How far would you go to protect your children? Where do our children stop and we as individuals begin? These are two questions that most of us wish we will never have to face during our lifetime. In reviewing American Literature spanning from 1899 to 2023, there was a great amount of womanhood being represented through female protagonists. One of the first novels we worked with was Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. This novel was published in 1899, making it a part of what is referred to as “Naturalist Fiction” in literature. In addition to The Awakening, we also studied Toni Morrison’s neo-slave narrative Beloved. Both novels tell the story of two women with vastly different backgrounds. In the context of motherhood, the choices of both Edna and Sethe are dastardly dangerous, yet different, due to the influences of race and societal expectations within their respective timelines.
In The Awakening, the character of Edna Pontiller goes through a variety of awakenings throughout the novel, and her shifted morals are completely taboo for the time period in which she is living. Social normalities and expectations play an antagonizing role in relation to Edna’s individual freedom and development. It is important to note that historically speaking, women during this time period (late 1890s) lacked any sort of rights. In fact, ideals such as the “Doctrine of Separate Spheres” were prominent during the time that this novel occurred. Standards of women were founded on motherhood and marriage. An important factor to Edna’s overall character is her being an upper class white woman. Due to this, Edna also has a lot of societal pressures on her back in being a wife and most importantly, a mother. In the beginning of the novel, Edna experiences an awakening of motherhood and what is expected of her as a woman. The text reads, “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (Chopin, page 16). I would say this is one of the first times in the novel that Edna begins to look at herself from an outside perspective when dealing with her troublesome feelings of isolation. She recognizes that society expects her to be a housewife and a ‘motherwoman’ who puts her children before her own identity as a person. This “awakening” is pivotal to the rest of the novel and the choices Edna makes following it.
As the novel progresses, Edna’s view on motherhood becomes quite skewed from what society would define it as. Once Edna begins to develop her own sense of identity, she states, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself. I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me” (Chopin, page 49). In this quote we see Edna discuss how disposable all other facets are in her life in comparison to her children. Normally, this would seem to be the socially “correct” thought to have considering the expectation of women placing motherhood above everything in their life. However, it serves as more of a commentary on Edna’s privilege in the sense that she has the accessibility to have more. Her children are just an aspect of life in the same way the large house and money are. Her unwillingness to put her children before herself is what makes her stand out during this time period, thus resulting in a diversion from societal expectations.
In order to escape these societal expectations, Edna purposefully exhibits careless behavior, ultimately resulting in her own suicide. Edna’s suicide at the end of the novel represents a final act of rebellion, ultimately freeing her from a world she did not relate to anymore. As mentioned previously, Edna’s strongest awakening involved her place in the civilized world. It is one of the first awakenings she has in the novel and one of the last as well when she realizes that most people are not willing to break free from society the way she is. She can only change herself, not society. In this, Edna takes her own life by drowning herself, which is both dangerous and reckless. The novel reads, “A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before” (Chopin, page 30). In the end, she does swim out farther than anyone has before because she is finally escaping society.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, we are given the character of Sethe, a woman who’s story within this neo-slave narrative brings out another tragic perspective of motherhood. The abuse Sethe endured during enslavement caused her to develop traits of possession and suffocating love. After the international slave trade began in 1700, African Americans suffered through a variety of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. People that were born into slavery were not recognized as humans and were treated as if they were property; the same way one would treat a farm animal. Because of this, slaves had virtually nothing except for their sense of self. This is something that Edna Pontellier lacked in her character in the sense that she had the privilege and assets at the tip of her finger. Sethe on the other hand, had to hold on tight to the love she had for her children. Sethe’s mother in-law, Baby Suggs describes learning the hard way that you can’t hold onto your children while being enslaved. The text reads, “Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children” (Morrison, pp. 27-28). From this perspective of Baby Suggs, one can gather that there is a lot of emotional turmoil for people when their family is constantly shifting and being taken away from them. Taking this into consideration, Sethe’s love for her children becomes emotionally dangerous, leading her to a dastardly response later in this narrative.
