Category: 2017 Blog Posts

In choosing to focus my thesis on the concept of monstrosity and literature of terror in 18^th and 19^th century Britain, I determined that it is important for me to gain insight into significant events, ideas, or societal changes that inspired fear in the British public in order to analyze the connection that literary monsters may or may not have to the society in which they were formulated. For this reason, the emerging scientific theories of Charles Darwin and Henry Maudsley during the late 19^th-century are of significance to my thesis and the concept of societal fear because their theories caused late Victorian Englishmen to express a newfound sense of anxiety about their inability to discern whether one’s degeneration, or gradual loss of morals and virtue, stemmed from one’s social influences or one’s ancestry and biology. It is though gaining insight into Darwin and Maudsley’s theories regarding heredity, genetics, and evolution that one is able to identify the ways in which emerging scientific theories spurred societal terror and helped to mold late 19^th-century literary monsters in Britain.

The publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, coupled by the work’s surge in popularity towards the end of the 19th century, paved the way for the society and scientists of Britain to work towards accepting the concept of biologically determined moral degeneration (Paul 214). Advocating the validity of “Darwinism,” or the “theory of evolution of species by natural selection,” Darwin’s Origin of Species utilized scientific data to demonstrate that animals and peoples’ traits are passed down from one generation to the next and that each individual is formulated by a culmination of physical characteristics that were previously possessed by familial ancestors (Darwin;Paul 214). This scientific work not only sparked a war between science and religion amongst the late-Victorian population of Britain by fueling confusion about whether or not God plays a direct role in shaping individuals, but undoubtedly caused many Englishmen to fear that their actions and morals were not under their individual control (Kent 667). Similarly, Henry Maudsley’s Body and Mind (1870) also caused a stir among the people of Britain by proposing that “multitudes of human beings come into this world with a weighted destiny against which they have neither the will nor power to contend; they are the step-children of nature” (Maudsley). By stating that a “multitude of human beings” are biologically and inwardly immoral from birth, Maudsley advocates that the possession of an inward deviance is a common plight among people. In this way, these two theories worked collectively to perpetuate the societal fear that certain individuals are born with a predisposition for deviance and immorality that cannot be controlled.

By gaining insight into the prominent scientific theories of the fin de siècle and their impact on the fears held by the British public, I have been able to gain a better sense of the primary novels that I want to work with moving forward and have developed further lines of inquiry that I want to pursue for my thesis. For example, at the start of my thesis journey, I planned to focus my work entirely on Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Goblin Market because I had chosen to define monsters as non-human beings with demonic appearances. Now that I have analyzed these scientific documents, however, I hope to utilize my thesis as a method for connecting monsters to the societal fears that existed during the time period of their inception, enabling me to expand my definition of monsters to one that touches on their ability to embody the social and moral concerns that confronted the people of late 18^th and 19^th century Britain. For this reason, I plan to also include Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in my thesis because they treat humans as monster-like figures and directly touch on the societal fear of degeneration that existed during the time of their publications. In addition, this work with primary sources has encouraged me to continue to link literary monsters with the societal fears of Britain regarding issues such as morals, colonialism, gender, and science in order to truly encompass the various facets that make up Britain’s literature of terror in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. While, ultimately, I will have to narrow my focus to one or two major social themes, this exercise has enabled me to better understand the objective of my thesis, incorporate the historical lens that I had hoped to utilize, and understand the multiple opportunities my topic affords me.

Works Cited

Darwin, Charles and Morse Peckham. The Origin of Species. [Electronic Resource]: A Variorum Text. Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. Evidence-Based Acquisition (PALCI EBA) Discovery Record (JSTOR).

Maudsley, Henry, Body and Mind: An Inquiry into Their Connection and Mutual Influence , Specially in Reference to Mental Disorders: An Enlarged and Revised Edition: To Which Are Added Psychological Essays (London: Macmillan (1870) 1873).

Kent, John. “Review.” Rev. of The Post-Darwinian Controversies, by James R. Moore. Journal of Biological Studies 2 Oct. 1980: 667-69. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

Paul, Diane B. “Darwin, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics.” The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. By J. Hodge and G. Raddick. 2nd ed. London: Cambridge UP, 2003. 214-39. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.

