CONFRONTING CULTURAL STEREOTYPES:

MOTHERHOOD IN TONI MORRISON‟S NOVELS

BELOVED AND TAR BABY

DR. MADHUMITA PURKAYASTHA

DEPT. OF ENGLISH
D.H.S.K. COLLEGE
DIBRUGARH
 CONFRONTING CULTURAL STEREOTYPES: MOTHERHOOD IN
TONI MORRISON‟S NOVELS BELOVED AND TAR BABY

DR. MADHUMITA PURKAYASTHA

DEPT. OF ENGLISH
D.H.S.K. COLLEGE
DIBRUGARH

Stereotypes, are formalized images, which are perpetuated through a host of socio-
cultural practices, beliefs and notions. The network of socio-cultural notions or prejudices
that are constructed about a group of people are a consequence of
conceptions/misconceptions, assumptions/presumptions based on prevailing popular
interpretations and inferences drawn from the behavioral patterns of that group.
Inevitably, these are colored by the social space occupied by that group in the context of
the mainstream/ dominant socio-cultural constructs and based on the idea of “other” ness
of the marginalized others. Women therefore, as a group, have always been confronted
with cultural constructs of their identity, which, as popular generalizations or
prejudgments, never take into account the differences of the vibrant complexities of the
individual‟s personality and are therefore delimiting and debilitating. For instance
“gender” as a socio-cultural construct, has assigned certain roles to women, which are
associated with their biological capacity for child bearing and consequent necessity of
child rearing. Sherry Ortner in her essay “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture”,
argues that “woman‟s physiology and her specialized reproductive functions make her
appear closer to nature. Men, unlike women, have to seek cultural means of creation–
technology, symbols– while women‟s creativity is naturally fulfilled through the process
of giving birth... (which) has tended to limit them to certain social functions which are
also seen as closer to nature… (W)omen are…(therefore)…the pre-social or not yet
culturally created persons.”1 This has led to the exaltation of the woman‟s role in the
home, the hailing of motherhood or the existence of mother goddesses, which were
criticised by the radical feminists as ways of subordinating the woman by putting her on a
pedestal.2
In Black Feminist Criticism, Barbara Christian defines stereotype, whether
positive or negative, “as a by-product of racism, … one of the vehicles through which
racism tries to reduce the human being to a non-human level.”3 Again, cultural
stereotypes are a product of perceptions that are shaped in relation to dominant
discourses. It is not difficult therefore to understand the predicament of Black women
who were imported to the United States of America primarily as laborers, whose
sexuality and fertility were then exploited ruthlessly by their white masters. Even after
Emancipation (1863) and long after liberty was “thrust upon them contemptuously” 4,
Black women continued to be a thrice marginalised group, facing the triple jeopardy of
racial, sexual and class exploitation. As such, it is obvious how images of African-
American women, churned out by a dominant white culture would be imposed upon them
as a mark of their non-existent/inferior social status.
