A Psychoanalytic Perspective in Toni Morrison’s Beloved with a Reference to the Protagonist Sethe

Abstract

Sethe's conflicted personality and her act of killing her own daughter in Toni Morrison's widely acclaimed novel Beloved has remained a very serious matter of concern leaving readers, researchers and critics alike in a state of shock. It is an attempt to probe into the psyche of Sethe in order to unveil certain psychological facts behind her complicated behaviour which led her to kill her own child and pushed her further into a state of unimaginable sufferings thereby. In order to example her thought process and the reasons behind an imbalance in her personality this paper took insights from Sigmund Freud's theory of personality in the three elements of her psyche resulted in Sethe's abnormal and unstable sense of self. However, the paper also detailed the ways in which Sethe' acknowledgement with her past by employing different coping strategies helped her in developing a stable personality.