Unformatted text preview: For Morrison's women, sexuality is the reward and burden of their gender. She describes Paul D's effect on females this way: "Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made them sad; that secretly they longed to die — to be quit of it — that sleep was more precious to them than any waking day." For Morrison's post-slave era women, menopause is the resurgence of desire, a fleshly encumbrance that precedes death, a well-deserved respite from indiscriminate breeding, unsatisfactory mates, and children sold before mothers could return home to wave goodbye. Ma'am, the elusive role model whom Sethe never fully knew, is excluded from this life cycle of...
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- Fall '09
- Beloved, Sethe, metaphoric chokecherry tree., limitless slave rolls, elusive role model, postslave era women, little girl forms