Tracing the stereotypical images of Black women that had been constructed by
Anglo-American literature as well as in African-American literature, Christian points out
how the novels of Slavery and Reconstruction periods fashioned images of the Black
woman with the ulterior motive of perpetuating the conflicts between Black men and
women and, most importantly, to create “a dumping ground for those female functions a
basically puritan society could not confront”5. The politics of oppression that operated
behind the projection of such images was condoned overtly as the audio-visual media
readily accepted and encouraged the broadcast of these negative images. Frances Beale
writes about the misconstrued images of Black women: “Her physical image has been
maliciously maligned; she has been sexually molested and abused by the white
coloniser… she… has been forced to serve as the white woman‟s maid and wet nurse for
white children while her own children were more often than not starving and neglected.”6
Of the most prominent images of Black women was the mammy figure, the ever
“enduring” Aunt Jemima of Southern* white literature, who stood as a faithful and dark
foil to the white, fragile, femininity that was cultivated as an ideal of womanhood by the
white, patriarchal culture. Mammy was typically black in colour and “(s)he (was) related
to the world as an all embracing figure, and she herself demand(ed) little… she must be
plump and have big breasts and arms--she (was) the mammy in the unconscious of the
south, desired and needed since ideal white women would have to debase themselves in
order to be a mother.” 7(Italics mine.) Mammy was physically unattractive (as the
paradigms of ideal beauty of white culture did not fit her) and so posed no threat to the
white mistress, she was bountiful and all her functions were “magnificently physical” – a
harmless and servile embodiment of the “gross” aspects of female functions that was not
compatible to the image of white lady hood. The pervading myth was, as Gloria Wayde
Gayles put it, just as “all black people can dance, so can all black women become
superhuman mothers…”8 (Italics mine)
This led to the natural assumption that, shorn of all sense of dignity and self-
worth, the black woman could find in motherhood the “chief justification” in life because
it was the only “honorable, creative role in which (she could) reasonably hope to
participate.”9 Again, the exigencies and compulsions of black life in white America have
forced African-American women to function heroically in the role… (which) was often
perceived as fulfiment.10
Black women were thus legendary mother figures in the American thought, vested
with superhuman strength, stronger than other women and stronger by far than black
men.11 The mammy figure was cultivated for the convenience of a dominant race whose
set of cultural beliefs and systems of socio-economic exploitation could be maintained at
the cost of a halo/crown of thorns. In a natural and passionate response to this image of
black motherhood perpetuated by dominant cultural and literary discourses, African-
American men constructed the counter stereotype of African-American motherhood,
idealizing “mammy” into a god-like, towering and dominating figure of the Earth-mother
with an immense capacity for love and an inexhaustible store of endurance. Again, there
was the death-dealing, destructive mother figure (Eve) who was repressive only as an
expression of her maternal devotion and love, or the life-giving Madonna, whose roles
however pivoted on the axis of subservience, self-sacrifice, self-denial and fierce mother
love. In contrast to this, the mammy of the oral folk tales and slave narratives was
indigenous, original and witty. The mammy of African-American folklore saw herself as
a mother, but the role embodied a certain dignity and responsibility rather than a physical
debasement, doubtless a carry-over from the African view that every mother is a symbol
of the marvelous creativity of the earth. 12
However, African-American male writers like Richard Wright inadvertently
confirmed and re-inforced the myth of matriarchy in claiming that mammies were
symbols of motherhood who “reigned” as “arbiters” of the domestic affairs of black
households,13 speaking as they did as representative voices of the African-American
experience. In this context, the emergence of a distinct Black women‟s literary tradition
can be viewed as a challenge to the authoritarian Black male voice that ignored the
complex problems of an exclusive Black female experience and suppressed the “sadly
expectant”14 voice of the Black woman. African-American women writers thus began to
write from within a tradition, writing about black women and in effect telling „her‟story,
rejecting or confronting stereotypical representations of black women and in the process
exploding the cultural myths and paradigms that had been created to circumscribe them.
