Thursday, April 4, 2019
(Lack of) Family in Beloved
For slaves or recently freed slaves in Beloved, family is a luxury most aren't able to have. Out of all the slaves at Sweet Home, Halle is the only one who is still with his mother (Baby Suggs), and he doesn't even get to spend time with her because they both work all day during the week, and he works weekends for five years to buy her freedom. None of the other slaves have their parents with them. Furthermore, the male slaves at Sweet Home have no women to interact with. One of the slaves walks thirty miles just to see his girlfriend, and only Halle is lucky enough to be chosen by Sethe (the only female slave) as her partner. Even when Halle and Sethe want to get married, they can't even have that relationship with the approval of their owners. Mrs. Garner, laughs at them because slaves aren't important enough--or "human" enough--to get married. Unions between slaves are meant to produce children, the future generation of slaves. Finally, slaves weren't even allowed to keep their own children because they would be taken away as soon as they were old enough to become slaves themselves. The only way Sethe ends up keeping Denver is because she is lucky enough to successfully escape while she's still pregnant--but she loses her partner, Halle, in the process, and Denver grows up without a father. The lack of structured families destroys the spirits of the characters who are forced to live without a close emotional support system.
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4 comments:
That’s so true! I’ve grown up being very close to my family, and I consider myself extremely lucky. When I was younger, I never really thought about how much they meant to me, but when my great-grandmother broke her neck and moved to assisted living, I took a step back. At first, I eagerly and confidently awaited her recovery, and suffice it to say, I was disappointed. She only deteriorated after this tragic incident, and eventually, she no longer knew who I was. It was then that I realized there wouldn’t be any more rendez-vous at her apartment with my cousins. No more eating white powdered doughnuts and homemade brownies. No more walking around the lake with her and feeding the ducks goldfish, or as we called them, “fishies.” Her fudge and buckeyes would be absent from our small family gathering at Christmas, as would her hugs and kisses to greet us at the door. My heart would ache at the next StM Grandparents Day, and I would notice that her smiling face was missing at my 8th Grade Graduation. 97 years of life might have been enough for her, but it certainly was not enough for me.
Moments and events like these and beyond special people like her teach us to cherish our families (blood-related or not) and not to take their undying love lightly.
I know that I am beyond privileged to be surrounded by so many of family members who love me, who consistently prove their love through their actions, and who live less than 15 minutes away, which is one of the reasons Beloved is so tragic for me. Because white people like the Garners truly seemed to believe that African Americans were “sub-human,” they treated them as such. In their minds, why would slaves need to marry? Why would they need the support of their families? Many white people treated slaves like animals, and as a result, they deprived their “property” of one of the most essential things in life: a family.
It’s very true that slaves were unable to have a family life at all under the control of the Americans. Like Jessie mentions, I feel like I am very lucky to have been born into my family and couldn’t imagine myself being in another one. Over the years I’ve built strong bonds with aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings alike. I couldn’t imagine not being able to just causally talk to my family whenever I wanted. The Americans did not care for the well-being of their slaves though. All they cared about was having power and money. Slaves were inhuman. They were animals to them. Thus, when two slaves are in a romantic relationship and have a baby, it is no surprise that they get separated from the baby. This fact further dehumanizes slaves and things like this only made them want to escape more. This is why Sethe has no choice but to escape from Sweet Home. She wanted her own family and wanted her own life. She did not want to subject her self to the in humane ways that slaves were treated. However, as a result of her actions, she is separated from her Husband, which is the very opposite thing that she was trying to go for. She wanted to live a peaceful, free life with Halle and Denver. Sadly, this dream doesn’t come to fruition.
Lainey, this is a very good point you bring up—one that I think is often overlooked when discussing slavery. When thinking about the cruelties of slavery, many imagine brutal physical work and punishment. While physical abuse was, of course, a terrible aspect of slavery, the emotional neglect was perhaps just as bad. In addition to being treated like objects by their owners, slaves didn’t even their families to rely on because they were so often separated from them. To go through such emotional abuse by itself is hard enough; to go through it without family is even worse!
I definitely agree that we're all so lucky to be close to our families, as slaves in America were constantly separated from their loved ones. The one hope that they had was that they could see their family again if they were to buy their own freedom, which is just chilling to even think about. From what I remember from visiting the old plantations outside of town as a kid, I remember that most of the slaves, although they were torn from their real families, formulated their own "families" among the slaves working with them.
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