The scene where Sethe attempts to kill all of her children is shocking to say the least, and is certainly intended to get the reader to start asking some serious questions, not the least of which is whether Sethe is to be considered a sane character or not.
In my previous post I addressed the manner in which Sethe dealt with her traumatic past at the hands of racism, how she was able to find a state of something close to peace. This event definitely seems to dispute that hypothesis. Yet Sethe does not seem to express great regret or guilt from her actions, or at least, she refuses to admit it. To her, that act of desperation was also an act of love: the only option to prevent the enslavement of her children.
In retrospect, Sethe's behavior in the early chapters of the novel seems to indicate that she had been scarred. She is often distant and rarely animated. When she does speak for extended times, there's a cryptic, almost ghostlike quality to her. I am especially reminded of that paragraph where Sethe tells Denver that "nothing ever dies". I assumed that Sethe had been left as a shell of a person due to slavery, but I think it has become clear that the scene in the woodshed was the primary cause.
I still stand by my original opinion that Sethe was able to find peace. She found peace not by burying the past, but by keeping it close to her in daily life. It seems that she had almost forgotten the event on the surface--she doesn't acknowledge Beloved as the ghost of her deceased child, even though it's painfully obvious to the reader at times--but the past nonetheless remains attached to her. What is clear is that Sethe sacrificed her humanity in order to protect her children. The question is if she is insane for being able to live on.
I agree that her actions at the start of the book and demeanor seem to make more sense in light of the actions she took. Obviously, this decision is going to stay with her for the rest of her life, and presumably will affect Denver's life as well, as she was clearly ostracized due to her mother's deeds during her brief visit to school. However, I think that the decision can be defended, and that given the context there is a case to be made that her actions were rational, even if they were still regrettable.
ReplyDeleteI would say that Sethe is "Sane", in the sense that she is making logical actions when presented with dilemmas. There is no denying that even for the lack of humanity in her actions, they worked. To call anything insane, I would say it's the setting. Clearly, Sethe has been dragged through hell and back: slavery, school teacher, the beating, it's just insane!
ReplyDeleteI agree that her actions do have solid rationale. I guess what I'm trying to say is that after the woodshed, Sethe's psyche is shattered, and she is left as what some people might call "insane". She exists in a distant, dreamlike state: an entity separate from her environment. There are certainly times where she's able to come out of that though, most often when she interacts with Paul D.
DeleteI also think Sethe is fairly sane even though she tried to murder all her children. I think that Sethe was already somewhat a shell of her former self right after she escaped slavery. Although they all got out, she lost Halle, whom she never got to see again, and she went through a fairly tramatic experience of almost having her child die, and having to run for her life. Although Sethe knows the risk going on such a journey would hurt anyone when it works almost perfectly except for one thing, in this case Halle. I agree with you that Sethe sacrificed some of her humanity to save her children, but I think the she was prepared for it. She probably knew that she would be looked for and had thought out this before, but as it would to anyone, it definitely hit her hard.
ReplyDeleteI really don't think it's entirely fair to say that she's been primarily left a "shell of a person" because of the incident in the woodshed, and not because of slavery. If anything, that scene takes place while she's still enslaved: There's nothing stopping Schoolteacher from taking her, and her actions are still dictated by his, so in what way is she free?
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing kind of works as a metaphor for the civil war, actually: In order to finally leave her (its) shameful past behind, Sethe (america) had to do something totally insane (the woodshed scene/the civil war), and even though we think it's terrible, it was pretty clearly necessary.
I agree with Coleman that Sethe isn't a "shell of a person." The scene in the woodshed is something she does completely out of love for her children. She has been broken down in some ways, yes, but she is still Sethe. Sethe realizes that she was someone else's property, but that didn't take away how much love she had to give.
ReplyDeleteComparatively to Bigger, I think Sethe's actions in the woodshed were, to her at least, completely logical, as she was protecting them from what she knew to be evil in the only way she knew how without any warning. She didn't do this out of insanity, but out of love. Maybe her definition of love differs (greatly) from some of ours, but I don't think that Sethe is insane.
I agree with you to an extent that Sethe has this sort of peace. Her ability to live with her past in the present, as you mention, comes form this commitment to her perception of love which she already had in motivating her to attempt to kill her sons and kill her daughter. She holds onto this commitment, continues to have confidence in her actions, but on the hand, I would not necessarily call her at "peace" because she is still haunted by them. It is only when Beloved shows up and she receives a sort of affirmation for her actions that seems to be more free.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Sethe's peace does seem a lot more solid than it appears in the Horsemen scene, but I don't think that the scene really changed my view on how sane Sethe is. If anything it makes her seem more sane. Insanity is usually characterized by a complete disregard for logic, and this is the opposite of what happens. In this scene we see Sethe acting out of pure logic in order to fulfill and end (keeping her kids from slavery) and she does so without any emotion (which I think is why she doesn't have any remorse for it... she knew what she was doing). This is why I feel like Sethe doesn't appear any less sane than she did before this scene.
ReplyDeleteIt's striking that Sethe nowhere tries to write off her rash actions as "temporary insanity," and she even depicts Halle's breakdown as a kind of irresponsible abnegation of his familial responsibilities--she almost envies him the ability to "check out" as he does. On the contrary, even 18 years later she views the scene in the woodshed as the culmination of her maternal duties, an ultimate act of love to save her children from slavery. It's this recalcitrance that the community seems to view as "pride." If Sethe seems less than sane, it's maybe less about her reflexive action on the day schoolteacher comes into her yard, and more about her refusal to repent for her actions.
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