Milk and Blood??? - Elias Acosta Mendoza

The Milkmaid- Johannes Vermeer

In the novel Beloved, Sethe is the main character who is trying to escape from a past that is filled with remorse and bitterness. However those memories of the past only exist in her mind, the one place she cannot escape. By using the psychoanalytical lens we can see what is going on in the minds of the characters as these unimaginable things happen to them. One event that traumatized Sethe was when she was sexually assaulted in Sweet Home. Schoolteacher whips Sethe and lets two boys assault her, “two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down, their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up”(83). Sethe claims that they were taking her “milk” all in an act of sexual pleasure. When looking at the connotation of milk, we can see that it represents nurture and innocence as a mother nurses a baby when it is very small. One could make an allusion to Macbeth and state that milk represents kindness as Lady Macbeth says, “milk of human kindness.” It is evident that milk would create a juxtaposition in this scenario. It is as if her intimacy was taken away and the worst part was that her husband witnessed the whole event. By looking on at what is going on in the mind of Sethe, we can infer that she is feeling humiliated because the boys have objectified her and made her feel inferior to them. They treat her a an animal and proceed to milk her, like a cow. This shows that at the time the mindset was extremely racist towards black people. They felt like they can do whatever they want and have no consequences. Halle, Sethe’s husband, is driven to insanity over witnessing someone else abuse over his wife and feeling like he is incapable of defending her due to the implications of doing so. Sethe doesn’t find out that this happened until Paul D tells her. She reacts in a negative way, “‘He saw them boys do that to me and let them keep on breathing air? He saw? He saw? He saw?’”(81). She's enraged at the thought that her husband did not defend her over this terrible situation. She implies that she expected her husband to kill the boys to defend her. However since that was not the case she is upset at the whole situation. Paul D then reveals that Halle started smearing butter all over his face after seeing them take his wife’s milk. Sethe then thinks, “There is also my husband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face because the milk they took is on his mind. And as far as he is concerned, the world may as well know it. And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now”(83). Morrison uses butter as a way to connect Sethe and Halle in this situation since butter is obtained from churning milk. Halle was driven insane and in his insanity, he was smearing butter over his face as a form of release. Morrison expands on the thoughts of Halle by stating that they took the milk from his mind. It could mean that the event had a traumatizing effect on Halle as if they were violating his brain in the same way they were violating Sethe’s breasts. It can also symbolize insanity, Sethe then states, “Other people went crazy, why couldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which is what must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been: the two of them back by the milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a care in the world. Feeling it slippery, sticky--rubbing it in their hair, watching it squeeze through their fingers. What a relief to stop it right 42 there. Close. Shut. Squeeze the butter. But her three children were chewing sugar teat under a blanket on their way to Ohio and no butter play would change that”(83-84). She shows the butter is sort of like a state of being unaware of evil in the world. When she says that they can be playing with the butter, it gives the impression of child like behavior and innocence since they are mindlessly playing around. It can serve as a form of release since she says that it is relief. When she talks about her brain turning around, it reminds me of leaving the world and entering a blissful alternate world. This however would imply that they were insane. It seems that Sethe is running away from her past since she is trying to disregard what happened and play with butter. She also says “no butter play would change that” meaning that butter could be like sugar coating the situation and trying to make the best out of it. Insanity is something that Sethe is trying to avoid since it has already consumed her husband, and the only way to do so is to disregard the past or else it will consume you.