Abstract
My thesis examines the ways in which the characters in Beloved exhibit behaviors and lifestyles that are indicative of the trauma which Toni Morrison purposefully exposes. I make use of Hortense Spillers’ writing about psychoanalysis and race, Saidiya Hartman’s focus on power and posturing in American society, Ernst Van Alphen’s studies of discourse as means for overcoming trauma, and Orlando Patterson’s analysis of the slave’s subjugation caused by the limitations of American discourse. Judith Lewis Herman’s book, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic to Political Terror, greatly informs my analysis of the characters as victims of personal and cultural psychological trauma and as survivors who are attempting to recover their personal and social histories. I argue that the character, Beloved, embodies cultural and historical resonances of Sethe’s trauma which not only invade the present and possess its survivors, but also take on a life of its own in the way that Beloved’s character does through the course of the book. Unlike other approaches, I argue that Paul D helps Sethe to summon, rather than to banish, Beloved by inviting Sethe into discourse about the past. Rather than describing the women gathering in front of 124 as an exorcism, I argue that their assembly integrates a previously incoherent trauma into the larger community. Their presence helps Sethe to break out of the isolation and stigma or her trauma, as well as the social negation imposed by slavery and perpetuated by her community’s denial. In addition to providing tools for tracing the affects of intellectual and social domination which occurred in slavery, the various symptoms of trauma and stages of recovery provide a valuable reference for understanding the initial limitations and ultimate profundity of Sethe’s individual character and cultural history.