Motherhood, especially black motherhood, is a multidimensional theme that has
been explored by Toni Morrison in all its different and loaded connotations. Ranging
from the slave women of Beloved who existed in a state of dazed emotional numbness,
whose fertility was exploited and motherhood commodified and then suppressed (as they
were not allowed to nurture their own children) but amongst whom there emerged some
like Sethe‟s mother who threw away in anger and hatred the white babies they had been
forced to bear as bitter fruits of their white master‟s rape, thus defying glorification as
universal mothers, to Sethe of Beloved who felt that her natural love as a mother could
find full expression only after she was able to escape from slavery to freedom with her
children; from the god-like and imposing matriarch Eva of Sula who took into her own
hands the destiny of her children, apparently confirming the stereotype of the destructive
and death-dealing mother-figure and reigning black matriarch but on deeper reading
belies this superficial impression to reveal a vulnerability and helplessness that is
moving, to Pauline Breedlove of The Bluest Eye who wore the burden of motherhood like
a cross – self-righteously, proudly but bitterly – unable to connect emotionally with her
children and viciously berating her own daughter Pecola (whom, as a mother, she had
failed to protect from rape by her husband and Pecola‟s father) while showering her
affection and attention on her white master‟s daughter; from Violet of Jazz who had
never missed motherhood but was suddenly struck by mother-hunger late in life, losing
herself in the dark fissures of her personality, which she discovered through this craving
for a child, groping for psychological mooring and emotional security in motherhood, to
Ruth of Song of Solomon who rose valiantly from the ashes of a passive, meaningless
existence in order to protect her son‟s life – rediscovering her own worth and dignity
through motherhood and Jadine of Tar Baby who rejected motherhood and its traditional
role implications as regressive and oppressive vis á vis the fierce pride of the black
women of the older generation in motherhood in which they had invested their entire
lifetime and for which they had made untold sacrifices, Toni Morrison‟s novels run the
gamut of African-American motherhood in all its multiplicities and complexities.
The present paper focuses on Morrison‟s representation of motherhood through the
analysis of two central characters/protagonists– Sethe Suggs, the slave mother of Beloved
(1981) and Jadine, the “cultural orphan” who rejects the maternal role in Tar Baby
(1974). It is interesting to note how Beloved that was published later represents the
apparently archetypal mother figure in Sethe while Jadine is a socially upward mobile
black woman of the new generation who is trying to “get out of her skin” 15 or her racial
identity. Both women not only resist accepted notions of Black motherhood but also
problematize the concepts of mother love and mothering, traditionally idealized as the
purest expression of human love and the most glorified of all roles.
Sethe Sugg‟s story was inspired by the true story of the fugitive slave Margaret
Garner who attempted to kill her children rather than have them suffer the atrocities of
slavery. Sethe of Beloved does the same, attempting to protect her child from a fate worse
than death by killing her. Her “too thick”16 “mother-love”17propelled her into committing
the “staggering”18 crime of killing her own child – an act that alienated her from the black
community for 18 years – a community that could tolerate crimes of all kinds but not one
that violated the unspoken but sacred tenets of motherhood. Described as the slave girl
with “iron eyes and a back bone to match”19 Sethe was proud and fiercely protective of
her children. As a fugitive slave, she had reclaimed possession over her own children and
was determined not to let white people “dirty”20 her children irrevocably by taking away
their „selfs‟. Sethe has repressed deliberately memories of her excruciatingly painful past
and the laceration of her soul with the ultimate insult inflicted upon her dignity and
motherhood by the “stealing”21 of her milk by the white boys. She had endured it in grim
silence but with unbroken will as for her, there was no sweet relief of insanity because
above all, she was a mother whose children‟s existence depended upon her. In
championing Sethe‟s almost superhuman strength and capacity to endure pain, Morrison
confirms the impression of towering strength and invincibility, only to subvert it when
Sethe begins to break down in mind and body with the appearance of her ghost-daughter
Beloved. Sethe is caught up in a paradox of life that is as complex as the mother love that
has compelled her to kill. For her, no sacrifice was too great for her children whom she
had given life (she had, in tight-lipped aloofness, allowed sexual favours to the engraver
to pay for her dead child‟s tombstone, she had literally waded through rivers of blood,
giving birth to her daughter Denver under circumstances that could strike terror in the
hardiest of hearts) and she was convinced that she had the right to take it back to
“protect” it from violation or a fate she considered worse than death. When the ghost of
Beloved appeared to reclaim her love, Sethe immersed herself in atoning for the lost
opportunities of enjoying the pleasures of motherhood. Hitherto she had cut a formidable
figure of steely reserve and strength but the „ghost‟ that haunted her house may well have
been the unspeakable memories of her traumatic past, guilt and self-blame tormenting her
psyche that she had repressed. The appearance of Beloved was perhaps a concretization
of these long suppressed emotions. Morrison‟s richly layered narrative and magical
realism allows scope for several interpretations, but one may say that Sethe was atoning
for past actions by giving back the “mother love” she had once withdrawn from Beloved
and reclaiming a lost child. Though traditionally black women in America have pooled
their strengths to form strong bonds of trust and affection with their communities that
have sustained and protected them, Sethe was one of those few who had been shunned by
the community for violating its systems of values and practices. Ironically, her strategy of
resistance against slavery and all that it implied was misconstrued as a blatant flouting of
the expected norms of black motherhood. In her glorious disregard of the community‟s
role expectations from a black mother, Sethe risked alienation and isolation to redefine
the parameters of motherhood. Yet, finally it was only through Denver‟s action of re-
establishing ties with the black community that Sethe emerged from the grip of past grief
to be at peace with herself.
