Sethe took over doing household chores at Sweet Home. Unaccustomed to any display of humane treatment, she was very apprehensive about the Garners. Sweet Home was a blessing compared to Sethe=s experiences in Carolina. Sethe was not working in the fields, but undertaking domestic chores. She noticed that Mr. Garner=s treated his men slaves civilized. Mr. Garner allowed the men slaves to express their own opinions, and gave them the freedom to work and think independently. She was amazed at the Garners allowing her to choose her own mate from these men. Sethe was not forced to go to any of their cabins to breed children to be added also as property. Instead, she was allowed to choose freely her man and marry him.
The five eligible slave men at Sweet Home were all in their twenties. They lusted for Sethe, but respected her. These slave men did not try to force themselves on her. Although Sethe was the only woman on the plantation, they reverted to Afucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbings their thighs . . . [all] waiting for the new girl. (13) These men, not being allowed to leave off the grounds, had no contact with women, except for Sixo who sneaked to be with his Thirty-Mile woman. All but Sixo, had never experienced any sexual encounter with a women and resorted to releasing their manly urges by having sex with the cows. Having lived at Sweet Home all of their lives, the humanness extended to them by their owners, the Garners, instilled morals they extended to Sethe by allowing her to make her own decision as to who she wanted for a mate. Sethe chose Halle out of all the slave men. (13) They were married, but it was not a legal. Their marriage was not legitimate, nor would be her children. Sethe=s children were bastards that were property belonging to Mr. Garner. Her family unit was fragile like glass and could be shattered at any time. She was to learn that slavery had a component included that would test and threatened her family. The threat was the unnatural ownership of Sethe and her children which were claimed by the new overseer, the Schoolteacher.
After Mr. Garner=s death, his wife had to sell Paul F to pay off debts and have money to manage Sweet Home. Alone, ill and a white woman, Mrs. Garner needed a man to manage the farm. She sent for her sister-in-law=s husband, a schoolteacher. Schoolteacher, the name the slaves called him, came to Sweet Home with his two nephews. He was not a bit like Mr. Garner. Schoolteacher was an educated and soft-spoken man considered by Halle to be a Apretty good farmer@ (44). He was a Alittle man@ not only in size but also in character. The Schoolteacher is comparable to Germany=s Nazi Herring Goebel (check correct name). He would Acarry round a notebook and write down what [slaves] . . . said (44). Schoolteacher was a psychotic man who studied the slaves scientifically as if they were part of an experiment. Whenever one of the slaves r challenged his rules and regulations, he displayed cruelty to them, the majority had never experienced. Sethe described Sweet Home after he became the Lord and Master as:
ASweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before your eyes, and
although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her
want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty.
It never look as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was
a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy
groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the
world@ (7).
Sethe=s life drastically changed with the arrival of Schoolteacher. She was forbidden bring her babies into the kitchen while she was working. With no other women around to care for them, she had to do her chores and constantly go out and check on her babies who were left all along. Sethe loved her babies and this was probably one of the hardest part of her slave existence to not be able to be given some decency in at least having her babies around her while she worked. Along with all her chores, she made ink which the Schoolteacher liked only her to make. It was important for him to write in his book (44).
Schoolteacher=s pseudoscience application of dehumanizing the slaves with his questions and his teachings to his student made Sethe realize he had considered slaves as chattel. His teachings to these pupils were about how slave had more animal characteristics than human characters, which proves that he used his superiority as their overseer to justify his actions of being a pure, sadistic racist. Overhearing the Schoolteacher=s categorization of the human and nonhuman elements of slaves like herself, was so hurtful and painful to Sethe=s heart that the experience caused a strange pinching and itching at her head. (228) Sethe discovered the Schoolteacher value of her self worth. Slaves were actually more animal than human. This ideology was the Schoolteacher=s justification for his superiority of the slaves. The strange feeling she had of her head was caused from an anxiety attach. There was worse then the Schoolteacher=s racist placement of slaves being like chattel. Sethe was to fear her children being taking away from her by the Schoolteacher=s statement to Halle.
Sethe was adjusting to all of the Schoolteachers demands with a grain of salt. The bottom finally fell out when Halle told her that the Schoolteacher said he did not have to work outside on Sunday. Schoolteacher stated to Halle A the reason for doing it don=t hold. I should do the extra but here at Sweet Home@ (231). Sethe became concerned about how else Halle could pay the last year off for the debt incurred for buying his mother=s freedom. Then it dawned on her when Halle said AIf all my labor is Sweet Home, including the extra, what I got left to sell?@ (232). She realized that the debt would be paid off through Sweet Home=s ownership of her children. What she loved more dearly than life itself, which were her children, were considered commodities to be brought and sold or used however their master wishes. At this moment in her life, escaping was the only thing to do.
Sethe along with the other slaves planned to escape on the Underground Railroad. At that time she had three small children and pregnant with one to come at anytime. She successfully got her three children away from Sweet Home and stayed behind looking for Halle. While searching for her husband, the nephews of the Schoolteacher held raped Sethe and also stole her baby=s milk (19). This is the ultimate inhumane and degrading experience for a pregnant mother. Sethe being a slave had no ownership of anything, but her milk. Her breast milk was the only thing that was not tainted by the atrocities of slavery until it was stolen by the nephews. After the taking of her milk, she continued looking for Halle (who later Paul D tells her saw the event and just lost his mind).
