Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal, {Bi-Monthly}, ISSN 2249-9598, Volume-08, Apr-May 2018 Special Issue
Racial Dehumanization in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
M. S. Subi
Assistant Professor Department of English Nanjil Catholic College of Arts and Science
Kaliyakkavilai Affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli,
Tamilnadu, India
Abstract
This paper entitled “Racial Dehumanization in Toni Morrison’s Beloved” presents how
the black people tied into the snare of slavery and racial discrimination. Black people
suffered a lot under the dominance of slavery. But women are the main victims of
slavery. Toni Morrison expresses her views through the main character Sethe, who is the
victim of slavery in the novel. Through her sufferings Morrison depicts that how people
faced the life of suppression and depression under the domination of slavery. She focuses
mainly on horrors of slavery and racial discrimination, their psychological and social
effects on the blacks over the ages. It revises the past which is a dark reality in the form
of slavery, subjugation of women, the destruction ofcultural identity of the African-
Americans and various other cruelties. This paper tries to light on the issues, problems
and woes of slaves due to racial discrimination.
KEYWORDS: Racial Discrimination, Slavery, Sexism, Suppression, Subjugation,
Dehumanization
African- American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by
writers of African descent. African- Americans also referred to as Black Americans or
Afro- Americans, is an ethnic group of citizens or residents of the United States with total
or partial ancestry from any native populations of Sub- Saharan Africa. Many African-
American authors have written stories, poems and essays influenced by their experiences
as African- Americans. African- American literature is a major genre in American
literature. The African- American literature mainly deals with the themes of society,
African- American culture, racial discrimination, slavery and social equality. According
to Nirmal Bajaj:
The African- American fiction primarily deals with the exploitation of the
black’s particularly sexual exploitation of the black women, loyalty to the
race of the black over that of the country very often prevails because the
Afro- Americans in the nineteenth century remained deprived of the basic
principles of liberty, equality and justice enshrined in the American
constitution. The oppressive and hostile white American culture forces the
blacks to search for dignity and identity to develop unified self. (6)
Among the famous African- American writers, Toni Morrison had a peculiar style
in her writings. She is among the pioneer of the contemporary black writers who have
refined African-American writing in many ways. In her work, she deeply focuses on
racial discrimination which has a dominant role in African- American. Toni Morrison
uses racial discrimination as the implacable continuation of a historical phenomenon.
Racial discrimination and slavery embody the supreme type of evil in Toni Morrison’s
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works. Black women only victimized by racial discrimination, sexism and classism, not
only from the white world but also from their own men. Being aware of these facts, Toni
Morrison aims to portray the experiences of black women in her novels. Morrison
expresses her knowledge about black life creating fictional characters.
Racial discrimination consists of prejudice based on social perceptions of
biological differences between people. It often takes the form of social actions, practices
or beliefs, or political systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently
superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities or
qualities. Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on
an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as
racial.
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison presents the pain of blacks.
Beloveddramatizes a haunting amalgam of the past and present experiences of an escaped
female Sethe. Through flashbacks to pasttragedies and psychological sufferings, the
novel explores the hardships endured by Sethe and her family during the Reconstruction
era. It is Morrison’s goal to demonstrate that collectivism is the first step in eradicating
the racial oppression and class exploitation of African people. Women have no freedom.
They were raped in the centrality of race. Morrison’s novel tells about the emphatic and
white’s domination in the society. The characters are defined by the racial barriers
formed by the surrounding white society. The dominant white society violates, denies and
sets the rules for the black communities to suffer from confusion and anxiety. African-
American people are oppressed both because of their dark skin and their poverty clearly
proves that race is a later justification for the enslavement of African- Americans.
Kavitha Arya says, “Morrison is successful in documenting slavery and its aftermath. She
dexterously shows how slavery was always slavery on whether Sweet Home or any other
plantation. The conditions of slavery were qualitatively indistinguishable whether the
slave had a good master or bad master (87).
The social life confronts the blacks in a mixed society of blacks and whites. Being
a minority, white dominates the blacks and so they accepted their fate. They appeared to
be hanging on the very edge of life. In Beloved Sethe experienced such a cruel racial
discrimination. Not only Sethe but also most of the characters experienced the cruelty of
whites. Sethe lived in a gray and white house on Bluestone Road on the outskirts of
Cincinnati. She “didn’t have a number then” (Beloved 3). Women were the labourers in
the field with the men. It also meant that the women were deprived of houses, of being
householders. Blacks were not allowed to possess anything, neither relationships nor any
belongings.The male protagonists also struggle in the hands of racist white masters. In
front of slavery, the women and men are treated equally, and they are commonly called
as slaves. Paul D suffers from the brutality of slavery physically and emotionally. Halle,
Sethe’s husband also suffers as a slave. He works for five years for his crippled mother
“usually he worked Saturdays and Sundays to pay off Baby Suggs’ freedom” (Beloved
71).