The 2011 film Melancholia by director Lars Von Trier synchronizes it’s ending with the end of the world, which runs the risk of overshadowing the characters and story of the film. Peter Szendy, author of the 2015 book “Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World”, believes this ending is the true ending of apocalypse cinema. Szendy feels he “disappeared at the same time the last image [of the film] did,” in which he became one with the last moments during the finale; The small planet Melancholia destroys the Earth with a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the music of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Szendy, 1). For Szendy, the ending embodies a “true” apocalypse genre theme: The end of the world should correspond to the end of the film itself. The majority of this chapter on Melancholia in “Apocalypse Cinema” spends a great deal of effort explaining the scene’s importance to him, but not it’s importance to the entire story.

Szendy praises the fact that that the film lets “the last image be the very last image” of “all past present and future” (Szendy, 2). Like the characters displayed in the film, the film audience too experiences a kind of “death” by cutting to black. Szendy’s experience of being “in the black screen” the film plays tribute to how the audience shares existential finality of death here (Szendy, 1). Szendy calling this image “past, present, and future” becomes erroneous in interpreting importance in Von Trier’s film and Apocalypse cinema in genre. It is erroneous in that the impact of Apocalypse is still in the before and after of the story, not the apocalyptic event itself. If you took this last image alone, you would be missing out on the rich character dynamics of Justine (Kristen Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the sisters who hold hands with Claire’s son Leo in the final scene. You would miss Justine as she sinks into a depression spurred by the stress of her dysfunctional family, her manipulative boss Jack, and cheating on her newlywed husband with Jack’s nephew. That includes missing her apathetic- depressive personality as a result. You would not witness Claire panicking about Melancholia while her husband John dismisses her fears in a patronizing way. You would miss the confrontation in which Justine’s acceptance of the end conflicts with Claire’s fear of death. Each of these plot points reflects personal devastation within the characters themselves. The world is both literally and figuratively ending for Justine and Claire. If you, the audience, only took away the final moments of the film as Peter Szendy implies are most essential, you’re missing 99% of the actual apocalypse conversation.

 

“The earth is bad, we don’t need to grieve for it, nobody will miss it.” Justine concludes to Claire (Melancholia, 2011). The fact that she been hurt by Jack, and has hurt by Michael affects her. The way she mentions “Earth is bad” gives evidence to how she has distanced herself from her own reality.  Justine mirrors the dysfunctional attributes of her family from the earlier in the film in her difficulty in coping with the past and present. By bringing Justine’s depression into the story as a form of apathy for everything, Lars Von Trier juxtaposes depression to the apocalypse. Justine calls Claire’s plan to spend her last moments together, “ a piece of shit” with deadpan eyes, mocking the “niceness” of her gesture (Melancholia, 2011). Justine wishes Claire to stop caring, or to “grieve for it”. Her emotional and physical state are both facing annihilation.  The arrangement of the scene has dim light, which only illuminate the each actresses’ expressions. The soft classical music that transitions each scene gives the film a dream-like quality. Szendy calls the last image an “end of cinema” moment in which the film itself perishes when the world ends. Von Trier’s character and film form evoke emotions related to the apocalypse as well as 

Szendy’s point on Melancholia’s final scene has merit, but his claim to it being the truest Apocalyptic film falls short by not imagining events that could complicate. A flashback would have been more meaningful. Keep in mind the ending of the ending of Matt Reeve’s Cloverfield (2008), in which the ending cuts to a found-footage flashback from before the film. He compares Melancholia’s ending to the ending of Ted Posts’s Beneath the Planet of The Apes. In Post’s film, an atomic explosion ends the world, followed by a narrator dialogue explaining the world “is now dead”. The post-film exposition was only meant to set up a sequel and is therefore not as apocalyptic as Melancholia according to Szendy. What’s wrong with events happening after the end? Can’t an apocalypse have a post-apocalypse?  The point of an apocalyptic fiction’s plot  isto show us the events leading up to the end and of what happens after, not to gratify us with an explosion. There is more of a narrative to an apocalypse genre fiction piece than the scene where “it all ends”, since it should be widely known that “true apocalypse” fictions are also the ones in which the narrative leads up to and continues after the end.

