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Conclusion Morrison Essay Presents other characters in Beloved who are mothers, either biologically or through their actions; however, their role is either limited or their influence is. For example, Beloved appears to be pregnant and Patsy, the Thirty-Mile Woman, is pregnant during the course of the novel. However, since the reader neither sees them giving birth, nor actually mothering anyone, they exert no motherly influence that can be pinpointed and analyzed. Ella, mentioned briefly, refuses to mother even though she does, in fact, give birth to a child. Nan othermothers Sethe, but the reader sees very little of her. In addition, Lady Jones serves to mother Denver to a point (and potentially others), through her schoolteaching. The fact that Denver comes to her first when she needs help is demonstrative of this. However, her role, though vital, is limited. Finally, Amy plays a caretaking role for Sethe when she delivers Denver, but like Lady Jones, her role is transitory. Unlike Lady Jones, whose role does influence Denver, Amys role is truly limited to the physical assistance and emotional support Sethe needs during childbirth. All of these women who act in some capacity as mothers must not be overwhelmed and determined by an oppressive past but must be able to live in the present and conceive of a future in order to assert themselves into a male-dominated patriarchal society, that although a post-slavery society (except for Sethes mother), nevertheless imposes restrictions on womanhood, on motherhood (Kubitschek 144). They may lack the perspective to comprehend historical experience as a part, rather than the whole of, their identities, yet they must persevere (Kubitschek 144). And, in some way, to some extent, they do. Perhaps through their own methods, but they do. Amy tenderly ministers to Sethes excoriated back which has been etched by Nephews whip into the image of a chokecherry tree containing a wild tangle of branches, leaves, and putrid blossoms. The tree, formed by pus, blood, and raised welts of flesh, becomes a perverse symbol of life and female experience, with pain, suffering, and fertility mixed together. Sethes wounds also represent an inscription of sorts and demonstrate how the slave mothers body painfully serves as a text written upon by white patriarchal culture. The wild and bloody image of the tree graphically symbolizes the tangled, purulent relationships that slavery often fostered between black women and white men. The tree serves as a branding which declares that Sethes body, like her children, is not hers to claim. This thesis evaluated the socially constructed mothering of mother figures: Sethes mother, Sethe, Baby Suggs and Denver. Like real mothers, each in her own way, and as a result of historical conventions, they affect the development of subsequent characters, of biological offspring or of children over whom they have chosen to assume responsibility. All are different, yet share commonalities associated with motherhood. These mothers take it upon themselves to determine who is their own, who they will accept as or make their own, and then they mother those children, passionately, forever. They are not real mothers addressing real life, real tragedy. Yet they are art imitating life, the real life of motherhood, not in a vacuum, but socially constructed by history, by family, by patriarchy, by imposed value systems. Real mothers do make immediate and impossible decisions about children in their care in real life. Real mothers can define their own value through breastmilk. Thus, rather than question or degrade any of these mothers, one must applaud them for persevering in motherhood under duress or the ramifications thereof. They achieved life, reproduction of life, and the goodness they could provide as essential mothers, socially constructed by a society that disempowers them consistently. Then, if aspects of mothering are universal, is mothering essentialist or socially constructed? Well, perhaps both. Mothers are undoubtedly constructed by the society in which they act as caregivers, nurturers. Nevertheless, some of the actions they take in this society become, without question, essential to their being, once they are mothers. To save, to protect ones child is essentialist, like the stork who will guard only her own. To have circumstances under which a mother must do this suggests socially constructed events. Thus, one must ascertain with respect to these culturally diverse mothers whether the essential aspects of being a mother transcend the socially constructed aspects of motherhood and thus their desire and ultimate goal of keeping their children and themselves alive. Essentially, humans want to be alive, but mothers who accept motherhood are taught to keep their children alive by the implicit role and social definition of mother. Ultimately, then, the concept of mothering is essentialist, but actual mothers, including those analyzed here, are socially constructed. Each woman identifies herself as a mother or othermother and thus subsumes motherhood into her personal identity. Bibliography Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge, 1991. Eckard, Paula Gallant. Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 2002. Eyer, Diane. Motherguilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for Whats Wrong with Society. New York: Random House, 1996. Fultz, Lucille P. Images of Motherhood in Toni Morrisons Beloved. Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers Daughters. Ed. Patricia Bell-Scott. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. 32-41. Furman, Jan. Toni Morrisons Fiction. South Carolina: U of South Carolina P, 1996. Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature Difference. New York: Routledge, 1989. Garner, Shirley Nelson. Constructing the Mother: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theorists and Women Autobiographers. Narrating Mothers: Theorizing Maternal Subjectives. Eds. Brenda O. Daly and Maureen T. Reddy. Knoxville.