Morrison here plumbs the depths of that indefinable sea of instinctive and primal
love that only a mother can have for her child, underscoring poignantly the helplessness
and defiance of a slave mother who was denied the right to express it. Revivifying the
cultural myth of the African-American super mother, Morrison uses this device (cultural
trope) used to delimit black women to show her vulnerabilities and insecurities in a
sensitive re-definition of motherhood. However, it cannot be denied that Morrison, like
other black women writers, has finally reinforced community ties and bonding as the
sustaining source of strength for black women (or any marginalized group for that
matter), indicating also that a rejection of such bonds could break even a person like
Sethe in body and mind.
In Tar Baby, the Sorbonne graduate and super-model Jadine is a self–centred and
hard-headed black woman who feels circumscribed by the expectation of the traditional
roles of black women – roles which seem mindless and regressive. Her fear in
recognising the potential for mothering as another dimension in herself stems from the
belief that in choosing the maternal role, she would fall into the quagmire of socio-
cultural stagnation. In refusing to “parent”22 her old uncle and aunt, Jadine fails to
combine strengths of African-American womanhood with the intellectual and material
freedom she craves. Yet, she is aware of a sense of lack which is aggravated by the vision
of a tar-like African woman described in the text as “that woman‟s woman – that
mother/sister/ she…unphotographable beauty”23 who leaves her transfixed. Symbolically
she is black motherhood personified, keeper of ancestral heritage and proud bearer of
African tribal culture, tradition and fertility, whose encounter with Jadine leaves the latter
with a sense of inadequacy and a feeling of indefinable incompleteness. Jadine resists any
identification with the woman‟s maternal difference and is consciously impervious to the
possibility of a maternal role for herself which demanded her to “settle for fertility rather
than originality, nurturing instead of building”24. Yet, in spite of having alternative
options of proving her worth, Jadine feels “lonely and inauthentic.” 25 She is confronted
with the “night women”26 in her nightmares, black women who flaunt their motherhood
in her face. The night women of her dreams include her own mother and aunt Ondine
who jostle each other to come near her, pushing their sagging breasts out at her:
“they seemed somehow in agreement with each other about her, and were all out to get
her, tie her, bind her. Grab the person she had worked hard to become and choke it off
27
with their soft loose tits.”

To Jadine, the sagging breasts suggest that they have been drained by motherhood while
their smug and haughty faces, secure in the knowledge of their superior virtues and the
greatness of their sacrifice project motherhood as the ideal role for “real”28 women a role
she rejects as confining and suffocating. Yet, for her aunt who was childless but had
brought her up, a woman‟s role as a mother, daughter and wife – roles that entailed
giving selflessly – contained the meaningfulness of her existence and proved her worth as
a “real” woman. Thus the cultural role of the black woman was considered to be
primarily maternal and life giving by women of Ondine‟s generation, in the face of which
Jadine felt acutely both her motherlessness as well as her emotional inadequacy in
denying the possibility of motherhood in herself. She cannot however resolve the
disparity between the African woman‟s maternal role recalled by her cultural memory
and the role she has chosen willingly. In telling her aunt that there were “other ways to be
a woman”29, Jadine rejects the notion that a woman could become “real” only through
motherhood.
