Sabine Buchholz 
How much love is bearable? Motherhood in slavery [EPUB ebook] 

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies — Literature, grade: 1, 0, University of Siegen (FB 3: Literatur-, Sprach- und Medienwissenschaften), course: Slave Narratives, language: English, abstract: “If I hadn’t killed her, she would have died.” (119)
It is a most horrible scene: A mother killing her own flesh and blood, out of deepest mother-love. Toni Morrison’s novel ‘Beloved’ takes this gruesome deed as an approach to illuminate the tortuous and intricate slave mother/child relationship, a bond that in many respects reflects the atrocious nature of slavery. Hence, the essay aims at elucidating the significance and extensive meaning of maternity in Morrison’s extraordinary slave narrative.