In Beloved, the aforementioned character’s eyes denote their magical qualities. At moments it is as if her eyes are completely without whites and instead are entirely black. What is perhaps most interesting about this particular description is typically this is saved for demonic or evil characters. Often in horror movies that feature a demonic character, or more broadly, in films that have a magical component the villain’s grand reveal will be that their eyes are completely pitch black.
What does this mean in the case of Beloved? First, the obvious answer is that in some way she is not a force of good in the novel. That is not to say that she is potentially a great evil who has come to commit violent acts against Denver and Sethe. What is more likely, in my opinion, is that she represents tremendous pain. That the manifestation of her eyes is not because she herself is evil but instead that the evil of slavery has infected her. Thus, the reader is presented with an extremely interesting and somewhat subtle description of the true violence of slavery. As the horrific actions of the institution have literally filled Beloved up with evil. Have changed her eyes into a symbol which is one of pure unaltered evil.
Perhaps, then, the reader is left questioning how this evil relates to Sethe, and by extension Denver. It is in the destruction of natural bonds of love. Sethe should not be afraid to love her children, and yet the institution of slavery has taken what is typically a person’s first experience of love, that of their mother, and replaced it with coldness. This of course, in reference to slavery more broadly, as Sethe takes the risk of loving her own child. Thus, the evil that is represented in Beloved’s eyes in two-fold. First, it shows the psychical, obvious violence of slavery, but secondarily, it demonstrates the more subtle, less talked about, destruction of the family and bonds of kinship amongst those who are enslaved.
Within Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” water is a recurring motif that represents new beginnings and rebirth. Both Sethe and Beloved emerge from the water having been remade in some way.
For Sethe, water represents her rebirth as a free woman. The river that she crossed to reach Baby Sugg’s house is the final physical boundary between her old life as a slave and her new life of freedom. It is also the location of Denver’s birth, making it both literally and figuratively representative of new life. The river “looked like home to her, and the baby… must have thought so too” because as soon as Sethe reached the river “her own water broke loose to join it” and she went into labor (Morrison 98). She gave birth while sinking in the river water, then swaddled the baby while standing in the river. The reiterated presence of water in this birth scene serves as a sort of symbolic baptism of both Sethe and Denver, indicating the new chapter of their lives that is about to begin.
For Beloved, water represents her rebirth in a corporeal form and her return to Sethe and Denver’s life. Beloved is first introduced with the phrase “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water” (Morrison 60). Everything about Beloved appears new, from her suspiciously uncreased shoes, to her fancy dress, to her “new skin,” which is “lineless and smooth” (Morrison 61). Later, when Beloved talks to Denver about where she came from, she explains that “in the place [she was] before” it was dark and warm, and she was small and curled in a fetal position like a baby (Morrison 88). As Beloved disjointedly reveals her journey to 124, she mentions that before her arrival she was “in the water” (Morrison 89). It is revealed that she emerged from the stream she and Denver used to play by as children. The water imagery surrounding Beloved’s reappearance represents the final stage of a birth-like transformation. It also ties back to past family memories, which Beloved’s appearance begins to reawaken.
Between Sethe and Beloved, water becomes a recurring motif representing rebirth. However, while Sethe’s rebirth represents a new future, Beloved’s represents a return to the past.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Penguin Random House, 2004.
William Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride is famous for its iconic characters. One thing I noticed while reading was how Goldman depicts masculinity in the book, namely how it manages to create a divide between the heroes of the story and the villains. On one hand, the villains are tied to traits of “toxic masculinity,” while on the other, the heroes have traits that relate to a more positive version of masculinity.
