In Pamela Barnett’s essay, she defines Beloved as a novel that mainly talks about slavery and the idea that women did not really have a way to escape that. Pamela dives into how motherhood has affected Sethe since she was a slave. Sethe was long affected by the horrors of slavery and she did not want her children to go through the same tortures she did as a slave. To further her analysis, Pamela uses her personal thoughts to provide insight and information on how slavery and moreover, how rape truly did impact Sethe and that we can see this throughout feminism.
Pamela Barnett brings up the idea that Sethe’s daughter has return back to haunt her for the harm she has caused (chapter 11). From this point, rape is being viewed as as a gender assault on individuals focusing primarily on the harm that rape does to individual victims. The way I view this is that a woman is raped due to the fact that she is forced to have sex with someone where she does not want to. This shows feminism in a way where women could prevent this from happening, but in most cases, it would be very difficult. Therefore, these memories are what women have a hard time dealing with because they have been mentally affected as well. Pamela’s essay use a lot of summarization and includes a lot of short quotes and passages where Sethe have been truly affected and impacted.
So Pamela’s essay truly did allow me to relate to most of her claims about slavery and feminism. Her integration of her opinions and ideas made it easier for me to tie in the possible thoughts and feelings of Sethe as a slave mother through a feminist lens.
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