Read and annotate through p. 51 in Beloved, keeping in mind Winnicott’s theories
Blog #4: Choose one statement from Winnicott’s chapter “The Ordinary Devoted Mother”, and use a passage from the novel (p. 24-51), to support or disprove what Winnicott says. You must quote/cite both passages, from the novel and from the packet, and explain why you think that passage supports/disproves Winnicott’s statement.
Marcel Johnson
ReplyDelete3 - 21 - 15
In Winnicott’s The Ordinary Devoted Mother, he states “some of the failures of development that we meet sprang from a failure of the ordinary devoted mother factor” (15). The failure of the mother to enable proper ego growth within the child is not present in Beloved. Toni Morrison, writes “after her husband disappeared; that after her milk had been stolen, her back pulped, her children orphaned, she was not to have an easeful death” (38) Due to this hardship, it leaves little to no margin of error for Sethe. With Sethe striving to keep perfection in her motherhood, it diminishes the development in her child according to Winnicott. Without witnessing natural failure in her mother, Denver’s superego has unreal expectations of life.
In the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe lives with her daughter Denver in a haunted house called 124. Paul D, a former slave and a friend of Sethe’s, comes to the house for a visit after eighteen years. He thinks that everything is going well at the house until he meets Denver. Paul D observes Denver and tells Sethe, “Your girl, Denver. Seems to me she’s of a different mind.” (Morrison 50). Paul D notices that Denver is not happy in the house and suggest that the family move, to help Denver. Sethe ignores Paul D and says, “Don’t worry about her. She’s a charmed child.” (Morrison 50). Sethe is ignoring her own childs need and putting her own needs first. Sethe’s actions goes against D.W. Winnicot’s theory about mothers. The article “The Ordinary Devoted Mother” by D.W. Winnicott states that a mother should be “devoted to something that is not in fact herself” (14). Sethe does the opposite of this. Instead of moving to a new house to help her, she stays in the house. She does not see how lonely and unhappy Denver is in 124. By putting her own needs in front of Denver’s, Sethe is contradicting Winnicots theory.
ReplyDelete"Maybe the white dress holding its arm around her mother's waist was in pain. If so, it could mean the baby ghost had plans." (Morrison, 42)
ReplyDelete"the mother's ego support facilitates the ego organization of the baby. ... [the mother] feels very much identified with the baby... From the baby's point of view there is nothing else but the baby, and therefore the mother is at first part of the baby." (WInnicott, 16-17)
The white dress, a supernatural apparition noticed by Denver while Sethe prays, came from the presence of baby ghost in the house. In the scene at hand, Sethe finds herself praying and in pain, and the white dress supports her in her struggle. It's supernatural presence means it must have come from the baby ghost, who still feels a part of Sethe because she never made it to the developmental stage where the baby develops its own identity. So, when the baby ghost sees Sethe in pain, she not only sees her mother in pain, but she feels the pain just as well because the baby ghost believes itself actually part of the mother. Also one must note that this closeness, and refusal to separate, takes part on the side of Sethe as well. Just as baby ghost hasn't made it past the stage of individualizing the baby child, neither has Sethe, in the role of the mother, and so she decides to stay in 124 indefinitely.