For our three villains Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen, this idea of “toxic masculinity” is clear in their need for control and dominance and their display of limited emotions. Count Rugen asserts his dominance in a few violent ways: killing Inigo’s father (131), defeating 10-year-old Inigo in a duel (132-133), torturing Westley (261-263) and almost killing Inigo (344-345). Once again, Rugen doesn’t show much when it comes to emotions, but he does have moments of arrogance and fear, which are both present when he faces Inigo at the end of the novel. With Humperdinck, we are shown these same emotions, but his most often shown emotion is anger. One display of his anger is during chapter six as Buttercup realizes he lied to her; during this fit of rage, he locks Buttercup in her room and then goes to “kill” Westley, both actions allowing him to assert his power. Earlier in the book Goldman show’s us two other instances in which Humperdinck asserts his dominance, one being his “Zoo of Death”. The “Zoo of Death” is a structure built under the castle with five different levels, four of which are filled with animals for Humperdinck to go hunt and assert his dominance over animals for whenever he pleases (74-76). On page 90 Goldman depicts Buttercup and Humperdinck’s first meeting where he asks for her hand, tells her because he’s the prince she can’t say no, and then threatens to kill her if she refuses again. Here Humperdinck makes his power clear as he threatens her with death to get what he wants.
Turning to our heroes Westley and Inigo, we don’t see as much need for control or dominance. An exception to this might be the duel between the two but the goal of said fight was more so to survive than to “show who’s boss”. Furthermore, we see a larger range of emotions from these two heroes over the story. During Inigo’s backstory (120-142), we see his love towards his father, his anger and grief at his murder, and his hopelessness at never avenging him. Right after he offers compassion towards “the man in black”, helping him up the cliff and allowing him to rest before they duel (144) and towards Fezzik as he tries to cheer him up with rhymes throughout the story. With Westley we are primarily shown his love for Buttercup and his despair at losing her. The important thing about their emotions is that they can be vulnerable within the text, they can show compassion and despair, which goes against the idea of “toxic masculinity”. Since Goldman connects “positive” masculinity with the heroes and “toxic masculinity” with the villains, he also ends up pairing the binary of “positive” masculinity vs “toxic masculinity” with the binary of good vs evil. As a result, the text criticizes the traits of “toxic masculinity” while encouraging vulnerability.
When reading the first 100 pages of Beloved, I was struck by how resentful Denver is to anyone and everyone she perceives to have abandoned her. This sense of abandonment threads throughout this first portion, extending to her brothers, her grandmother, and even her mother when Paul D shows up and they begin to talk about their lives at Sweet Home. It excludes her, something she can’t stand, evidenced by the later quote “This was the party of the story she [Denver] loved. She was coming to it now, and she loved it because it was all about herself…” (91). Denver is not a person who can easily accept the kind of change that people leaving and entering her life creates. At the beginning of the novel, she is described as being “ten and still mad at Baby Suggs for dying” (4). Her anger towards her grandmother is irrational, but it is consistent. She feels that sense of resentment and betrayal towards her brothers, too, for running away, something their own mother seems to understand and accept. When Paul D and then Beloved enter their lives, she’s forced to fight for her mother’s attention in a way she hasn’t had to for years. There are now parts to her mother’s life that she is not an insider to, and it frustrates her and invokes a deep sense of jealousy. Curiously, the only person she doesn’t seem to hold anger towards for abandoning her in some way is Halle, her father, perhaps because no one really knows for sure what happened to him.
As Beloved’s personality and reason for showing up at 124 become clearer, it is also clear that Beloved and Denver truly are sisters. Only the two of them know what/who Beloved really is. More importantly, they share the same desire for Sethe’s attention. Denver delights in the thought of having a sister, someone her age to talk to and spend time with, but when Beloved makes it clear that she’s only there for their mother, Denver becomes defensive, hurt, and jealous. Beloved’s conviction threatens Denver’s place in her own home, when Denver asks what her plans are and Beloved says she’s staying because she belongs there. “I belong here too,” Denver insists, sensing that her sister’s ghost intends to make room for herself, even if it costs Denver in the process (89).