Sources:

Szendy, Peter. Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World. New York : Fordham
University Press, 2015.College Complete.

Trier, Lars von, et al. Melancholia. 2011.

 

Update:

I wish I had a place to put this in the rest of the blog. After writing this piece, I found two other movie that fit into Peter Szendy’s definition of the “true” apocalyptic cinema. Go watch (or rewatch) Miracle Mile (1988) with director Steve De Jarrett if you have a chance. Miracle Mile has a similar “ending”, in that a nuclear weapon is dropped on LA in the last moments of the film. Seeking a Friend For The End Of The World (2012) is another film I had forgotten about until the last minute. Will Ferrell and .  It’s unfortunate that I could not rewrite the entire post in time to discuss it further, but it adds to the point that Szendy’s concept is not unique to Melancholia.

The book Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution was written by Peter Paret, Beth Irwin Lewis, and Paul Paret. The story was published in Princeton Universities press in 1992. Peter Paret himself was born in Berlin, Germany on April 13^th, 1924.  Peter Paret’s mother was Jewish while the father was not so when the parents divorced Peter eventually immigrated to America in 1937 while Peter Paret’s father stayed in Germany. Peter Paret’s wife was Isabel Harris and their two children were Suzanne Aimeee Paret and Paul Louis Paret. Paret at one point served three years in the United States army from 1943-1946 and he specifically served in New Guinea, the Philippines, and Korea. This first hand perspective on war gave Paret the ability to describe the brutality and a first hand look at how war impacted individuals.“Paret belonged to a generation of World War II veterans who used their experience of the war to better understand military history. Paret’s major interests include the relationship between art of a particular era is related to that era’s ideology and social context, and the interactions among politics, intellectual trends, and war.” (JewAge article)

Additionally, in the book it discusses and brings attention to 317 different posters that were involved in World War 2. With these posters, the United States government wanted its audience to feel compelled to join in the war to fight against the enemy. Through these posters the US government would dehumanize their enemy to help the American people not feel guilty about killing other human beings. By dehumanizing the enemy this allowed more American citizens to become invested in fighting for their government because they knew they were not fighting against another person but they were fighting against something that was not human and was threatening American citizens. Through these posters the United States government gained more civilians to become involved in fighting to defend the US.

Changing subjects, I watched this video on Hitler giving a speech to the German people. In the speech, he tells his Nazi supporters that he needs their help to get the German people on his side. These brief ten minutes clips of some of his speeches provide me with an insight at how well Hitler was able to influence and make people believe in his theory that the German people were superior to other races. Hitler at the beginning of the video makes the Nazi people out to be the victims that went through adversity. He says, “I know, my comrades, that it must have been difficult at times… when you desired change that never came… so again and again the appeal had to be made… to continue the struggle… you mustn’t act yourself, you must obey, you must give in… you must submit to the overwhelming need to obey.” That is the whole idea behind propaganda is to make an individual’s actions justified so that it can “help” make an individual’s country better. When the most powerful man in Germany turned to his people and told them to try and exterminate the Jews as it would be helping them save their country from evil. Many of his followers did what they were told. Additionally, just watching these short clips on Hitler’s speeches made me realize that many of his speeches include uniting the German people together to fight and support their country through the ups and downs. He also wanted all of the German people to help one another despite their social class and work together as a unit. Hitler made the German people believe that their actions were helping their people and as Hitler said, “The most precious possession you have in the world… is your own people.” While Hitler may have been trying to “create” a better Germany he ultimately made millions suffer and the world a more hateful and cruel place, in my opinion.