It is revealed that in order to escape the thought of being recaptured, Sethe attempted to kill all of her children and herself in a barn. She was only successful in slitting the throat of her toddler. Sethe’s treatment as a black woman in captivity was all she ever knew prior to the murder of her child and was foundational to her choices as a mother after escaping slavery. An important piece of historical context to consider for this scene was the “Fugitive Slave Law” in which slave owners could search and recapture runaway slaves, even if they were in a “free” state. Keeping this law in mind, Sethe was on edge and was sent into a panic when she realized her previous owners were coming to recapture her and her family. During the scene in which Sethe is found with her murdered child by her owner (who is referred to by the name of “Schoolteacher”), the text reads the following: “She turned to him, and glancing at the baby he was holding, made a low sound in her throat as though she'd made a mistake, left the salt out of the bread or something” (Morrison, page 178). In this quote, Sethe is looking at her living baby, Denver, in the arms of someone else. The reason she felt as if she made a mistake was because she meant to kill Denver just as she intended for the other children. This gruesome scene speaks volumes about the time period Sethe lived through and how it influenced her actions. Taking the life of her children was the better option to Sethe rather than being taken away by someone else. These actions represent possession and control within Sethe. Toni Morrison deliberately included this specific scene because it reflected the ownership of slave masters through Sethe controlling the fate of her children.
Sethe’s overbearing love and control over her children causes her to lose touch with reality, making her actions dangerous to those around her. Shortly after Paul D, another former slave who is friends with Sethe, learns about what she did to her child, he has the following thought: “This Sethe talked about love like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone. This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and she began” (Morrison, page 193). In this quote, Paul D describes Sethe not understanding the reality of herself and the outside world. This further complexifies her decision to make the choices she did in the context of motherhood. It is understood that Sethe’s actions were not derived from malice and that she truly was trying to make the best decision for her family. However, Sethe fails to recognize the boundary that lies between her life and the lives of others. This is what makes Sethe’s decisions dangerous to those around her. It is especially apparent at the end of the novel when Sethe charges after a man with an ice pick, with the intention of harming him, when she mistakes someone for Schoolteacher returning. While a reader looking through modern lenses can recognize these dangerous tendencies are influenced by her trauma, it does not change the fact that Sethe’s choices are and will continue to be a threat to those around her.
Looking at the character development of both Edna and Sethe, it is hard to ignore the similarities in their choices. Within both of the texts, the actions of these two women both resulted in death. This is Edna’s death of herself and Sethe’s death of her baby. What is most compelling about these two incidents is that they can both represent a selfish element to motherhood. Edna abandoned motherhood altogether by leaving her husband and children to chase after her own identity. After she realized she would never be able to escape the pressures of society and live life alone, she commits suicide by drifting away in the ocean. Sethe can be portrayed as selfish because she took the life of someone else. In an interview with Toni Morrison published by The New York Times in 1987, Morrison states, “'It was absolutely the right thing to do,' Ms. Morrison said, ''but she had no right to do it.’” (New York Times, 1). This goes to show how much of a moral dilemma Sethe’s actions cause. It was a decision that could be understood, but not supported. This is what draws both of the characters and their choices together. However, where they begin to differ is their “freedom” to make decisions for their family. Given the historical context and events leading up to both tragedies, Edna and Sethe come from two completely different backgrounds on the premises of race and socioeconomic status. Edna is a wealthy upper class woman, so her assets are dispensable to her in search of her own identity. Sethe on the other hand is a black woman who lived her life as a slave and eventually escaped from slavery. Sethe did not even have the recognition of being human because of her race, let alone the luxuries that Edna had in addition to being white. Even though Edna was oppressed as a woman in the 19th century, she still had the ability to explore her interests such as art. Sethe’s love and enjoyment came from that of her own children. In both novels, these women exhibited dastardly dangerous behavior as a result of their backgrounds, thus reflecting two unique perspectives of motherhood and the influence that race and societal expectations have on decision making.
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Works Cited
Chopin, Kate, and Margo Culley.The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Biographical and
Historical Contexts, Criticism. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage International. Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.,
2019.
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Rothstein, Mervyn. “Toni Morrison, in Her New Novel, Defends Women.” The New York Times, The
New York Times, 26 Aug. 1987, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/26/books/toni-morrison-
in-her-new-novel-defends-women.html.
Ayla Deck