Both young women are deeply resentful. Denver’s dominant nature stood out in the first half of this section, but she has met her match in Beloved, the sister she wanted but perhaps shouldn’t. Beloved, evidently, comes to 124 on account of unfinished business and wants to take in all the knowledge she can about her mother, compelling Denver to tell her the story of Denver’s birth. She is greedy in a way that Denver recognizes, because she behaves similarly about her and Sethe’s status quo when Paul D shows up and she has to accept that her mother had a life before her. After all the people who have left her, Sethe is all she has left and so Denver takes her time coming around to Paul D. Beloved is reckoning with the opposite—the life her mother had after her—and so the two sisters stand in a uniquely similar yet disparate position.
An unexpected recurrence across my classes this semester has been a continuous discussion about how things come to be. Whether this is material or metaphorical, it bears surprising relevance when thinking about (you guessed it) context. In one of my classes, the content of a text is distinguished between the “verbal work” and the “material work”; the verbal work being the concept and existence of a body of work inside its creator’s mind, and the material work being every step of the physical production of said text.
What is so significant about the material work is that every step along the way to produce a physical copy is influenced by the possibility of error, human or otherwise. Even in modern book production there is a margin for error, and book printing in the past was subject to even more so. The manuscript passed through so many hands just to print words on paper, not to mention the work of binding those pages together. Perhaps there is a typo somewhere – or perhaps where the text is being produced is undergoing the unfortunate influence of censorship, muddling the “intent” of the author. I use quotes around intent here to acknowledge that there is no way of knowing, when considering texts, the specific intent behind content.
Toni Morrison touches upon this in Playing in the Dark, where she delves into an in-depth and heart-wrenchingly philosophical analysis of author biases. Whether subconscious or conscious, the “verbal work” is influenced by the sociocultural environment of the time. Whether this is through racialized language or other hierarchical values, these influences present, along with the fluctuating content of the material work, a greater contextual insight into broader contexts beyond the pages of the text itself.
Consider Ulysses: the process Joyce went through to transcribe the “verbal work” into the meticulously edited and revised versions of the “material work” was Herculean (don’t let Joyce know I think that). Part of the trials Joyce went through for Ulysses was due to censorship laws; others due to his physical health (which can in part be considered a “human error” influencing the material work). Take into account more ancient works like The Odyssey or The Iliad, which were originally entirely verbal performances. Although the time and quantity of recitations could have deviated the material from its original “verbal work”, transcribing these epics into versions of their “material works” surely subjected to them to all manner of errors; additionally, every translated edition contains slight variations that can impact the way a text is consumed. The ways that things are made, and specifically the context the making of things offers when trying to understand a work to the fullest, fascinates me thoroughly.
In Morrison’s novel, the titular character Beloved shines. “That’s how Beloved looked – gilded and shining” (Morrison 76), and though Paul D expressed his wariness towards the mysterious young woman that shows up on the doorstep, the two women of 124, Sethe and her daughter Denver, immediately take it upon themselves to become caretakers in ways they’ve never been before. The distinction between humanness and motherhood continually weaves through the timelines and characters of this novel, but in the beginning of the novel, Sethe’s past trauma and its relation to Denver and Beloved walks the dividing line. Beloved is a thing almost entirely other; constantly referred to by her newness and confusing presence, after a month of staying with Sethe, they still had not “gotten used to her gravelly voice, and the song that seemed to lie in it,” “for just outside music it lay” (72) and Sethe, Denver, and Paul D remain enclosed in a vicinity outside of her foreign presence. Denver, entranced by her newness, cares for her as if she were Beloved’s mother, but Beloved is only satisfied when hearing stories of Sethe’s past.
Sethe was amazed at Beloved’s desire to hear the stories “because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost…Perhaps it was Beloved’s distance from the events itself, or her thirst for hearing it – in any case it was an unexpected pleasure” (69). At this point in the novel, Sethe has not questioned if Beloved is connected to her now departed child, but telling Beloved these stories of her past at Sweet Home enacts a caretaking she deliberately avoids with Denver, as the memories are too painful if the distance does not exist between them. Beloved exists in the “gleaming, powerful world” of Sethe’s memory that is “made more so by Denver’s absence from it” (79). Sethe’s “remembrance of glittering headstone” (63), marked only by the name Beloved, establishes Beloved’s belonging inside this past life, as they both shimmer in the light of remembrance, and remembrance is how Beloved asks to be cared for. Though Denver is Sethe’s only daughter still alive, she cannot exist inside the world of memory because she exists in the present moment, and cannot be cared for in this way. Sethe then divides Denver and Beloved through remembrance, or deliberate avoidance, as an act of motherhood.