"gradual change-over in the woman from the one kind of selfishness to the other" (Winnicott 12)
ReplyDelete"Well, at least I don't have to take another step. A dying thought if ever there was one, and she waited for the little antelope to protest, and why she thought of an antelope Sethe could not imagine since she had never seen one" (Beloved 37)
Denver remembers the story of her birth, as told by Sethe, and it shows how Sethe's selfishness evolved to encompass Denver, but also how Sethe still thought of herself first, despite an identification with Denver as an extension of herself. Even as Denver expresses that she can understand the stories from Sethe's past, Sethe tells Paul D. and Denver that Denver can't understand. This exemplary of her selfishness. Even though Denver can understand deeper and more painful stories than Sethe gives her credit for, Sethe selfishly refuses to tell her everything because it means she has to relive the events. When Sethe is dying while pregnant with Denver, their fates intertwine since Denver's life depends on Sethe's. Although Sethe continues to try and live, with the help of the whitegirl Amy, she does this more for her own sake than for Denvers, regardless of their connectedness. This simultaneously contradicts and agrees with Winnicott's point because on the one hand, Sethe fights for her life, and by extension Denver's, which shows this transference of selfishness to include someone else, but on the other hand, she doesn't really think about Denver as the primary reason for doing things; she projects her fear of Sweet Home and other horrors there as protection for Denver, but neither Denver (nor Paul D.) see Sethe's actions as really benefiting Denver, even though she says they do.
In Winnicott’s The Ordinary Devoted Mother, he argues that “the mother has one kind of identification with the baby, a highly sophisticated one, in that she feels very much identified with the baby, but of course she remains adult…From the baby’s point of view there is nothing else but the baby, and therefore the mother is at first part of the baby” (17). In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Denver and Sethe have lived together for some years and when Paul D enters the story, it seems to bother Denver. Even though Denver is not a baby she has the mentality of one. Denver decides to confront Paul D by asking him how long he will “hang around” (43). This leads to an argument with her mother, in which she ends up being sent to her room. When Sethe and Paul D are alone she apologizes for her daughter’s bad behavior and he tells her “You can’t do that. You can’t apologize or nobody. She got to do that” (44). Sethe has “the feeling of oneness between two persons who are in fact two and not one”(14), proving Winnicott’s theory. In addition, she ends up telling him, “I don’t care what she is. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing” (45). Sethe an Denver view each other as one and both believe that there is nothing more important than Denver. Sethe is very overprotective and only worries about her daughter.
ReplyDeleteWinnicott, in his chapter The Ordinary and Devoted Mother, argues that a baby needs his or her mother to fail, that is, to let the baby be angry and frustrated while still nurturing the baby and instilling in their relationship that her ego support is always reliable. He goes on to say that “there is much satisfaction to be got from anger that does not go over into despair” (14), which is the goal-to let the child experience feelings of frustration to learn how to deal with them, but not so much that the child feels alone in his or her struggle. In Beloved, the effects of letting a child’s frustration go on to despair because of a mother that failed for too long is perfectly demonstrated in Denver, who from a young age, felt her mother’s understanding and support absent and was forced to deal with her frustration on her own. This is demonstrated as Denver finds a quiet, private, secret room in the woods and uses it as a refuge from her brothers’ fright and closed herself off from the hurt of the world. In the room, “Denver's imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because loneliness wore her out. Wore her out” (35). The food here represents a means of survival not for physical matters but for emotional matters as she needed a way to deal with the tension (so far unknown) from her brothers and loneliness. Only in this room was Denver able to feel “veiled and protected” (35), something she should have been able to feel with the presence her mother but does not because Sethe abstained from nurturing her from even before birth. While Paul D confronts her about Sethe not being comfortable with him around, Sethe replies: “Don't worry about her. She's a charmed child. From the beginning...nothing bad can happen to her” (50). Indeed, Sethe has perceived Denver as equally strong as she is as Denver was able to endure inside of her while she was escaping from the School Teacher. Because she was able to be strong inside of her during one of Sethe’s toughest times, Sethe believes Denver is innately strong and is why she has not nurtured her as much as she should have. As demonstrated, this leads Denver to grow up and fall into despair.
