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A Review of Literary Criticism: "Beloved"

A Review of Literary Criticism: "Beloved"

Erica Baurmeister was the author of the first critical analysis that I read. In her brief review of the book she says that Beloved is no longer the traditional novel. In this book slavery has torn apart one’s own heritage and the death of a baby creates such a rage that it literally rocks the house. Bauermeister describes Beloved as being written in bits and pieces then smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to put together. The stories circle, swim dreamily to the surface, and the become suddenly clear and horrifying. Bauermiester concludes her article by saying that, “because of the extraordinary, experimental style as well as the intensity of the subject matter, what we lean from them (the characters of the novel) touches at a level deeper than understanding.”

The second critical analysis that I read was written by Stephanie A. Demetrakopoulos, a professor from the Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. The focus of her essay was to show the way in which Toni Morrison develops the idea that maternal bonds can stunt or even stop a woman from developing her own sense of self.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is the first piece of literature that is of book length that examines the dangers of mothering to the mother’s own sense of self. The bonds of mothering are what differentiate women’s lives from men’s. Recently many books have been published on the psychological, sociological, and even the clinical aspects of mothering. There is often a dark and painful side of motherhood that many people do not see or recognize.

This theme is also present in Morrison’s Bluest Eye. Pecola becomes pregnant in her early teens through incest with her father. Her pregnancy abruptly brings abuse to her from the community, which eventually sends her over the edge into permanent insanity before she can even develop her own sense of self. The teenage mother is often erased from society and can not solidify her own sense of self.

Morrison said in a national broadcast shown after she received the Pulitzer Prize that motherhood is not history. “It is a timeless, ahistorical force with all the glories and limitations that pure nature imposes, even when camouflaged by its many cultural versions.” This critic believes that Morrison...

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