The novel Beloved revolves around the death of Sethe’s infant daughter Beloved,
who mysteriously reappears as a sensuous young woman. Beloved’s spirit comes back to
claim Sethe’s love. Sethe struggled to keep Beloved gaining full possession of her present
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Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal, {Bi-Monthly}, ISSN 2249-9598, Volume-08, Apr-May 2018 Special Issue
and to throw off the long, dark, legacy the period of the 1870s by looking back to the
mid- nineteenth century when black “men and women were moved around like checkers”
(Beloved 27). They were “hanged, rented out, loaned out, bought up, ran off, brought
back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized” (Beloved 27). Their life choices were
severely limited had freedom was an unimaginable dream for them. Sethe was depressed
by the action of white people in the name of racial discrimination. The black people were
treated as the prey for the whites. Usha Puri says, “Sethe’s experience is treated with
many ironic overtones that point to certain paradoxes and many fundamental
complexities of her quest to freedom” (172).
The whites’ superiority through verbal or physical means, both results the
subjugation of the blacks.Sethe’s encounter with evil begins in Sweet Home.The
atrocities and mental trauma Sethe faces in the Sweet Home is “a total subjugation of a
race which was made a victim coercion, sexism and racism, practical successful to
obliterate their individuality” (Gaur 52).The school teacher exploited Sethe’ssexuality in
a violent and brutal manner. His nephews attacked her and treated her as an animal.They
degraded the blacks at Sweet Home.
The school teacher measures the body parts of the blacks and studies them. This
action of physical measurement becomes a form of oppression, as they subjugate the
slaves into biological specimens. He also directs his nephews to categorization divides
the black and the white community and they labels black people as an inferior creatures.
Sethe ultimately defines the school teacher’s authority resulting in the murder of her own
child, Beloved. By murdering the child she feels that “no one, nobody on this earth,
would list her daughter’s characteristics on the animal side of the paper”(Beloved
251).She has tried to save her children from the terrible experience of being a slave in the
name of racial discrimination. Amother who loves her children so deeply doesn’t want
her children to experience the cruelties. So she tries to kill them. She feels that this is the
only way to prevent her children from brutality.
Morrison presents how the women struggled to live and how they faced the
problems during slavery. Barbara Schapiro says that, “For Morrison’s characters, African
Americans in a racist, slave society, there is no reliable other to recognize and affirm
their existence. The mother, the child’s first vital other, is made unavailable by a slave
system which either separates her from her child or so self with which to confer
recognition” (194). Sethe’s mother Ella is also a victim of racial discrimination. She has
delivered various times but Sethe is the only one she has kept with her. Being a slave, her
mother has to work all the time and has no time even to take care of her daughter Sethe.
These women have faced the problems of race, class and gender which pushed them
towards the margin. Through the novel Belovedone can comprehend how difficult it is to
be a slave at the hands of slave- holder.
The novel Beloved shows the damaging effects of racial discrimination on the
black community. Toni Morrison’s novels are meant to celebrate sense of black
womanhood and to create awareness for the honour and dignity of black women in the
society. Differentiating people by pointing their colour, lack of education, subjugation of
women and no freedom for women are the main reasons for slavery. The black victim
stands in the vicious circle of prejudice, which creates the racially determined terror, the
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Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal, {Bi-Monthly}, ISSN 2249-9598, Volume-08, Apr-May 2018 Special Issue
shadow that constantly accompanies the black existence. Fear, pain, dehumanization and
the feeling of worthlessness are omnipresent in the lives of black people.
References:
Primary Source
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. London: Vintage, 1987.Print.
Secondary Sources
Arya, Kavitha. Blackhole in the Dust: The Novels of Toni Morrison. New Delhi:
Adhyayan, 2010. Print.
Bajaj, Nirmal. “Perspectives of Afro- American Fiction.” Perspectives on the Afro-
American Novel. Ed. Tarlochan Singh Anand. Jalandhar; ABS, 1994. 1-7. Print.
Gaur, Reshmi. Women’s Writing: Some Facts. New Delhi: Sarup, 2003. Print.
Puri, Usha. “Convergence of History and Feminism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.”
Perspectives on the Afro- American Novel. Ed. Tarlochan Singh Anand. Jalandhar:
ABS,1994. 170- 79. Print.
Schapiro, Barbara. “The Bonds of Love and The Boundaries of Self in Toni Morrison’s
Beloved.” Contemporary Literature 32.2 (1991): 194-210. Print.
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