ReplyDelete"Sethe smiled just thinking about the word can mean. it was a luxury she had not had an 18 years and only that once. Before and since, all her efforts was directed not on avoiding pain but I'm getting through it as quickly as possible" (48)
ReplyDelete"There happens to be that useful nine months. In which there is time for a gradual change-over in the woman from the one kind of selfishness to the other... I think that by the time the baby is right for birth the mother, if properly cared for herself by her man, is ready for an experience in which she knows extremely well what the baby needs" (14)
I think that this quote from Beloved supports Winnicott's belief that there must be this idea of preparation and support from a man. Denver, as seen in Beloved, seems very unstable and sheltered because of Sethe. From the quote in Very Ordinary Mother, it explains how Denver might have become this way. Sethe, by not planning in 18 years, does not have the capability to see what her daughter really needs and part of the reason she may not have planned is because there was no one by her side. By not being supported by Halle and also not being prepared, Denver is unable to grow and become a "normal" child.
"I'm having a baby, miss. Amy looked at her. That mean you don't have no appetite? Well I got to eat me something." (37).
ReplyDelete"I think that by the time the baby is ripe for birth the mother, if properly cared for by her man or by the Welfare State or both, is ready to exxpierecnce in which she knows extremely well what are the baby's needs"(13).
I believe that the the scene in Beloved where we are first introduced to the "white girl" (36), Amy directly relates to Winnicott's theory of "being cared for" (13). As a slave woman, Sethe has never been properly cared for, at the time these were normal conditions for slaves, however Sethe refused to let her baby go through the same struggle and lack of care as she herself did, and so she ran, she ran to find a place where she would be able to treat her baby as human, and so that she herself could properly train toward being a good mother for her baby. Sethe is well aware that at this point in her pregnancy she is no where near ready to care for a baby, and so running toward safety for her is just onestep closer for her to be physically and mentally prepared for this new life she is going to bring into the world.
It is essential for every baby to experience "growth of the most immature and absolutely dependent human personality" (Winnicott 15). Sethe burdens Denver with the assumption of strength and power. Denver displays a regressive state of being because Seth did not recognize the need to begin dependent. Denver's "imagination produc[es] its own hunger and its own food" (Morrison 32) to cope with the lack of nurture she experiences. Denver is lonely and seeks sanctuary in her playroom because she hardens herself there. Unable to grow and develop slowly and thoroughly, Denver's deficiency stems from the absence of support when most necessary, during the period of "absolut[e] dependen[ce]" (Winnicott 16). Sethe displaces her need to be remarkably strong, and expects equal strength from Denver.
ReplyDelete"When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual. What was unusual (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the living activity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her mothers waist." (35)
ReplyDelete"In other words there are all manner of reasons why some children do get let down before they are able to avoid being wounded or maimed in personality by the fact." (15)
The Beloved quote shows Denver seeing a ghost with her mother while she is praying showing the affects of trauma on her personality. The quote from the Winnicott discusses how a parents hard exterior will ruin her child's personality. Not to say that Denver's personality is ruined, but the fact that seeing ghosts reminds her of her birth says something about the way she feels about herself. She maybe feels like she is not loved like the dead baby was. She feels that she is not the "favorite". She is maybe wondering why she is the only child that has not left the house yet besides the dead baby.
"There is a time for gradual change- over in the woman from the one kind of selfishness to the other." (Winnicott 12)
ReplyDelete"Nothing bad can happen to her. Even when I was carrying her, when it got clear I wasn't going to make it- which meant she wasn't going to make it either- she pulled a whitegirl out of the hill." (Morrison 50)
When Sethe is telling Paul D. how she survived escaping Sweet Home, she describes Denver in a way that makes Denver seem like she is extremely lucky, like Sethe's own personal good luck charm. She gives Paul the example of how Denver "pulled a whitegirl" out of the field (seemingly out of the blue) and doing so led to both Sethe and Denver's survival. This is a complicated, but factual, example of one of Winnicott's theories of motherhood. Winnicott believes that when a woman is pregnant, she becomes selfish in caring for her baby since a woman's baby is at first only seen as a part of themselves. Sethe projecting Denver as 'lucky' is an example of Sethe acting selfishly because Denver is in actuality an extension of Sethe herself. Even when Denver was still inside her mom's stomach, Sethe still thought of her as having her own independent 'luck'. This is proven to be Sethe acting selfishly because of Winnicott's theory. Because of Sethe's traumatic past, she is never able to let go of her maternal selfishness for her child, which explains why she has isolated Denver so much growing up- she is still acting selfishly as Winnicott believes a pregnant mother does towards their child.