Toni Morrison crafts a narrative in Beloved that uses the motif of a tree to explore concepts of trauma and healing that looks at the deeper roots of generational trauma and Sethe’s response to it. Sethe’s perspective on her “chokecherry tree” scar go back and forth, similar to her emotions about remembering her past and living her own life in the present. This is especially apparent when looking at Sethe’s first conversations with Paul D. She subtly brings up her scar, stating that she only calls it a chokecherry tree because a white girl (who we later learn is amy) said it looked like one. Sethe then says, “But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know” (18). In this, we see how Sethe doesn’t like to consciously think about her past. Her biggest and most traumatic scar is something she can’t see, and because she can’t see it, is easier to try to forget. The fact that it “could have cherries now for all I know” implies that much more has happened to Sethe, but she also pushes it down so much that she doesn’t really “know”. The words “for all I know” are often used casually, for things that don’t matter or things we don’t feel have significance to talk about. In reality, she does know. Her body knows, at least, but she brushes it off in her mind like she does in her words, because talking about it would dig deeper into it and open it up again. This is similar to Amy’s phrase, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts” (42), which also captures what Sethe’s healing process looks like. It emphasizes the painful process of confronting historical trauma and acknowledging that its essential for healing, but it also reopens wounds that are never truly closed and maybe never will be because it’s so deeply scarred.
This same inner conflict is discussed on page 43, when Sethe explains her understanding of time and rememory. “Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place– the picture of it– stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.” In this, Morrison establishes that trauma leaves a permanent mark on both memory and the world itself. Morrison compares it to physical things, stating that even after something is physically destroyed or no longer present, its impact and the memory of it shape how we understand our present– like trauma and the past do. It becomes something that is not responded to in a set way, but is approached subjectively to how the carriers of this trauma are feeling in their present.
This is exemplified when Sethe’s description of her scar changes when she first lays with Paul D. Instead of her “Chokecherry tree” she calls it a, “clump of scars” (25). At this point, Sethe had just experienced a very intimate opening of her scars, lying with Paul D. The act of intimacy likely brought out her sexual trauma, and she and Paul D were described as “resenting” each other after the act (24). She calls her chokecherry tree a “clump of scars” because she assumes that Paul D thinks that. She is put in a position where she is forced to be seen as vulnerable and as a harbor of trauma, so she digs into her insecurities, and instead of brushing off her deeper issues like she did before, she insults them as a defensive response. She does this in a way that opens up ideas of self-loathing that she was likely trying to avoid previously by pushing down her trauma. In fact, the aging of her trauma shows in this statement of self-loathing.
This “aging” of trauma is interesting to think about when compared to the physical form of a tree. With age, trees become more hollow on the inside. The recurring symbol of a tree being used might be used to explore how although “time heals”, time can also worsen the issues developed by trauma in a person, making them more “hollow” or emptier because a part of them feels missing. This can also be applied to an entire generation of people, especially if they are traumatized as a collective, like previous slaves. In this context, Morrison’s use of trees reveals how ingrained trauma– especially the trauma of previous slaves, affects more than the individual, but instead entire communities and even future generations. Although Sethe is continually healing in her own ways, or at least with time, the past is something that isn’t easily erased, especially when the past is a shared experience. Morrison shows how healing is ongoing with collective generational trauma, and doesn’t necessarily have an “answer” that fits all.
