Beloved Comparison to Another Feminist Text

In the article, “Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Psychological Reading” by Sandra Mayfield, the novel Beloved is analyzed in depth by the feminist lens. I am currently examining this text for the feminist lens myself, I am very excited to reveal Mayfield's views and how they relate/oppose to my own.

This article first focuses on how Beloved “deals with both the suffering and the creativity of slave mothers”.Sandra Mayfield later mentions multiple black female experiences from slavery to freedom and how they wrote a book about them completely different from Sethe's experience in Beloved. She also brings in a perspective of another writer who studied Women that lived through the evolution of slavery by the name of Alice Walker. In her collection of essays she discusses how african american women from the south were very resourceful before and after slavery. She also suggest that these women were “artist” who even after the hardship of slavery found the ability in themselves to write, sing, compose music, and write novels. Sandra Mayfield then compares Toni Morrison's interpretation of african american women with other writers. Mayfield concludes that women like Sethe used their tragic/suffering pasts to become caring mothers.

I do not completely disagree with Mayfield's views. Although I do believe someone’s past can mold your personal current life, I do not believe it makes you a creative, better mother. Slavery was a very traumatic experience for all African American women, some might not get over. Not all enslaved women had children, or even kept those they once had. Having a child is a large responsibility that they might not want as a free person outside the walls of slavery.

The character of Sethe is very mothering, however that is because she never had a mother of her own that she actually knew.