Winnicott states, "In time the baby begins to need the mother to fail to adapt- this failure being also a graduated process that cannot be learned from books. It would be irksome for a human child to go on experiencing omnipotence when the apparatus has arrived which can cope with frustrations and relative environmental failures" (14). This claim is supported by Morrison writing "Shivering, Denver approached the house, regarding it, as she always did, as a person rather than a structure... Her steps and her gaze were the cautious ones of a child approaching nervous, idle relative" (35). In the previous reading, we recognize Denver's over-dependence on her mother because of how she was so dedicated to her job as a mother that she never allowed Denver to experience disappointment and create judgments on her own. Similar to how a baby is attached to their mother's umbilical cord when still inside of her, Denver still is extremely dependent on Sethe to provide her with the thinking she is supposed to do on her own. Wether never puts importance on her own life and instead devotes her actions and dreams to the betterment and benefit of the lives of her children. Because of this, Denver never felt true disappointment and thinks of her mom as a strong woman that can handle all the struggles. Therefore, Denver's unhealthy dependency on her mom makes her feel excessively lonely and jealous when Paul D entered their lives and stole her mother upstairs to the bedroom. Seth was always strong enough for Denver, so Denver didn't feel the need to adapt to the struggles of her life, thus, her ego wasn't able to develop, explaining her child-like perspective on the house and her confrontation with frustrating circumstances.
ReplyDelete"Of that place where she was born (California maybe? Or was it Louisiana?) she remembered only song and dance. Not even her own mother, who was pointed out to her by the eight year old child who watched over the young ones" (Morrison 37)
ReplyDelete"When a mother has the capacity quite simply to be a mother we must never interfere. She will not be able to fight for her rights because she will not understand" (Winnicott 18)
These two quotes connect similarly because they both discuss the relationship with the mother and child early on. In Beloved, from the quote above, it is assumed that Sethe was not raised by her own mother. Her psychological feelings could easily had transferred to Denver when she was born. Winnicott states that interfering with a mother and her child can be damaging. We already know that Baby Suggs was living in the house with Sethe and Denver for all of Denver's life, therefore, we can assume that there could have been interference with Sethe's mothering. Winnicott continues on to state how "often a mother spends years of her life trying to mend this wound which in fact was caused by us when we unnecessarily interfered" (18). Sethe is probably wounded by the interference between her mother and her when she was a baby, and most recently with Denver and her.
"the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver remember the details of her birth...two friendly grown up women...one helping each other" (Morrison 36).
ReplyDelete"Based on contact without activity, where there is opportunity for the feeling of oneness between two persons who are in fact two" (Winnicott 13).
These two quotes share the same idea as to how a mother can maintain a safe/reasonable relationship with her child. Winnicott states that the two have to come together and feel "oneness" (mentally). Just like Denver when she sees the white dress wrapped around her mother, the child must not always depend on the mother. But, should understand and help her; and same goes for the mother. The two need to help each other grow because they will always depend on one another (if toddler is raised right).
Willcott
ReplyDelete"She ordinarily... The baby is her"(13).
"They took my milk!" (19)
The quote from Beloved supports a portion of Willcott's thesis, which is stated above, because there seems to be a clear distinction between nurture and nature. Sethe's inability to nurture her baby while having her "milk" taken away from her makes her feel ultimately incomplete. This feeling of incompleteness affects her nature, making her feel like she can't take care of herself. So in order to compensate for her loss, she tries to take care of everybody else. The Baby Ghost, Paul D, and Denver are all different characters linked to Sethe's past who all have the ability to manipulate and control Sethe. This type of idea remains consistent with other characters although those characters are very minor. Sethe's inability to protect herself or her need to protect herself creates the dichotomy between nature and nurture; nurture always coming first.
