Beloved: The Enslaved Black Female and the Realities of Gendered Trauma
Ashley Miller
Abstract
The classical definition of a feminist novel is a novel that projects women overcoming gender roles, sexism, and discrimination. In 19th-century America, women in society, their role and their sexuality regularly micro-managed, were prompted to seek solidarity to redefine these aspects of identity and demand social equality. However, black women in this period of history were either pushed behind the scenes or fell silent in this fight for women’s rights. Racist and sexist socialization conditioned a generation of black women to devalue their femaleness and to regard race as the only relevant label of their identity (hooks 1). In other words, not only were black women denying a part of themselves, but taught socially to submit and to accept both their racial and sexual inferiority (hooks 2). This deep rooted history of violence and dehumanization to the enslaved black female continues to perpetuate trauma and identity fragmenting through each generation. In addressing the experiences of these individuals respectively, as it pertains to victims of oppression and persecution, it is not meant to discredit or speak on behalf or account for every narrative but to illuminate a critique to the semblance of trends in the process of power that validate driving forces of gendered and racialized persecution. Using intersections of race and gender to analyze Toni Morrison’s Beloved in the context of its female characters, a connection can be drawn to the historical and social constructs of power in their capability to dehumanize individuals and the use of literary mechanisms to cope with the violent realities done to women of color. Morrison presents a text foundational to black feminism that illuminates the dualistic constraints imposed on black women and presents fiction parallel to factual instances that break down fulcrums of oppression and compels the characters to address points of problematized healing and prosper past their convictions.
Please find my submission for this assignment included below.