In addition to those speeches, one of the films that I started watching was called, Triumph Of The Will or also known as Triumph des Willens. This films was produced in 1935 and shows clips of the Nazi group coming together and giving praise to their leader Hitler. To the Nazi group Hitler seemed to be beloved by his followers. The film has an up close personal viewpoint of Nazi leaders giving speeches to the Nazi parties and the speakers included Nazi leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Rudolph Hess, and Julius Streicher. These clips and speeches give me as the audience a personal first hand-look at Nazi propaganda and how the leaders were capable of influencing their followers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=AnpTWKKWQ1o -Hitler Speeches

 

“Peter Paret – Biography.” JewAge, www.jewage.org/wiki/he/Article:Peter_Paret_-_Biography.

 

Everipedia. “Peter Paret.” Wiki | Everipedia, 6 July 2016, everipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paret/.

 

Riefenstahl, Leni, director. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. N.S.D.A.P. (NAZI PARTY), 1936.

 

https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Paret_CV.pdf- (Facts and analysis on Peter Paret)

 

This blog post really revealed to me the obscurity of my thesis topic. I’m enjoying the challenge of finding creative resources. Honestly, I had a hard time with this blog post, because none of the three prompts really directly apply to my thesis subject without some tweaking. The primary texts I will be working with, Beowulf, and a multitude of the Icelandic sagas, have no known author, because they were mainly told orally until written down later by a nameless scribe. I think the best response to these prompts would be to research a little translation theory, since I know nothing about it and I’m working with strictly translations. Beowulf was written in Old English, and the Icelandic sagas were written in ancient Icelandic. Since it’s impossible to close-read the actual texts, I have to look at a few different translations of my chosen passages, because, for example, I cannot analyze something like word choice if I am not actually reading the original words. Zohre Owji describes some problems that translators encounter when translating a text, and strategies that they employ to deal with these issues when they inevitably arise. She cites Mona Baker’s In other words: A Course Book on Translation for support in her arguments. She puts forth a list of constraints, or rules, for translation strategies. They must: apply to a process, involve text-manipulation, be goal-oriented and problem-centered, be applied consciously, and be inter-subjective. There is a careful relationship between the source-language text and the target-language readers. The original text must, in a way, be “decoded” from the original, only to be “recoded” for the reader, in a way that is obviously different, but also the same. Different, because the actual words themselves might be different languages, different iterations of the evolution of the same language, etc., and the same because the translator has the responsibility of not altering the meaning of the words. In order to close read Beowulf, I will be attempting to read some of the Old English version, with help from Peter Baker’s Intro to Old English, published by Wiley-Blackwell, and recommended to me by Professor Skalak, who specializes in medieval studies.  Unfortunately, I do not think it would be reasonable for me to try to decipher the Icelandic.

One of the main differences to keep in mind when dealing with Old vs. contemporary English is that Old English is an inflected language, like contemporary German. But present-day English has only a very few inflections, such as the plural and the possessive of nouns. There was much more variety in Old English. Using Baker’s book and Owji’s article, I will try to “decode” the Old English of Beowulf and “recode” it into contemporary English so that I can understand it, and see what how this added layer to my close reading and study of Beowulf changes my understanding of the text. Maybe I am being overly optimistic about my ability to translate Old English, but it might reveal a change in things like tone, or reveal something hidden in the syntax and form of the epic poem.

Food with the Famous (1979) by Jane Grigson explores the lives of eleven famous English and French artists (writers, painters) in history – Grigson’s mode of selecting the eleven was to “take a number of famous people who liked eating, and give recipes for their favourite dishes” (9). Grigson published this book as an established cookbook writer who performed light scholarship; but she was not a food sociologist. The titles listed in my first edition copy of Food with the Famous suggest that Grigson’s experience lay in writing about enjoying food rather than the history behind it; these titles include Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, The Mushroom Feast (which explores the diversity of the mushroom family), English Food (which remains a “classic” and can be purchased updated with a modern cover on Amazon), Fish Cookery, and Good Things, all of which preceded Food with the Famous. In her introduction Grigson explains that she wrote “cookery articles in the Observer Magazine in 1978,” and that a conversation with a coworker spawned the idea for Food with the Famous (9). This frames Grigson’s career as oriented towards eating in history, but focused mostly on cuisine itself.

