Devastating Effects of Motherhood in Slavery
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A mother will stop at no ends to secure the safety of their children, but one never knows to what extreme she will go until she lives the life of a slave mother. Harriet Jacobs captures the fear of mothers shared throughout those in slavery in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This fear is heavily revisited in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Jacobs and Morrison share the theme of motherhood in slavery and both contribute very different accounts of tragedy and ultimate sacrifices a slave mother will endure for the safety and love of her own children.
Harriot Jacobs uses different mothers living in slavery to show various scenarios of how a mother protects her children in a life of tragedy. Starting with the main character, Linda Brent, who represents Jacob’s personal true story, was six years old when her mother died. She never knew the atrocious life that her and her family was living because her mother shielded her children from the effects of slavery. “They lived together in a comfortable home; and, though we were all slaves, I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment,” (Jacobs, p. 8). In her mother’s death, the shielding ceases and she is then cared for by her grandmother, who has her own tragic story to tell of motherhood in slavery.
Brent’s grandmother had to endure the loss of her children when her master passed away. Her “five children were divided among her master’s children,” (Jacobs, p. 9). She had worked hard as a slave by day and would bake crackers at midnight to sell in order to make money to purchase her own children’s freedom. Such hard labor can be praised by one looking back at such exertion, though this could appear as no noble feat in her eyes but rather a path to protection and optimism for a much improved future for her children. Mothers in slavery would sacrifice their own well-being to ensure a better life for their offspring and Linda Brent was no exception to this way of life as she endured the utmost test of fate.
Brent laid in a confined hiding space in her grandmother’s attic when she ran away from her master. Living in this tightly confined area for seven years, she bore extreme weather conditions, loss of strength in her limbs and the death of her great-aunt. Through all the trials that she endured, the hardest test to brave was watching her children grow up through a small hole from the attic, in which she would only catch a glimpse of her precious son and daughter over the course of these grievous seven years. “My friends feared I should become a cripple for life; and I was so weary of my long imprisonment that, had it not been for the hope of serving my children, I should have been thankful to die; but, for their sakes, I was willing to bear on,” (Jacobs, p. 105). A mother never knows to what extent they would go to protect their children, but would she do the “unthinkable?” What would be considered as the unthinkable?
Morrison echoes similar agonizing and heinous trials of mothers in slavery in Beloved. All mothers who lived in bondage knew what would become of their future slave daughters and for these mothers, there were no limits that were too far, too severe, or too unthinkable when it came to her maternal rights and actions as they pertained to her children’s safety. Sethe knows this all too well and rather than allowing her daughters to endure the wretched life of being slave girls, she murders her infant daughter and attempts to murder her older daughter, who was only two years old. No one will get to her daughter-to enslave her, to hurt her, to kill her soul.
To further add to Sethe’s troubles in motherhood, Beloved’s character returns as a spirit, or ghost. Although one could agree that this burden would be overwhelming, Sethe never vocalizes this thought, but rather continues to believe she acted justly, according to her maternal rights. Beloved’s return reveals more than Sethe once believed and understood to be the right thing to do.
In attempts to justify her actions, she feels the need to explain to Beloved why she had to set her free of a life of slavery. Death was the only resolve in setting Beloved free, but this undertaking only enslaved the now-free Sethe again, except this time, in her own mind. The hidden remorse reinvented itself and left someone else in charge of her parental rights; this time it was Beloved herself. While she is eventually freed from this bondage of self-reproach, it is safe to assume that this anguish may never completely diminish because the fact still remained: she murdered her child.
Morrison highlights the contrast of Sethe’s actions by introducing other slave mothers in Beloved. Baby Suggs, who was, in a sense, Sethe’s mother-in-law since she was the grandmother of Beloved through Sethe’s marriage to her son, Halle. Eight out of nine of her children passed away while she lived in slavery and Halle died the day Beloved was born, purchasing his mother’s freedom before expiring. Baby Suggs’s bond with her children was so strong that Sethe said that she “claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour,” (p. 9). She takes Sethe in as her daughter when she escaped slavery and helped her raise Denver, Sethe’s first daughter, and Beloved. When Sethe murders Beloved, Baby Suggs did not turn her away, but rather continued to care for her and her granddaughter.
Morrison touches on the effects of the loss of maternal rights in the mother of Paul D. Garner. When her husband passed away, she was forced to sell one of her son’s to pay off debts from being widowed, leaving only one son, Paul D. This was, by no means, done without extreme degradation of a mother’s heart as she distressingly cried, (p. 11). While mentioned only briefly, Mrs. Garner’s character is a necessary aspect to further elaborate on the horrors of motherhood in slavery.
Whether these mother’s actions can be seen as justified or not, every slave mother has their story and by no means is it one of true glory. Linda Brent, Sethe and others would endure it all so their children wouldn’t have to; even if it killed them or their children. Although some may have, what an outsider could describe as, a happy ending-Brent is ultimately free with her children and Sethe realizes that she is her own “best thing,”-are they truly happy endings? While their lows are lows of extremity, their triumphs are equally profound.
“O reader, can you imagine my joy? No, you cannot, unless you have been a slave mother,” (Jacobs, p. 142).
Works Cited
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Dover Publications, Inc., 2001.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage Books, 1987
