ABSTRACT

Toni Morrison’s Beloved digs deep into the history of slavery in America. It blurts out the chronicle of tragedies that came upon the enslaved people in the country. It depicts how the slaves were made to bear the lives of subordinate creatures. It illustrates how they were snatched off their basic and necessary possessions. It delineates the fact of the black people’s being born slaves and their giving birth to slaves. Nevertheless, there are the unmitigated longings to embrace freedom even at the expense of one’s survival. If not for those who have served their whole life in subjugation, at least for those who are to come to this world for the first time are there intangible and tangible attempts for liberty. This is what Sethe, the mother of Beloved has in her mind for her children. She would move heaven and earth only to be able to liberate her children from the venomous shackles of slavery which she has been born into and has been serving all through her life. She has in her mind to go for the most hapless option if it is needed to set her children free from the worst curse in human history. This is where Sethe loses her daughter, her Beloved only to feel the utmost motherly demand that lets her decipher the inseparability of mother-child bond. This universally-felt-fact can be rationally elucidated through Jaques Lacan’s Psychoanalysis that traces how a child feels for its mother and vice-versa. This article aims to interpret the relationship between Sethe and Beloved through Lacanian psychoanalytic principles. It also targets to come up with some logical conclusions on how Lacan’s psychoanalytic criticism can be put into use to comprehend the novel, Beloved, in its maximum extent. It is perceptible that this attempt and its outcome will hopefully pave the way for some more empirical research to the literary scholars concentrating on Toni Morrison.

Keywords: Jacques Lacan, Psychoanalysis, Mother, Daughter, Relationship, Beolved