For the better part of the last year, I’ve spent my time reading every Partition novel focused on the female experience that I could get my hands on. Some context: Partition refers to the division of the British Raj into modern-day India and Pakistan. Overnight, people suddenly had to decide if they were Indian or Pakistani—a choice defined by religion. This single decision to reformulate borders (may I add, borders drawn by a British civil servant who had never set foot on the subcontinent) triggered brutal communal violence and the mass migration of around 14 million people (and that’s the lower end of the estimate). Women were especially targeted in the violent aftermath of August 14th-15th, subjected to abduction, rape, torture, forced suicide, and dismemberment. With my senior thesis project, I want to interrogate the presence of women in Partition fiction against the absence of women from the historical archives.
There are numerous binaries inherent to this subject, some of which include:
woman v man written history v oral history voice v voiceless independence v colony India v Pakistan Hindu v Muslim izzat (honor) v shame rape v consent macrocosm v microcosm
It’s this last binary that particularly interests me. It features over and over again in my reading towards my thesis.
Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar (1950) chronicles the life of Pooro, a young Hindu girl abducted and forced to marry her captor shortly before the Partition of India; she is involuntarily converted to Islam by her husband, forcibly renamed Hamida, and bears his children. Originally published in Punjabi, Pritam’s work is exceptional for its exploration of violence against women in both the time leading up to Partition and the immediate aftermath. Pinjar (The Skeleton) conveys the experience of gendered violence during Partition through binaries—Pritam explores the sharp distinctions between Hindu and Muslim, consumption and nourishment, and shame and honor through the overarching tension between Pooro and her newly named self, Hamida. Ultimately, Pritam’s dichotomies of the split individual emphasize the nature of female survival during Partition as one of self-martyrdom; for the women of Pinjar, choosing a distinct communal side becomes necessary to continue living in a moment of post-colonial state formation.
Within the last few scenes of the novel, Pooro and Rashida—Pooro’s husband—devise and carry out a plan to return an abducted Hindu girl named Lajo back to her family. Upon reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro is given the option to join the band of Hindu refugees and flee to India. She rejects their offer, declaring instead that: “When Lajo is welcomed back in her home, then you can take it that Pooro has also returned to you. My home is now in Pakistan” (Pritam 127). Pooro accepts Pakistan as her new homeland, surrendering her past self. Lajo becomes a completion of Pooro’s homegoing arc, leaving Hamida behind to embrace Pakistan. The microcosmic tension between these two identities are mirrored in the larger macrocosmic conflict of India versus Pakistan. This is an instance where a binary is broken; Writing Analytically talks about binaries as “not so separate and opposed after all” but “parts of one complex phenomenon” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 60). Here, the “complex phenomenon” is the process of decolonization. One binary (Hamida/Pooro) complicates another binary (Pakistani/Indian) in the service of yet another binary (macrocosm/microcosm). All these identities merge in the restoration of a “whole” self. Pritam writes this restoration as remedying of the split female self as achieved through picking a distinct nation-state; to survive and move beyond the split self, it is necessary for Pooro to accept her new homeland. In this regard, Pritam’s narrative is a literary project that works to rationalize new borders as a resolution to the dichotomies of communal violence. Pooro’s acceptance of Pakistan is her acceptance of her fragmented self. This constitutes a sort of self-martyrdom:
“Whether one is a Hindu girl or a Muslim one, whoever reaches her destination, she carries along my soul also,” Pooro said to herself and made a last vow by closing her eyes” (Pritam 127).
Here, Pooro effectively dies—she establishes that “her soul” follows any woman who successfully returns to her family, and these are her last words. Her decision to remain in Pakistan and to live as Hamida signals a death for Pooro, and Pooro becomes an omnipresent figure guiding young women to safety. She sacrifices her Hindu self to survive in her new surroundings. In reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro finally exercises her autonomy and acts according to her own wishes; she is not bound to the demands of her husband, her son, or the newly independent state. Her personal choice to act blurs the divides between Hindu and Muslim. In the wake of gender-based violence during Partition, female autonomy is a revolutionary act that works to mend the fragmented dichotomies of self.
