Home Journal List The ELF Annual Research Journal Volume 22 Article Details

t was me doing it”: A Psychoanalytic Study of Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Abstract

Since its publication, Sethe’s conflicted personality and her act of killing her own daughter in ToniMorrison’s widely acclaimed novel Beloved has remained a very serious matter of concern leaving readers, researchers, and critics alike in a state of shock. The present study is an attempt to probe into the psyche of Sethe in order to unveil certain psychological facts behind her complicated behavior which led her to kill her own child and pushed her further into a state of unimaginable sufferings thereby. In order to examine her thought process and the reasons behind an imbalance in her personality, this paper took insights from Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Personality and Cathy Caruth’s Theory of Trauma. The findings of the study revealed that the traumatized events of her past and an inconsistency in the three elements of her psyche (id, ego and super-ego) resulted in Sethe’s abnormal and unstable sense of self. However, the paper also detailed the ways in which Sethe’s acknowledgement with her traumatic past by employing different coping strategies helped her in developing a stable personality

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