Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Thompson, Roger | Scheckel, Susan
Date
2016-12-01
Keywords
English literature -- African American studies | Beloved, Morrison, Motherhood, Othering, Trauma
Department
Department of English
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77506
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
As a text based heavily on tropes from both American Gothic literature and the slave narrative genre, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved serves as a complex and delicate commentary on racial ambiguities and the psychologically haunting effects of African American trauma. These ambiguities simultaneously serve as reasons for and consequences of the various traumas that strain the interpersonal relationships between the female characters. Aside from the most blatant and gruesome trauma of the novel—the infanticide that Sethe commits as an act of mercy for her unnamed child—many of the recurring traumatic memories evoke the challenges of motherhood during slavery. | As a text based heavily on tropes from both American Gothic literature and the slave narrative genre, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved serves as a complex and delicate commentary on racial ambiguities and the psychologically haunting effects of African American trauma. These ambiguities simultaneously serve as reasons for and consequences of the various traumas that strain the interpersonal relationships between the female characters. Aside from the most blatant and gruesome trauma of the novel—the infanticide that Sethe commits as an act of mercy for her unnamed child—many of the recurring traumatic memories evoke the challenges of motherhood during slavery. | 39 pages
Recommended Citation
Greco, Gabriella Elizabeth, "Othering the Mother: Traumatic Effects of Motherhood on the Formation of Identity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved | Othering the Mother: Traumatic Effects of Motherhood on the Formation of Identity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved" (2016). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3316.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3316