Throughout the book Beloved by Toni Morrison and the slave narrative of Aunt Betty's story, the significance of the roles of the main characters as women, their strive for their freedom from the era of slavery, the memorys and "rememorys" that serve as a reminder to Aunt Betty and a haunting past to Sethe help to shape their character and further their generations by coming to grips with the past in order to move forward. The ultimate importance of Toni Morrison's work in Beloved in contrast to the real life testimony of Aunt Betty is being able to look at the different horrors of the slave era as seen through the eyes of black women. The significance of family, their roles as women, the impact on their children, and the men who help them with their struggles gives us an understanding of how it was for them to escape slavery and face their past in order to make forward progress and emerge into a free society.
English: Toni Morrison speaking at "A Tribute to C...
Toni Morrison, on jacket of her Pulitzer Prize win...
English: Toni Morrison, Miami Book Fair Internatio..."Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a colored woman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that. (Beloved 67-68)" These are Sethe's words to Paul D that describe her feelings about the torture she received in the barn at the hands of Schoolteacher's boys. Her emotional and physical scars run deep because of the sexual violation and the beatings she took. Life on Sweet Home wasn't always a hell on earth though. Before Schoolteacher, she and the other Sweet Home men had a certain degree or...