Henderson, Mae G. Re-membering the Body as Historical Text. Toni Morrison’s Beloved: a casebook, pg 81-106. Oxford University Press, 1999. New York.
In order to fully engage with the future, Henderson argues, one must construct a sense of individuality by creating meaning from the unspeakable memories of their past – in Sethe’s case, by wiping herself of the myth of the master (or her master’s) narrative and telling her own story as both a slave and a mother. As we discussed in class, Beloved emerges in response to the flagrant, although not altogether startling, omission of female slave narratives, attempting to imagine the accounts of “…the women and children who left no written records.” (82) Within this vacuum emerges an opportunity to redefine the contemporary understanding of slavery by breaking into the reproductive reality of alienated maternity and sexual abuse. In the same way that Morrison pieces together a story from narratively isolated memories, Henderson interprets Sethe’s journey throughout the novel to be one of emplotment and re-figuration; piecing together memories to create a story, and then re-engaging with them to change their meaning and their significance to herself in the present and the future. As such Morrison and her protagonist are paralleled in the process of deconstructing the pallid master narrative in order to bring to light opaque truths of slavery, and demonstrate the challenge of coming to terms with the weight of the past. Henderson reveals the importance of open dialogue with the then in order to understand the now and create the after – and yet grapples with the frustration of ultimate destruction in the process.
Perhaps less emphasized, but no less fascinating, are Henderson’s themes of the physicality of the past in the present. Elaborating on the inscription of Beloved’s name upon her tombstone as a symbol of the trace she leaves behind in the world as memory, she describes the way “… the master has inscribed the master(‘s) code on Sethe’s back,” (86). There is significance to the way Sethe’s body acts as a template upon which her owner can write – narrative and trauma is generated not simply through text and law, but also through the physical implications and applications upon its victims. Furthermore, schoolteacher “… [appropriates] Sethe’s ‘milk’ through a process of phallic substitution…[using] the pen… to ‘re-mark’ the slave woman with the signature of his paternity.” (90) Referring to Sethe’s rape scene, in which schoolteacher’s nephew forcibly nurses from her, Henderson’s focus on material symbols belies that even beyond literary technique, the past and future are inevitably linked to objects in the present, and implies that the damage of slavery includes the denial of physical things in the future – children, touch (the nerve-deadened skin on Sethe’s back), and perhaps even skin ship between emotionally damaged individuals.
Henderson more concretely discusses the idea of the Other, and it’s significance in creating identity for the self. When analyzing Baby Sugg’s wordless reaction to Sethe’s scars, she describes the presumption that “…[black women] can be written and written upon precisely because they exist as the ultimate Other, whose absence… only serves to define the being or presence of the white or male subject.” (87). Henderson describes here how black women serve as a template upon which the identity of the master narrative is created – a narrative defined by all of the ways white males are not like black women (an idea, as we’ve read about in class, that Morrison herself has written about). To further complicated the matter, Henderson brings in the concept of “self-distanciation” from Morrison, in which “… ‘the self [is] really a twin or a thirst or a friend or something that sits right next to you and watches you.” (92). Morrison describes here the way in which women can project their value of their own life onto something other than themselves – and Beloved acts perfectly as this other, connecting “… the individual to repressed aspects of the self, as well as to… others.” (93). Beloved mirrors the otherness of Sethe and the black women in her community, and must be expelled in order to develop a sense of self that is not defined by trauma. In this way Henderson creates an interesting parallel between the way whiteness exists only relative to blackness, and the way projection of Sethe’s repressed self must be engaged with to move beyond.
In order to create the framework for Henderson’s ideas of memory creation, organization, and significance, she brings in Paul Ricoeur’s notions of “… prefiguration [denoting] the temporality of the world of human action; configuration, the world of the narrative emplotment of these events; and refiguration, the moment at which these two worlds interact and affect each other,” (100). In context of these philosophical ideas, Sethe, according to Henderson, configures a narrative, with a plot, by using prefigured re-memories, and triggered by Beloved, is forced to re-figure the meaning of these memories and the collective story she has created out of them in order to deliver the future. Ricoeur’s framework allows a structured approach to the novel, in which repeatedly Sethe, her children, and her peers create stories out of memories (their own and others’) in order to make sense of their lives. In a similar vein, Henderson cites Morrison’s process of “literary archeology” as “… ‘[moving] the veil aside’ in order to penetrate the ‘memories within’.” (83). In the same way that Sethe has pre-figured (experienced and consolidated) her own memories, Morrison uses the act of imagination to generate memories that can then be communally configured and refigured.
In addition to the philosophical and critical frameworks provided, Henderson strives to emphasize the importance of psychoanalysis in her reading of the novel. Quoting Norman Brown – “… ‘the method of psychoanalytic therapy is to deepen the historical consciousness of the individual (“fill up the memory gaps”) till [she] awakens from [her] own history’”. (92). According to Henderson, the process Sethe and Morrison go through to create a sense of individuality and identity for black female slaves echoes the process a practitioner of psychotherapy might use when working with a patient. There must be some level of interaction with the past, some construction of a functional internal narrative, before the patient may “awaken” from the nightmare of their trauma and move on. The use of these analytical tools seems to pay off during analysis of the end of the novel, when Sethe “…re-enacts the original event… This time, however, [she] directs her response to the threatening Other rather than to… “her children.” (100) Following this reading, Sethe’s conflation of Edward Bodwin with schoolteacher becomes a re-figured history, in which Sethe is placed in the same situation that led to her infanticide, except she has changed the significance of her past, and thus redirects violence upon the antagonist rather than her children.
Henderson’s article reads very insightfully into the nature of Morrison’s intentions of examining the creation of history and the parallels it has with Sethe’s creation of her individual history. The act of re-membering, emplotment, and re-figuring are impossible to deny in the text – each of Sethe’s narrations engage in traumatic memories, and the novel is founded upon the painful process of confronting the past. Henderson also aims to address the ending as fairly as possible – she does not claim that Sethe is herself redeemed by Morrison, nor does she imply that she has been necessarily healed of her trauma either. Rather, in her view, the novel instead celebrates the process of refiguration rather than its results – a fair assessment of a story entrenched in moral ambiguities and disregard, and that emphasizes the physical and mental permanence of traumatic events. If there is one thing Henderson did not elaborate upon, however, it is the significance of Denver in process of moving beyond the past. Denver, unlike her mother, engages with and overcomes her own trauma successfully, and is arguably the most important symbol for what is at stake in Sethe’s re-figuration process – the next generation.
The Scenic Climax 