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Nick Soar 12/10/03
Naming and gender in Beloved
Chapter ten marks a shift in the gendered tone of the novel. Morrison moves the audience’s attention from the female interior of the trinity of Denver, Seethe and Beloved with its ‘dancing’, ‘music’, and ‘diamonds’ into the ‘red-dirt’, ‘ditches’ and muck of the chain-gang. ... Thus does chapter ten shape a contrast in the reader’s mind between men and women: between femininity and masculinity. ... The borders between race and gender are dissolved with the collapsing of the monologues into one another and the final exploding of Beloved. ...
It is revealing to frame and contexualize this exploration of masculinity with a quick reference to the women in Beloved. ... Beloved is at once naïve infant already crawling and a ghost shattering mirrors and strangling Sethe in rage. ... Beloved’s name is an abstraction of a feeling, Denver a name redolent of the new America. ...
It takes Sethe’s presence and Beloved’s touch to cause the flakes to fall off Paul D’s tobacco tin. ... Just as we see Baby Suggs wrapping Sethe in lard, so Paul D is opened up by being enveloped by Beloved’s inside part. ...
Slavery has taken men and masculinity and made them meaningless. ... Garner represents a peculiarly Southern sense of masculinity, however.
Approximate Word count = 1319
Approximate Pages = 5.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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