Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Women's Roles and Presentation of Their Bodies in Toni Morrison's…
Women's Roles and Presentation of Their Bodies in Toni Morrison's Beloved 
Characters
Beloved
QUOTE: "If schoolteacher was right it explained how he had come to be a rag doll—picked up and put back down anywhere any time by a girl young enough to be his daughter. Fucking her when he was convinced he didn’t want to."
Here, a woman's body is no longer portrayed as the one being used. Instead, it is the woman who is using the man's body for her needs, his own needs becoming irrelevant in comparison to hers. However, the woman's body- Beloved's body- is still not being given any value beyond that of a warm body. The body is stilll not being given respect.
Sethe
QUOTE: "....ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave..."
-
Her body is presented as a form of payment, it isn't sacred or respected.
QUOTE: "A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men"
Not raping Sethe was an accomplishment to the men at Sweet Home, as if her body was theirs to take and the fact that they didn't exercise this so called right it meant they were owed gratitude.
QUOTE: "Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her"
Sethe's role to the sweet home men is to serve them. Her only purpose for being at sweet home is to "choose" one of the men. Another instance in which a woman's body is portrayed as belonging to another instead of the woman herself
QUOTE: They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves.
Here, Sethe's body is compared to that of an animal, dehumanizing her role as a woman as well as amounting her body's functions to that of an animalistic nature.
In other words, the men don't see her as a woman to be respected going so far as to using a calve as an alternative for a human woman as if her body and that of a cow hold the same value.
Stamp Paid's wife
QUOTE: “I looked at the back of her neck. She had a real small neck. I decided to break it. You know, like a twig—just snap it. I been low but that was as low as I ever got.”
Stamp Paid's describes how he wanted to snap his wife's neck because he was tired of her being repeatedly raped by their owner. Both the slave owner and Stamp Paid believed that this woman was theirs to do what they wanted. Her body was a tool for them to each unleash their own desires and sentiments; the slave owner used Stamp Paid's wife to satisfy his sexual and sadistic needs and Stamp Paid-though figuratively-used his wife as an outlet for his anger. Her body is portrayed as not hers.
QUOTE: "Born Joshua, he renamed himself when he handed over his wife to his master's son.... With that gift, he decided that he didn't owe anybody anything. Whatever his obligations were, that act paid them off. "
Stamp Paid's wife is presented here as a form of payment for her Husband's debts. She is presented as being of monetary value. Her body's sole purpose being to service others.
His own name "Stamp Paid" means that he has paid a debt. The presentation of the objectification of women and their roles as simply a form of payment is made clear in the very name of one of the characters; Stamp Paid.
Denver
QUOTE: The thought of being alone makes Denver feel “breakable, meltable, and cold.”
-
Here, Denver is being presented as being a weak individual affirming the belief of others around her that women are fragile, breakable, but most of all weak; weak enough to fall prey to men.
Images, Motifs, Symbols
MOTIF: water
QUOTE: Beloved is described to have"“walked out of the water” and “emerged” from the water with “new skin, lineless and smooth,”
As water in this case is being used to represent birth and new life, much like a baptism, the interpretation that can be drawn from this quote is that when a baby is born they are innocent from the horrors of the world in which they were born in.
-
QUOTE: Sethe's “own water broke loose to join [the river]”
While crossing the river to freedom, Sethe's water breaks and she goes into labor.
Here, water signifies birth and life.
water and the reoccurring imagery of water further elaborates on and reintroduces the role of motherhood for the women in this story
while crossing the river to freedom (the water serving as a metaphor for freedom as well in this case) Sethe gives birth which connects the concepts of freedom and birth
water may represent the lack of freedom women have in this time as well, Freedom from being objectified and used by men as well as their owners
Throughout history, many mothers have chosen to give birth in water
QUOTE: "river water, seeping through any hole it chose, was spreading over Sethe’s hips."
Water may also represent the inescapable nature of the objectification inflicted by men. Much like this water can seep through any hole it chooses, these men as well penetrate any hole they please.
SYMBOLISM: Vagina/ Vaginal Imagery
-
questions
-
What function do Bibilical Allusions serve in Beloved? How do these allusions contribute to the message or advance the plot?
Are these biblical allusions an attempt at subtle foreshadowing of the following events in the Beloved?
How does water imagery contribute to other themes beside "women's roles and presentation of their bodies"?
biblical allusions
QUOTE: "When the four horsemen came- schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher, and a sheriff
symbolism behind it is Sethe feels as if men will bring about the end of her as an individual. much like the four horsemen bring about the end of the world.
-
QUOTE: "If he trembled like Lot's wife and felt some womanish need to see the nature of the sin behind him..he too would be lost"
refers to the repercussions of weakness but primarily stresses on the weakness of a woman as it was Lot's wife who looked back not Lot
Angel's instructed Lot to run from Sodom. However, Lot's wife looked back and was turned into sand
-