Excerpts of Food with the Famous did not appear before the full text was published, but Grigson’s writing in the Observer Magazine and her prolific career during the 1970s established her as a familiar name in English food writing. There appear to be only two editions of the book: the original 1979/80/81 publications, and an updated 1991 edition. This indicates that the book was popular during the 1980s and 1990s, before it could drown in the new millennium’s surge of cooking shows, cookbooks, and stylish diets requiring their own subcategory of cookbook. An Amazon search today generates only used first and second edition copies of Food with the Famous, all with visibly dated dust cover designs. The only book of Grigson’s that I discovered is still regularly read and praised is English Food (1974), which is sold on Amazon today by Penguin (a step up from the relatively unknown Hollen Street Press, who published Food with the Famous). The new edition features journalistic quotes testifying to the revival of English national cuisine that the book promoted. Jane Grigson died in 1990, so the decline in her books’ popularity may be due simply to her absence in emerging food writing.

Food with the Famous was published by an already popular author – English Food, evidently Grigson’s most lastingly influential book, was published five years before it, so Grigson’s name would have leapt out to customers. The book popularizes the history of food through famous cultural figures, all of whom are English or French, thus reinforcing the emphasis on nationality that characterizes Grigson’s work. Food with the Famous takes an unusual form: Grigson introduces her work and the book’s format in her introduction, then includes a section for each author, listing them chronologically, she explains. Each author section begins with a two or three page description of their life and relation to food, favorite dishes, and materials Grigson used to investigate their life through food. What follows are on average eight recipes, excerpted from diaries or family cookbooks but which Grigson modernized for the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century cook. She combines anthology, scholarship, biography, and recipes to form a book that maps English food. As a marketing strategy, this gives readers many reasons to buy the book: as a cookbook, a piece of academic work, or an exploration of the lives of figures famous and popular in England.

 

Grigson, Jane. Food with the Famous. Hollen Street Press, 1979.

For this blog post, I chose to focus on a text that came out of one of the scholarly articles that I originally referred to on my reading list. That article was “Speak, Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory” (2014) by Joshua Pederson, which uses trauma theory and psychoanalytic theory as a lens to understand how literature aids in the healing process of people who experience remarkable trauma in their lives. Pederson refers to Cathy Caruth many times in his argument, citing her as “an important first-wave trauma theorist” (Pederson 334) who contributes to the understanding of trauma theory and how trauma, as it is described, shapes history. Because of his references to her, I decided to look into her own texts, which proved to be relevant to my own interest with trauma theory.

For this post, I will be focusing on Caruth’s book Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (1996), which, in essence, discusses the confusing experiences of trauma, the disparities in explaining trauma from the victim’s perspective, and the consequences of trauma – as it has become more relevant in society – that make it hard to document history based on straightforward experience and reference. Trauma essentially clouds history for those who experience it, causing a biased and sometimes inaccurate portrayal of history.

This book, published in 1996 – not long after her first book, titled Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) – is considered one of the first critiques of trauma as it was used in historical references, and Caruth was seen as a trauma theorist who helped to develop the language that surrounded this idea. Her work introduced fairly new ideas in the trauma theory field, which have still stayed relevant today. Her ideas from this book have been cited and referred to in numerous publications, anywhere from peer-reviewed articles and journals to books where chapters are dedicated to her theories – playing to her prestige and the importance and influence that her theories had on trauma theory as a whole. On the same note, Cambridge University hosted a colloquium surrounding her work in 2011, dedicated to discussing and applying her theories to modern day events. Jean Wyatt, another published author, explains that trauma theory “is dominated by the theoretical framework that she [Caruth] introduced” (Wyatt 31).

Caruth’s theories clearly had a lot of clout over the way trauma theory was viewed, and her work is still referred to today in regards to a plethora of historical events. Her theories have been applied to many historical events/groups of people who have experienced trauma – anything from WWII/Holocaust and Japanese internment survivors to Trinidad slaves and the “War on Terror” prisoners of war. Her theories are applicable to all of these traumatic events and the people who experienced these wide-ranging traumas, showing how well thought-out and important her works stand to be.