Pritam, Amrita. Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories. Tara, New Delhi, 2015
Note- this is a plot summary for this nearly century old, largely culturally irrelevant movie for context, not analysis. The analysis will begin after this paragraph:
You may not have heard of Wings, the 1927 silent, first best picture Oscar-winning film, but you have seen it before. Jack, an all-American boy, pines for aviation and dignified city-girl Sylvia. Slyvia’s kindness makes her reticent to break Jack’s heart; she really loves David Armstrong, and equally kind rich boy. When World War I calls and both answer, Jack asks for and receives Sylvia’s picture, unbeknownst to him, that professes love to David on the back. Both boys become friends at training camp, and the friendship soars like their careers as star fighter pilots. The friendship eventually again strains when David destroys the picture to prevent Jack from finding out the truth. In the next battle, David overexerts himself and is shot down trying to prove friendship despite Jack’s anger. David survives, and commandeers a German plane to fly back. Jack sees this German plane and shoots it down to avenge his loss. After landing, Jack realizes the flier was David, and they forgive, caress, and kiss as David dies. Later realizing his foolishness towards Sylvia, Jack returns home a hero, ending the film romantically involved with his neighbor.
How Mary Imagines the Plot of Wings
So, who is this random neighbor?
She, Mary Preston, played by top-billed megastar Clara Bow, only receives about a tenth of the overall screentime, despite appearing on all the posters. Her scenes are relatively disconnected from the plot; though Sylvia appears for five minutes, her existence causes tension in the main war plot. Mary causes no such tension, and Jack’s first words to her of “Gee, can’t you let a man work in peace?” encapsulate their relationship (Wings, 00:03:26) But though Slyvia affects the war plot more directly, Mary commands her own rom-com subplot to win Jack’s love. When Mary appears on screen, all the other themes of brotherhood(?) and war are forgotten, essentially creating a fusion of a war and rom-com movie, with Mary as the clear lead in the latter. This does not make Wings an “empowering movie,” for a closer look at the genres themselves a deference to prevailing social structures, allowing both to cohere and “come home” in a socially acceptable manner- a heterosexual relationship.
From the opening, Mary’s active pluck sets up a familiar binary with Sylvia. Sylvia literally swings onto the frame with David, sitting, and playing music (Wings, 00:06:48). Mary, after upturning her lacy undergarments on the drying line- creating a more risqué association reinforced by a later scene of her changing topless, even if the character herself is not sexual- to get a better look at Jack, and the climbs a high fence to be next to him (Wings, 00:02:59).
Despite his rebuffs, she puts an apron on to help fix Jack fix his car (Wings, 00:04:09). Though Sylvia has her music, Mary can drive a car, and these driving skills land her in the women’s Motor Corps (Wings, 00:26:20). Slyvia dresses as an older ideal of women with her elaborate curls and ever-present lacy long dresses, whereas Mary’s flapper bob, risqué associations, and later smart uniform indicate she belongs to a newer era.
Though modern, she has a sensitive heart. When Jack drinks himself to incapacity and dallies with duplicitous women on shore leave, too drunk to realize he must report back- or else, court-martial, Mary must save his career (Wings, 01:07:50)! The scene follows Mary’s point of view, taking long shots of her despair as her attempts at reason don’t work, at one point doused with champagne (Wings, 01:12:59).
(01:10:52)
But through a random kindly old French woman’s intervention of a glamourous dress, Mary uses her revealed sexiness to save Jack (01:13:50-01:18:00). Unfortunately, after putting him to bed, officers barge into the room while she changes. Assuming her waywardness, Mary tearfully but willingly resigns from the military, and the top-billed character does not return for another hour (01:24:00). Mary expresses her femininity in different ways that Sylvia- sexuality, action, and skills- but she remains a girl in all the ways that matter- obeying authority and standing by “her” man despite his lack.
