Motherhood in Beloved: Love as Resistance and Love as Violence
“It was absolutely the right thing to do, but she had no right to do it.”
The above quote was said in an interview by Morrison about Sethe’s act of infanticide and it expresses the moral paradox Sethe experienced. Sethe killed her baby rather than let her be enslaved–it is questionable whether this is the right thing to do, but what was legally certain is that she had no right to do it because her child belonged not to her but to her master. The law stripped enslaved women of their most human claim: the claim to motherhood.
Morrisson shows us that in slavery, motherhood is exploited. It is not a natural right but an emotionless systematic function. Sethe never knew her mother but saw her from afar and was brought up by a girl who brought up many others of the same kind. Even Sethe’s breastmilk, meant for her children, became another commodity taken away from her. A slave mother had no right to love her child, because it was not hers to love. She had no agency as a mother.
Sethe’s murder of her child is Morrison’s most controversial idea of the expression of maternal love. Sethe’s logic was to take her babies and put them somewhere safe, safe from the horrors of slavery. It shows us that Sethe’s experience of slavery was so horrid that she thought death a better option than slavery and she saw murder as the only way she could protect them. The morality of this infanticide has been corrupted by slavery. By taking her child’s life, Sethe claims the maternal right to determine her child’s destiny that was denied her by her enslavers.
The ghost of Beloved represents both the murdered child and the guilt that consumes Sethe. This guilt materializes into self-destruction as Sethe sacrifices everything for Beloved, trying to repay a debt that cannot be repaid. At first, Sethe believes she has regained her child, that Beloved was finally hers to love. “Beloved, she my daughter. She mine.” Later on, however, Beloved claims ownership over Sethe, or rather Beloved ensalves Sethe: “I am Beloved and she is mine.” The two forms of possession differ: Sethe’s is the desperate love of a mother seeking redemption; Beloved’s is the enslaving love of revenge and dependence.Through their collapse into one another, Morrison exposes how trauma reproduces the logic of slavery inside even the most intimate relationships.
In the end, Denver’s growth represents a new love, not rooted in ownership or sacrifice, but rather survival and solidarity. When she realizes that Sethe is being consumed by Beloved, she stepped outside and seeked help from the community, a place Sethe has long rejected. Her action restores a sense of collective care, showing that healing must come through connection, not isolation.
Beloved ultimately exposes how slavery poisons even the deepest human bonds. When a system denies a woman her right to be a mother, killing her own child can seem like the only act of protection left. Morrison does not ask readers to forgive Sethe, but to understand the world that made such love possible—and necessary.