The main focal point, and perhaps trigger, for my emerging project was Yoko Ogawa’s book The Diving Pool, and the elements of the grotesque that she expertly incorporates into it. As the book is written by a female author, and tells three stories from the perspective of female protagonists, I thought that a feminist lens would be an appropriate way to approach this. Yet, I also do not want to ignore the fact that what mostly caught my attention in these three novellas was their intricate attention to the human body, and specifically the female body and the connection of the grotesque to them. By incorporating this unpleasant and repulsive element, Ogawa adds another side to the feminist lens. Is she trying to lend a look at how society perceives women’s’ bodies? Is she trying to draw our attention to the women’s function in reproduction (as one of the novellas centers on the pregnancy of the protagonist’s sister)?

I proceeded to find a tentative answer to this question by consulting Freud’s The Uncanny. Freud begins his analysis of the Uncanny as something that “evokes fear and dread,” or discomfort in the beholder (p.123). He claims that the uncanny is experienced through aesthetic, and therefore is a kind of aesthetic disorder. As these things that are considered uncanny are the opposite of beautiful, they are categorized as grotesque, which perhaps Ogawa is trying to hang over the women in her novellas to make a point about how society perceives the female body. The need for the female to be more thoroughly covered in public, lest she show too much and reveal herself to the public eye could be a contributing factor for this display in Ogawa’s book.

To further the point that Ogawa is reaching for a feminist lens, or that her novellas could be interpreted in such a way, one could mention Freud’s comment on the basis of the term, “uncanny.” According to Freud, “one may presume that there exists a specific affective nucleus, which justifies the use of a special conceptual term,” (p.123). This special term Freud refers to is the “uncanny,” but what struck me with this sentence was the use of the word nucleus to represent the uncanny. We know that this nucleus is “affective” in creating the effects of fear and discomfort in the ones that witness the aesthetic deformity, which for now we will assume is the female body. Next, the use of the word “nucleus” right after affective suggests that this aesthetic disorder is, in fact, at a cellular level, in other words, a genetic defect. Men and women each have different cells (chromosomes) that make an individual genetically male or female. If Freud states that this disorder of the uncanny lies at a cellular level that is affective, this could be applied to the fact that the female body is considered grotesque simply because of an affective difference in genetics. Not only is this difference effective, it is also “specific”, as if it needs to be just right and very calculated.

Another element of the uncanny is also the fear of castration, and as Freud states, “ losing a precious organ,” suggesting that the male sex organ is what creates power and normality as opposed to females who don’t posses one. The anxiety and fear associated with the castration complex falls parallel to the fact that the uncanny also evokes feelings of fear and anxiety. Freud claims “one finds it understandable that so precious an organ such as the eye should be guarded by a commensurate anxiety. Indeed, One can go further and claim that no deeper mystery and no other significance lie behind the fear of castration,” (p. 140). In other words, the fear of losing the male sex organ denotes a male as male. Without this symbol of masculinity, the man has no identity and subsequently no power. Women do no posses this organ and therefore start off with no power, or less power than men. As said before, the basis for the uncanny lies in the cellular differences of men and woman, which then leads to physical difference in appearance; the aesthetic disorder.

Not only have common patterns in the physical writing been apparent, but common themes in Tony Morrison’s book, Beloved, have also made themselves known. In broad retrospect, common themes that have been recurring in this text have been ones such as the warping of time, and it’s fluidity in the text. There is also the matter of pain, whether it is physical pain, or the mental pain of remembering the past.

All of these aspects become apparent in the section I have chosen for this post in Beloved on page 113. The theme of warped and fluid time is represented in a way that creates a sense for the reader that there is no linear path that the book follows. Characters can die or leave the scene, but they will always come back and keep circling around like vultures waiting for the opportune time to strike. On page 113, the third person narrator takes on the persona of Sethe as she remembers Baby Suggs, deceased at this point, as she sits in the Clearing that Baby used to frequent. Although Baby Suggs is dead, and we know this through Sethe’s “rememory” of her, she somehow creates a physical presence as she is seemingly “touching the back of [Sethe’s] neck,” with fingers that are “gathering strength,” (p.113).

