A Mother Missed: Sethe’s Familial Repressions

            In Beloved, Toni Morrison sets up a scene where Beloved, the new visitor to 124 whose strangely insightful questions provoke suppressed memories for Sethe, has begun asking Sethe about her mother. Through revealing for the first time Sethe’s repressed memories, Morrison shows Sethe, as a child, did not understand slavery’s effect on the family, and although she now intellectually understands the horrors, she cannot accept the impact of slavery on an emotional level. Sethe remembers her mother could not see her each night, explaining it would have been “too far from the line-up, I guess” (72). Sethe’s almost passive use of “I guess” shows that although Sethe has recognized the fact that slavery denied her mother the chance to care for her child, she has not fully emotionally accepted the absence of her mother. Even more of Sethe’s troubled childhood is summed up in her mother’s action of showing Sethe her brand and immediately stating, “This is your ma’am” (72). The indefinite pronoun “this” seems to refer to the scar alone, which dehumanizes Sethe’s mother into nothing more than the mark of slavery on her skin. When the child Sethe expresses that she wants to share a connection with her mother through a similar mark, her mother “slapped” her (73). The unmotherly response emphasizes that slavery and normal familial bonds cannot coexist. After recalling this memory, Sethe now “chuckle[s]” at her own naivety as if to downplay her still unresolved pain from her lack of a mother (73). Sethe has been hardened by her lack of familial connection because of slavery, which profoundly affects her adult life leaving her determined to ignore any troubles from her memory yet unable to move on from her past to enjoy her present.