Pamela Barnett argues that Beloved is haunted specifically by the history and memory of rape (Barnett, 418). Thus, although Morrison depicts innumerable abuses of slavery, the depictions of and allusions to rape are of primary importance to the novel's central theme that sexual relationships are more akin to violent, dehumanizing, power struggles than they are to romantic love and intimacy.
In Beloved, the memories of sexual abuse and exploitation haunt each of the characters (Barnett, 418). For example, Paul D. must hide rape's traumatic effects in "that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be" (Morrison, 89) and Denver is a hostage in her own home and mind for fear of sexual violation if she opens either. Nonetheless, the novel's recounting of incidences of sexual exploitation, which is accomplished through a dual structure of memory and live telling, serves primarily to situate the novel's main action, which is Sethe's murder of her own child to save her from violation by white slave owners and the apparent return of that child to seek retribution. Sethe killed the two-year-old child so that no white man would ever dirty her as did the young men who violated Sethe, "one sucking on [her] breast the other holding [her] down" (Morrison, 86). But now Beloved's return forces each of the main characters to face the dehumanizing effects of the innumerable incidents of sexual violation so that each character can reclaim his- or herself as an independent, worthwhile, empowered human being.
Sexual Violence, Power and the Fragmented Self
Beloved is replete with allusions to sexual violation, including the Sweet Home men's dreams "minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape" (Morrison, 13) and Sethe's explanation that Beloved must stay with them because she herself knows "how it feels to be a coloredwoman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you" (Morrison, 83). Notably, however, all s...