Beloved Essay

Being to Becoming: Reinventing the Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

V.S.Karunashree, M.Phil Scholar, Department of English, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore

Dr. Sumathy K Swamy, Associate Professor, Department of English, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Coimbatore

Power corrupts Man; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human society is often subjected to Change, be it for better or for worse. Today, this change has taken its turn in such a way that it has resulted in the lack of humanitarian principles. Words like love, care, family, relationships have lost their true sense. It is now high time to reinvent oneself, and to comprehend the ultimate meaning of humanity.

The term ‘Anthropocentric’ as defined by the Concise Oxford

Dr. Monika Gupta in Racial Sensuality and Gender Identity in Toni Morrison’s Sula says that “the individual has the problem of livelihood for which compromise with the surrounding happens to be the first pre-requisite” (227). Thus the community plays a pivotal role in shaping the mental well-being of a person. People in a society should be generous, benevolent, merciful, and sympathetic to one another. Wilbur Scott in his introduction to The Moral Approach: Literature and Moral ideas, says, “Freedom is thus not only liberation from circumstances, but subjection to inner law” (24). This inner law is the self. True freedom lies in reinventing oneself, and it is in the sense of belonging “to a community […] __ to love and be loved by them, to counsel and be counseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed__” (209). Sethe experiences the erosion of her female self when she is given a sub-human status in her community. When she realizes the value of herself, she develops a quest for self-definition. Thus both Sethe and Suggs insist on a collective act of self-appreciation, and that communal strength is important in tackling the subjugation of women, and promoting the liberation of the entire