” (Kochar). After the murder of her daughter, Sethe remains proud and the community refuses to support her. However, instead of