Motherhood and maternal bonds in Toni Morrison's novels

Motherhood is defined as a set of feelings and behaviours that are unfolded with the start of pregnancy and the birth of a child. The maternal bond between mothers and children is significant in all cultures since they are connected together physically and emotionally. However, the story of black mothers was quite different because they experienced slavery in the past making them inferior to other races. Under the system of slavery, African American mothers still face difficult and diverse challenges. The hardest being their inability to practice their roles as biological caregivers. In some extreme cases black mothers even thought to kill her own children to save them from the threats of slavery. This study explores the conflict between the white and black communities and the victimization of the black people by the prevalent ideology of marginalization and suppression. It examines the concept of motherhood and the impact of slavery in the life of black mothers through a special attention on Toni Morrison's three novels The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved. In each single novel, Morrison presents a unique picture of motherhood as a term bound by slavery. In the study, feminist readings of the texts as well as textual and contextual approaches are employed to study the relationships between the mothers and daughters as depicted in the selected novels. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the complexity of the life of black women and the impact on motherhood and family interaction of poverty, subjugation and oppression.