Hysterical Herstory and the Unravelling of Misrepresented History

Women often neglected to speak out against the public for fear of being called hysterical 

In Emma Parker’s “ A New Hystery: History and Hysteria”, an insightful connection is drawn between personal hysteria and its symbolism in regards to how history has been represented. She explains how Beloved criticizes the way in which history has been told- being of a male born angle. Yet, though the novel strives to challenge male-dominated representations of history, as Parker iterates, it’s “not so much ‘herstory’ as ‘hystery’”. Rather than literally having a heroin fighting for women’s liberation, Beloved conveys the historic misperceptions of slavery through the eyes of a hysteric female protagonist.

It is with Sethe and other character’s hysteric outbursts that the “disempowered and dispossessed express personal dissatisfaction and enact political change”. Essentially, Parker believes Sethe’s crazed decisions, like choosing to murder her child to save her from slavery, is symbolic of a true confrontation of what slavery was, and what history depicts it as. Parker parallels between Sethe and all the character’s “repression of pain” and “repossession of the past” to “confronting, reclaiming, and transforming history” to what it really was, rather than the male version we know today.  

Parker continues with this idea, claiming that the hysteria in Beloved is a response to “public and personal repression”, a response Parker believes to be “read in history”. Specifically, she believes the characters’ hysterical actions are responses to the inability of “language to articulate the immensity of the horrors of slavery”. This idea in particular I find extremely interesting, for I believe much more meaning is brought to a criticism of historic portrayals when the argument is conveyed by hysteric, horrific, and disturbing outbursts, rather than simply being stated. The reality of the fact that the only way Sethe and other characters of Beloved were able to express their emotion was through mutilation of themselves or their loved ones is striking and very persuasive of their misrepresentation.

Parker’s interpretation adds to my comments in my blog, “Sethe’s and My Mirrored Emotions”, on how Sethe’s inhumane and disturbing actions conveyed the emotional horrors of slavery in a way that words simply can not. Following in line with the common saying, “actions speak louder than words”, what Parker observes, and what author Toni Morrison strategically utilizes, are the hysterical characteristics and actions of all the enslaved people. But in particular, by having the main protagonist be a woman, Toni Morrison complicates the meaning behind the hysterical outbursts to symbolize a large underrepresentation in history of the women who endured the unimaginable while enslaved. With this symbolic intention, Morrison’s feminist appeal comes clear.