Sethe, still looking for Halle, came across Paul D who the white posse had found and captured. He was wearing cruel a three-crown collar around his neck and had a bit in his mouth ( ). Sethe witness slavery=s cruel and unusual punishment that white slave owners displayed to their slaves when they tried to escape. Her anxiety level would have had to peak knowing that Halle, still missing, could be somewhere like this or worse hung or lynched. Sethe then proceeds to the mansion and tells Mrs. Garner what the nephews had done to her. Schoolteacher and his nephews find out about her telling Mrs. Garner. The Schoolteacher=s orders the nephews to dig a hole. They placed her pregnant stomach in the hold as not to hurt the baby. They then proceeded to whip the skin off her back with a cowhide whip ( ). They whipped Sethe so badly that when it later was described as looking like Abranches of . . . a chokecherry tree (20). She managed to run away from Sweet Home. While running she passed Paul A, hanging in a tree but without his feet or head (233). She learned later that Sixo was burned and shot by the posse that caught him. Sethe was the one who escaped out of the six slaves at Sweet Home. Running away, she realized her journey was not over. It was just beginning.
Sethe escape from Sweet Home was a psychological terror, but she was also in bad physical shape. Her back had deep lacerations and her feet were so swollen she could not walk, resorting to crawling. She was at a point to there she was thinking she could not make it. She would not have if it had not been for a white woman going to Boston to look for velvet named, Amy Denver. Amy was a white indentured servant who was also running from a cruel environment (40). Slavery was also severely thrust on poor white people in the form of rendering their services to pay off a debt to the owner of them. Amy=s mother had died doing so and she was kept on to pay off the debt. Amy helped Sethe heal by massaging her swollen feet which she could not stand on, less walk (42). This was a AKodak moment@ for a white woman to not only keep company with a black slave, but to rub her feet of what her race describe as Achattel@ in order to help her heal. Sethe was exposed to a rare humanitarian side of white people, but she more than likely she may have considered Amy=s life was not too far off from her own by what Amy told her. Amy also tended to Sethe=s severely scarred back and helped her delivery her child whom she called Denver (158) . Amy left her at the rivers of Ohio and while walking she encounters Stamp Paid who helps her cross the Ohio River and delivers her safely to her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. Baby Suggs, a free woman, has Sethe=s three other children safely with her. Sethe has arrived to give the baby girl her milk she has been waiting for.
Sethe arrived at Baby Suggs= house Aall mashed up and split open, but with another grandchild in her arm . . .@ (159). Baby Suggs cleaned and cared for Sethe. Sethe was united with her children and gave her baby girl that was waiting to be breast fed her milk. Sethe experienced only twenty-eight days of freedom, Athe travel of one whole moon-of unslaved life@ (111). During this period she talked with other Negroes, learned the alphabet, and sewed. She learned to Awake up at dawn and decide, what to do with the day@ (111). This is a luxury Sethe had never had. She was never afforded the chance to claim her own life. Sethe never had any moment in her previous life as a slave to decide what she wanted to do with her life or to think for herself without being told what to do. She waited for her husband, Halle, blissfully in these twenty-eight days with the happiness of this unidentified feeling, freedom. The twenty-ninth day the four horsemen of the Apocalypse appeared with Schoolteacher being one of them. They had come to take back Sethe and her children, but Sethe saw the schoolteacher=s hat and ran to the woodshed. There she shed the blood of her children. The two boys were hurt on the floor, the baby girl=s throat was cut with a saw and she was proceeding killing Denver when stopped by Stamp Paid. As Stamp Paid recalled Aa pretty little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and spit to the woodshed to kill her children@ (186). Sethe had endured so much trauma from slavery that she was determined that her children would not have to succumb to this way of life. She would rather kill them than give them back to Sweet Home and the cruel, barbaric way of living one was condemned to if a slave.
In the novel, Beloved, Sethe was a born into a perilous life of slavery. She had no claim to anything, not even herself and later realized her four children. Sethe had witnessed some many tragedies, starting from a young child. She had no bonding with her mother, just glimpses of her. The only real conversation she had with her was when her mother showed her brand, a cross under her breast. Sethe witnessed her mother=s cruel death by hanging and disfigurement where she couldn=t even identify her. She left the Carolinas to come to Sweet Home where she briefly received humaneness with the Garners until the Schoolteacher arrived. During this time, Sethe was forced to leave her babies outside her work area. Her children were her Abest@. She got them out of the hell of Sweet Home before the Schoolteacher could take them away from her. Sethe=s escaped involved her being raped and her breast milk stolen. She saw Paul D who was displaying the cruelties of being caught around his neck and in his mouth. Sethe recognized Paul F, hanging on a tree without head or feet, by his shirt. Sethe escaped severely hurt and with the help of Amy, a white slave, she managed to deliver Denver and make it to Baby Suggs house where here children were. She enjoyed twenty-eight days of freedom and when the Schoolteacher and his posse came to claim her and her children desperation fogged good judgement. Slavery had pounded on her so much pain and terror that she would rather see her own children dead than to become part of the institution of slavery. Thus, her baby girl, Beloved, died not for nothing. What Sethe wanted she accomplished, they did not take the remainder of her babies back into slavery.
