ECHOES OF THE FRACTURED WOMB: TRAUMATIC MOTHERHOOD AND SOVEREIGN RESISTANCE IN THE NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON AND ALICE WALKER

Abstract

Abstract

The maternal dilemmas in Toni Morrison's Beloved and A Mercy and Alice Walker's Meridian and Possessing the Secret of Joy do not emerge from an eternal struggle between motherhood and freedom. And they begin in those institutions that require Black women to give care, while also refusing them custody, bodily security and the power to define what protection means. This essay traces four sharply different historical contexts as if they were not multiple versions of one wound. What else has the woodshed scene in common with Florens's mother's bargain, Meridian Hill's slavery of her child and Tashi's surrender to genital cutting, is that each one happens under a different kind of pressure. What keeps them connected is the rupture at the juncture of responsibility and acknowledged power. The breach, which the story refers to as a ruptured womb. Reading milk, scars, letters, domestic thresholds, political malady and interrupted testimony closely demonstrate that resistances is not the same as sovereign command. And Morrison and Walker are most disingenuous when a character appears to gain the ability to choose finality. Their multiple politics, in a more durable way, are in deferred account, collective listening and care partial outside of biological ownership. The emergent model of maternal authority here is relational: it is compromised by history, answerable to others, and able to contest ownership without claiming that injury has led to a pure freedom.