"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." Sethe loves hard, especially her children. Her escape (so her husband and kids could have a better life), her devotion to Beloved's grave, her strong attachment to Denver despite their distance: all of those parts of her prove how far she is willing to go for the people she loves. When she (spoiler alert) tries to kill her children in a desperate bid to keep them from wrathful slavery under Schoolteacher, is she right?
We've actually seen her have the exact same reaction before when a loved one is in peril: when the dog is injured, she knocks it out with a hammer with no hesitation. (Jeez, Sethe, at least use a book or something!) Her protective, maternal reaction is instinct stronger than logic. Think of mother dogs who are ordinarily passive but will bite off your hand if you touch one of her puppies, or a ferocious "mama bear," defending her young above all else. She doesn't flinch, doesn't think, but finds the fastest way to resolve the conflict. (Paul D specifically calls her out on the animalistic nature of her protective tendencies when he reminds her she has "two legs, not four.")
Sethe is, as the kids say, peak "mama bear." She has "a big love that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia," as Paul D says. She lives for her children and would die for her children's safety. The big question is weighing how much she wants them to live versus how much she wants them to live free lives. When Schoolteacher's arrival short-circuits her rememory, she goes into hyper-protective mode and loses any secondary mental processes that might have stopped her to let her think. Baby Suggs insists that "there had to be another way," but Sethe holds her conviction that what she did was right. And with all she's been through, you almost believe her.
As you said, Sethe is "peak mama bear" with a devotion that can sometimes unsettle (the treatment of the dog was especially harsh). This could be explained by the harsh conditions she would lived in at sweet home, and the things she is just hard wired to do to ensure what she sees as best for those she loves. The killing of Beloved could be attributed to the love she feels for her, but it is as you said: she has to weigh how much she wants them to live with how much she wants them to be free.
ReplyDeleteWhen Paul D claims that her reaction is insane and not normal, I wondered what kind of reaction would be classified as normal in this sense. Sethe is probably suffering from the incredible trauma she experienced at Sweet Home, and wants to protect her children from this at all costs. In a sense her method was successful. None of the children returned to Sweet Home, and only one died, at her hands. This is certainly a cold way to look at things, but I definitely am not sure what a "normal" reaction would have been.
ReplyDeleteThis is cool. One thing you said that resonated with me was "how much she wants them to live versus how much she wants them to live free lives." I think this question is very important. Sethe who has really experienced the effects of slavery and what it is like to be under someone's control and not be able to do anything. Based on what we know, I don't think the kids did much yet(?). But I think that Sethe might've felt that living a life of slavery is not living and she wanted her children to really live. But then it falls back to would the children prefer to live in slavery and be alive, or die in order to have not lived through hell on earth? Great post :)
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