The idea and physical manifestation of Baby Suggs also speaks to the point of pain, not just the manipulation of time to bring characters back from the dead. It is Sethe’s pain and longing to have Baby Suggs back that calls her into a sort of physical form that is able to knead the back of her neck. Not only does the pain of loss bring Baby Suggs back into being, but she also brings with her anguish, or a pain of her own to inflict upon Sethe. As if the pain of loss cannot go unaccompanied by physical pain. As the fingers push “harder, harder… Sethe was actually more surprised than frightened to find she was being strangled,” (p.113). The fact that Sethe is “surprised” rather than “frightened” is what was striking about this sentence. The pressure of Baby Suggs’ presence at first brings her peace that soon turns into pain and surprise.

This simple schema seems to be a recurring theme in Sethe’s life. When she escaped Sweet Home, she was only consumed by the relief and peace she found in the house with Baby Suggs, but despite this, the past came creeping up not far behind and inflicted its pain on Sethe. It was a pain that was inescapable and triggered by the smallest of instances and impossible to predict. The next stage was the surprise and not fear. She was surprised by the schoolteacher and his entourage and resorted to killing her children, but she was not frightened. It is similar with this instance with Baby Suggs’ ghost supposedly strangling her, that she is used to the cycle and almost expects pain to be right around the bend.

Her surprise leads Sethe to go “tumbling forward from her seat on the rock, she clawed at the hands that were not there,” (113). The word tumbling echoes the rapid changes in Sethe’s life, and the fact that none of these are her own decision. It is only when she does make the decision to escape that she has the time to stop and remember all the terrible things done to her, and the ability for her to let the pain in. The word clawed also speaks to pain, as the word itself evokes this sensation, and also desperation. “Clawed” paired with the remainder of the sentence, “at the hands that were not there,” creates a sense of pain for things that are ghost-like, no longer there, and therefore in the past. Sethe suffers from pain from her past, present and future because of the pain she endured as a slave.

Toni Morrison’s novels consistently raise critical moral questions via their intricate plots, complex character development, and the use of narrative devices such as flashback and/or limited perspectives. Beloved, in particular, deals with the moral binary of good versus evil, or otherwise ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ by complicating the way readers consider the extent of the role of ‘evil’ and also what may be deemed as ‘good.’ The main force of evil in the novel is the institution of slavery, and Beloved actively works to unpack the intricacies of this ‘evil’ by considering how it shapes the way we understand ‘goodness’ relative to its oppositionary force.

Beloved responds to the personal and interpersonal traumas created by the institution of slavery by highlighting how these traumas manifest in the characters’ lives, and drawing specific attention to relevant historic detail. On the most basic, fundamental level, one might reduce such a novel to an anti-slavery text with the main argument that “slavery is bad”; this kind of text typically sets up a binary that suggests slave-owners are guilty while enslaved people are innocent. But Morrison does not give this to us straight—in fact, she hardly gives us the opportunity to even think we’re off the hook so easily.

The book is loaded with examples of slavery and racism’s pervasiveness. For example, the detailing of Paul D’s horrific experience with the iron bit exposes the cruel, torturous elements of slavery: “He wants me to ask him about what it was like for him—about how offended the tongue is, held down by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back,” (71). Decades later, Paul D continues to face the repercussions of having had the iron bit forced upon him. There is no ambiguity here; the iron bit is a clear, representative symbol of the evil of slavery.

Sethe’s description in the above quote reveals another binary that Beloved addresses within the institution of slavery—“the place before Sweet Home” versus Sweet Home itself. The novel hardly describes the place before Sweet Home except for in passing—in brief memories of traumas that the characters experienced. Yet, by grounding most of the novel’s story in Sweet Home, Morrison further complicates and criticizes the notion of a more “benevolent” form of slavery. Sethe’s understanding of Sweet Home is informed by her past experience: “The Garners, it seemed to her, ran a special kind of slavery, treating them like paid labor, listening to what they said, teaching what they wanted known. And he didn’t stud his boys. Never brought them to her cabin with directions to ‘lay down with her,’” (140). The ‘goodness’ of Sweet Home—here indicated not by a moral judgment but merely by the word ‘special’—is defined by Garners’ treatment of her being better than her previous situation i.e. not being subjected to sexual abuse or extensive degrading. Other points in the narrative storyline continue to challenge the notion of a ‘good’ kind of slavery, as when Sister Brodwin says: “We don’t hold with slavery, even Garner’s kind,” (145).