"Denvers imagination produced its own hunger and it's own food, which she badly needed because loneliness wore her out."(35)
ReplyDelete"Whatever they were or might have been, Paul D messed them up for a good ... None could appreciate the safety of ghost company." (45)
These quotes support Winnicott's argument that at some point in the child's development mothers will fail them but it is not necessarily her own fault. Sethe failed Denver because she did not raise her to be an individual. Denver fails to adapt to change because she lacks this individuality. As a result, she feels lonely and resentment towards Paul D, who she feels has snatched her mother away. However, this is not necessarily Sethe's fault because she is a strong, independent woman. Her characteristics should serve as an example to Denver and give her an independent role model to follow. From this perspective, Denver should not lack individuality because she was raised by an independent character.
"'You like huckleberries?' 'I'm having a baby, miss'" (Morrison 39).
ReplyDelete"Opportunity of Oneness" ( Winnicott 14).
Sethe is running away from Sweet Home when she encounters Amy. While her energy is almost completely depleted, she continues to keep pressing not only for her own freedom, but her child's freedom. At this point, Sethe has terribly swollen feet, suffers from exhaustion and is running on very little aliment. However, when asked if she is hungry for huckleberries, she can only respond that she is having a baby. This shows that her baby has consumed her. All of her focus is on the unborn baby. This clearly demonstrates the oneness between the mother and the child. She lives vicariously through the baby even though it hasn't had any experiences yet. This may show that she has given up on all other aspects of life and is really clutching on to whatever she has left.
"There is a time for gradual change- over in the woman from the one kind of selfishness to the other." (Winnicott 12)
ReplyDelete" I'm having a baby, miss" (Morrison 39)
Winnicott explains the importance of 9 months, and its relevance in the preparation for being a mother. Sethe during her pregnancy is naive to what an expecting mother should be doing. Winnicott's argument is invalid in this case, since Sethe while pregnant for the fourth time with Denver is still unprepared and is unable to form a bond with her unborn child. By this time one would make assumption that after 3 children Sethe would be better equipped to welcome another child, however the trauma of losing her past child is being transferred onto her unborn child. Her psychological issues are impacting her unborn child, and will continue to impact Denver throughout her life.
"When these conditions obtain, as they usually do, the baby becomes able to develop the capacity to have feelings that correspond to some extent with those of the mother who is identified with her baby." Winnicott 14
ReplyDelete" 'So Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over-over and done with-it's going to always be there waiting for you. It's how come I had to getting children out of there no matter what.' 'So if it's still there waiting that means nothin ever dies'" Morrison 44
The conversation between Sethe and Denver prove Winnicott's idea that children are mirrors of their mothers because they have no sense of who they truly are. Since Denver is 18 but has been isolated she still doesn't know who she is either except for her interactions with her mother. She identifies herself through Sethe. Sethe told Denver how to feel about Sweet Home and Denver subconsciously agrees with her mother.
"There happens to be this useful nine-month period in which there is time for a gradual change over in the woman from one kind of selfishness to the other' ( Winnicott 12). In Beloved Winnicott's theory is proven when Sethe says, " Well, at least I don't have to take another step" (36). Here Sethe is 6 months pregnant with Denver, but here Sethe is being selfish for herself because she doesn't care of dying even with a child in her belly. This is what Winnicott is trying to say that like every other person a mother before having her child is selfish, meaning they want everything for themselves. However, this nine month period allows the mother to become selfish, but for her child. For example, Sethe later says, "'I'm having a baby miss'" Sethe says this because she wants her baby to be saved and needs food for her baby to survive. Furthermore, it is shown that Sethe is running away from Sweet Home because they steal all the milk, so she has none left for her babies. Therefore, this act of selfishness is not for herself, but for her unborn child.
ReplyDelete