Morrison shows how, despite the new found freedom of choice, successful black
women like Jadine somehow seem to be unable to resolve the conflicting demands or
positions of material success with racial-cultural loyalty or their modern career-oriented
roles with traditional roles of black women as nurturers. The clash that drains them
emotionally is inherent in their situation and therefore inevitably irresoluble because they
are also unable to connect themselves or even identify with the collective and common
experiences or existential realities of other black women from whom they are
intentionally or otherwise, alienated. Jadine‟s selfish choice is not condemned by
Morrison as it is also the most natural choice in the given situation – yet, she does suggest
that Jadine could have, had she not been afraid, given another enriching dimension to her
womanhood, had she accepted the challenge of emotional commitment – of “mothering”
and “parenting”. In an interview with Claudia Tate, Morrison has observed that “Black
women seem to be able to combine the nest and the adventure” 30 In failing to understand
the complexities and strengths of black motherhood, Jadine commits the same cultural
fallacy of the white society, which suggests a betrayal of African-American culture and
an alienation from her roots. Finally, it can be said that while acknowledging that African
traditionalism and expectations of sacrifice could restrict intellectual development of
black women, Morrison also suggests the risk of an inauthentic, soulless existence in the
deliberate alienation from one‟s community and cultural roots.
References:
1. Ortner, Sherry, “ Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? “ Women, Culture and Society. Ed. M.
Rasaldo and L.Lamphere, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1974, p.77.
2. Omvadt, Gail, “Patriarchy and Matriarchy”, Feminist Concept. Part I I contribution to Women‟s
studies Services. Research Centre for Women‟s studies, SNDT Women‟s University, Vithaldas,
Vidyavihar, Santa Cruz West, Bombay, p.8.
3. Christian, Barbara, Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers, New York:
Pergammon Press, 1985, p.16.
4. Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater, Reprinted in To Be a Black Woman, Eds. Mel Watkins and Jay David,
New York: Morrow, 1970.p.234.
5. Christian, Barbara, Black Feminist Criticism, p.3.
6. Beale, Frances, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female”, The Black Women. Ed. Toni Cade
Bambara, New York : New American Library, 1970. p-92.
7. Christian. Black Feminist Criticism, p.2.
8. Wayde Gayles, Gloria. No Crystal Stair. New York: The Pilgrim Press,© 1984, p.6.
9. Thompson, Daniel, Sociology of the Black Experience. West Port, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1974,
p.81.
10. Wayde, Gayles. No Crystal Stair. p.59.
11. Ladner, Joyce, Tommorrow’s Tommorrow, New York : Doubleday; 1972, p.63.
12. Mbite, John, African Religion and Philosophy, New York, Doubleday Anchor, 1970.
13. Wright, Richard. Twelve Million Black voices. New York: Thunder‟s Mouth Press, 1988, p.30.
14. Cooper, Anne Julia. Quoted by Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Ed. Reading Black Reading Feminist: A
Critical Anthology. New York: A Meridian Book, Penguin Group,1990, p.1.
15. Morrison, Toni, Tar Baby, London: Picador, 1993, p.45.
16. Ibid, Beloved, New York, Signet Penguin Group, 1991, p.205.
17. Ibid, p.162.
18. Ibid, p.250.
19. Ibid, p.10.
20. Ibid, p.308.
21. Ibid, p.24.
22. Morrison, Toni. Tar Baby. p.283.
23. Ibid, p.43.
24. Ibid, p.271.
25. Ibid, p.45.
26. Ibid, p.265.
27. Ibid, p.264.
28. Ibid, p.283.
29. Ibid, p.284.
30. Tate Claudia, “Conversation with Toni Morrison,” Black Women Writers at Work. New York:
Continuum, 1983. p.117-131.
*The Southern states of the United States of America, were the seats of slavery as an
institution as most of the cotton and sugar plantations were confined to these states.