(01:18:02)
In Wings, two plotlines exist. The war plot follows the false love triangle of jealousy and brotherhood(?) that culminates in patriotic tragedy, and other involves our zany rom-com top-billed heroine desperately trying to get the protagonist, and thus implicitly the movie, to notice her. For her efforts, despite Jack not remembering her Paris sacrifice, she gets her desired relationship. Mary also joins the chorus of characters at the end assuring Jack that he shares no guilt in David’s death, which includes David and David’s parents- it’s simply the war’s fault (02:06:34-02:17:28). Instead of focusing on the actions of men that comprise the war, responsibility is taken away from Jack so the prevailing social structure and the type of men they produce needs no critiquing. Jack is a hero. End of story. Heroes must get a girl. Rom-Com Heroines must get their man, no matter how terrible they may be. End of story. Though both Mary and Jack lead different genre plotlines, both the patriotic war movie and the rom-com encourage adherence to the status quo. Mary never questions why she loves Jack at any point. Despite Jack’s dismissiveness towards Mary and deadly jealousy toward David, he gets to go home- by virtue of his “heroism.” By virtue of Mary’s rom-com plotline, she gets her man in the end, despite his previous lack of interest. In the end, there are no possibilities, whether that be more romantic interpretations of Jack and David, or Mary alternatively using her independence and can-do attitude to do literally anything else.
The Real Plot of Wings (IMBD.com)
Works Cited:
Wings. Directed by William A. Wellman, Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, 1927.
Poster and photoshoot taken from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018578/mediaindex/?ref_=tt_mv_close
Throughout the first third of Beloved, Sethe is continually described by her iron-eyes and iron-will. One of her most common descriptors, I believe Morrison uses this adjective to depict how Sethe has had to close herself off to the world (and love) for her own survival.
The earliest chronological mention we have of this description is: “Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed” (Morrison 12). As the reader learns more about Sethe’s childhood, separated from her mother and taken care of by other young children, one can understand how she comes to see the world as harsh and unforgiving. “Iron” brings up connotations of toughness, strength, and unbreakability, but also dullness, emptiness, and imprisonment. The complexity of this word does exactly what, I argue, Morrison wants it to do – makes you see Sethe as a strong woman who has endured many hardships, but also as someone who has been forced to hide herself away and become closed off to people in order to survive. Eyes are the window to the soul, and Sethe’s soul is hardened and closed-off. And understandably so.
The narrative mentions how “in all of Baby’s life, as well as Sethe’s own, men and women were moved around like checkers,” which means that to get too close to anyone was a risk you could not take (27). To love someone, even your own children, is a danger to yourself and them — Baby Suggs says she “could not love” and “would not” (28). Even with these lessons having made her iron-eyed, Sethe was lulled into a false sense of security at Sweet Home, coming to love the other men and her husband, having her own children, and feeling relatively settled. She lost most of that “iron-eyed,” or closed off, quality as she lived there, and she calls her past self “reckless” and says “a bigger fool never lived” because of it (28).
Since she started to “lean on” others, losing the mental walls against love she had built, the schoolteacher’s assault was even more violating and destructive. Morrison says that “What he [the schoolteacher] did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe’s eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight” (11). The rape and humiliation caused by the schoolteacher killed Sethe’s fire, her determination, and her humanity, leaving her feeling hallow and broken. He stripped her of the last mental defense she had, and what resulted was a total violation of her body and her soul. All of the good qualities of iron were ‘punched out,’ leaving only the dull, closed off parts.
When Paul D finds Sethe 18 years later, he remarks that “now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough” (11). Away from the horrors of the schoolteacher, though still struggling with it in her memory, Sethe has softened some of that iron and let love back into her life, which Paul D calls “very risky. For a used-to-be slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (54). She lives in a sort of middle ground – letting her walls fall, opening herself up to love, but remaining weary. After the cruelty inflicted on her, she had to rebuild that iron, rebuild those walls she put up, to survive.
I believe that the significance of the iron-eyes is to reflect on the measures taken by slaves to survive in the cruel world they inhabited. This weariness of the world forms a kind of mask and barrier between her and the outside world, reflecting her position as a slave, only able to watch and not act. She’s locked inside herself with iron chains of her own making to protect her soul, though this also means she can be trapped in there, struggling with her own memories and thoughts.
