Mother/Daughter Relationships In Beloved

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betrayal and recovery through the mother daughter relationships between Sethe and her mother, Ma’am, and Sethe and her daughter, Beloved.
The mother-daughter relationship between Sethe and her mother starts the cycle of perceived abandonment, betrayal and recovery inherent in the novel. Sethe is the daughter of a slave woman that suffered through the Middle Passage. The only memories that Sethe has of her mother, Ma’am, are two vague instances were first her mother was pointed out to her “stooping in a watery field wearing a cloth hat as opposed to a straw one” (Morrison 61) and secondly where her mother showed a young Sethe her identifying mark. The one encounter Sethe remembers with her mother begins the cycle and gives her the first feeling of perceived abandonment.
“...picked me up and carried me behind the smoke
house. Back there she opened up her dress front and lifted
her breast and pointed under it. Right on her rib was a
circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. ...

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digging from Beloved, Sethe remembers what her nurse maid Nan told her : “ She threw them all away but you. The others from more whites she.... threw away. Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man” (Morrison 62). From this Sethe gathered that she shared a special relationship with Ma’am. Out of all the children she gave birth to she kept only Sethe. Sethe realized then that her mother showed her the mark to keep her safe and so that she would recognize her. Sethe did not realize why her mother slapped her for asking for the mark until she had a mark of her own. Sethe knows something as an adult that she did not realize as a child. The mark was not ...

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