Strange Psychology of Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Abstract

Toni Morrison, the Nobel Laureate of 1993, has been the vociferous voice for the Black Americans. She has revealed the suppressed voice of these depressed people through her writings. It is her novels that compel the white Americans to think over the humanity and impartiality despite of the colour, gender or nationality. Toni Morrison’s writings contributed much to improve the pathetic condition of the blacks in America.

The main motive of writing this paper is to analyze Toni Morrison’s characters through psychoanalytical lens. The paper elucidates the sacrifices and a strange mentality of a mother who kills her daughter not because she cannot nurture her or hates her but because she does not like her to live a slave and pathetic life like her. Though Sethe’s inhuman deed is heinous crime but the women who live in the same locality support her as they see Sethe’s love in that infanticide. Thus Morrison shows the strange psychology of motherhood through Beloved.