Mothers as a class below slaves

Terry Paul Caesar analyzes the role of mothers in Toni Morrison's novels. She claims that Morrison describes mothers as slaves. Toni depicts a life for mothers filled with "an anger handed down through generations of mothers who could have no control over their children's lives, no voice in their upbringing." This concept is clearly related to the context of slavery, where slaves have no choices in their lives. There is a direct relation to this if mothers are considered as a class of people separate from society. Being a mother immediately relinquishes some control of their lives and their children's lives. As mothers exist in every other class in society, mothers are inherently lower in every class. Therefore, a slave who is a mother (Sethe) is the lowest on every social class. We can see how Morrison makes this brutally evident in the scene where Sethe has her breast milk stolen from her. This is clear indication of how she can and is humiliated and diminished by her treatment which she cannot defend herself from.

Women as a social class is clearly indicative of the fact that they are treated as inferior in the society they exist in. There needs to be a change that raises women and mothers to the level of the men that dominate society. The conflict between the classes of women and men is drastically one-sided as the men who are dominant remain dominant and continue to suppress the lower classes. By reducing mothers to the level of slaves, society opens itself for conflict and causes many problems within it that can only be fixed by the removal of class. In order to remove class, the ruling class must have its power relinwuished or forcibly taken away.