Surrogacy in "Beloved"

The surrogacy experience discussed by Delores Williams in "Black Women's Surrogacy Experience" is present in the novel "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. The types of surrogacy I have noticed have been black women filling in for men by doing hard labor, as well as black women filling in for other mothers while not having the time or resources to care for their own children.

Characters in "Beloved" are forced into hard labor that was thought to be more suitable for men. In the novel, Sethe's mother demonstrates this type of surrogacy. Sethe talks about the few memories she has of her own mother. She said " I didn't see her but a few times out in the fields...by the time I woke up she was in line. Sunday she slept like a stick" (p. 72). Her mother was forced into working the fields as a slave and the fact that she had children and was a woman, was ignored. Sethe explains that another woman was designated to nurse the slave children so the women could work in the fields. This perpetuated the cycle of surrogacy: Sethe's mother was forced to fill in for men and so could not be present for her children and so another woman had to give of her body in a motherly way to children who were not her own. Sethe would also find herself in a surrogacy position, even though she was not a slave.

Sethe was forced to give of her body and in doing so, could not care for her own child. She explains her painful memory of the time she was beaten and had her milk taken from her. Sethe explains earlier in the novel how she was determined to feed her own child with this milk but was ruthlessly violated and had the one thing she felt she herself could provide for her daughter stolen from her. Sethe describes that "for a used-to-be slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she settled on to love" (p. 54). This shows that African American women felt it was actually dangerous for them to love their own children because they knew they would be forced to spend their emotional and physical resources taking care of other children or filling other roles.

I believe the presence of surrogacy in "Beloved" shows that this experience was present in many African American women's lives before and after the end of slavery. I believe because this was such a common experience, womanists should address this in their assessment and development of womanist theology.