While Sweet Home might be considered “good” relative to the place before it, it is also specifically Sethe’s trauma associated with Schoolteacher that drives her to kill her own daughter. Sethe is the novel’s “heroine” and thus we are made to empathize with her, but yet, this does not mean that she is free from moral judgment based on her actions. Morrison complicates the binary which suggests Sethe’s “goodness” by depicting a complex character who is deeply impacted by the role of the ‘evil’ (slavery) in her life: a character who cannot be easily dismissed as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ specifically because we understand the wider moral injustice of slavery when we consider the moral injustice of her act as a mother.

Beloved calls for a complex understanding of morality, rather than considering it something that could be so easily clear-cut. Both sides of judgment—both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are informed by the contexts in which that very moral judgment is made.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Plume: 1988.

*Trigger Warning*- This post contains  close-readings of violent scenes that involve sex and physical abuse.

Throughout Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a consistent thread appears that depicts the dehumanization of slaves at the hands of those with privileged identities. Within the text, Morrison uses animalistic language to describe different scenes in which Sethe and other slaves are being beaten, coerced into sexual acts, and controlled by someone of privilege.

One of the first moments in which Morrison uses language related to animals to describe a scene of abuse and powerlessness occurs when Sethe partakes in a  sexual act with the engraver in order to have the name “Beloved” written on her daughter’s head stone. The narrator describes the scene once saying, “she thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new,” (pg. 5). This graphic scene was extremely disturbing for me to read, indicating it was a passage worth noting. Here, a key aspect of the scene is the nature of the son and the engraver who both contribute to the dehumanization of Sethe. By describing the son as, “looking on,” Morrison creates a sense of spectatorship, as if Sethe was an interesting object to gaze upon. Furthermore, the engraver is said contain an amount of “anger” and an “appetite.” This image immediately evoked a dynamic of predator and prey, as the words “anger” and “appetite” indicate a sort of animalistic, instinctual need for satiation. The juxtaposition of the engraver’s “old” face yet “new” appetite emphasizes the instinctual nature of his need for sexual gratification. It’s as if despite his age, the act of asserting himself upon Sethe ignites feelings of youth and power. Lastly, the word “rutting” in this context contains significant meaning. I decided to look up the definition of this word and its connotations. I found that “rutting” has another meaning and often refers to the sexual acts of farm animals, mainly deer. This term is repeated later in this section as the narrator says, “Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver’s son was not enough,” (pg. 5). The repetition of this word refers to the way in which the engraver and his son treat Sethe as non-human. Instead, she is an object with little importance to them, similar to an animal. This can be connected back to Mulvey when thinking about the object of the gaze and the performer of the action.

Another instance in which animalistic language is used to describe a scene of abuse when Sethe recalls slaves being forced into wearing bits generally used on farm animals. The narrator ays, “She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye,” (pg. 84). This instance is one more of many examples in which Morrison uses animalistic language to emphasize the dehumanization of slaves. The terms “wildness” and the picture of one’s lips being “yanked back” evoke images of a horse being tamed. Generally, this is called “breaking” a horse and often involves using a bit to tame the wild creature. The practice is based upon removing the independence and power of the horse in order to serve its master. The same practice is being used here on people as means of control. Ultimately, Morrison seems to be using both this scene and that which Sethe is at Beloved’s gravestone to depict the way in which African Americans were treated as though they were animals. The language here is not only rooted in referenced to animals, but also to the body and the lack of power. Both of these scenes depict an act being committed against the will of the recipient. The language is centered upon the body and contains notions of forced penetration, whether the mouth or other areas of the body. This constant referral to animals throughout the text furthers the central theme which is the deep-rooted pain that is a result of years of torture and abuse. It highlights the lack of agency had amongst slaves and the cruel practices held by their owners who often performed violent acts centered upon penetration and disfiguration of the body.