The mother-daughter Aje relationship in Toni Morrison's Beloved

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Teresa N. Washington

As a living example of Aje-resistance, when the plantation mistress struck her, Fannie beat her, chased her into the street, and ripped off her clothes. (5) Fannie declared, "Why, I'll kill her dead if she ever strikes me again." Fannie is clearly historical mother to Sixo, the ever-self-possessed enslaved African in Beloved who grabbed his captor's gun to provoke a stand-off. Cornelia recounted her mother's reaction to the county whippers who had been employed to chastise her for beating Mrs. Jennings:

   She knew what they were coming for,
   and she intended to meet them
   halfway. She swooped upon them like
   a hawk on chickens. I believe they
   were afraid of her or thought she was
   crazy. One man had a long beard
   which she grabbed with one hand, and
   the lash with the other.... She was a
   good match for them. Mr. Jennings
   came and pulled her away. I don't
   know what would have happened if
   he hadn't come at that moment, for
   one man had already pulled his gun
   out. Ma did not see the gun until Mr.
   Jennings came up. On catching sight of
   it, she said, "Use your gun, use it and
   blow my brains out if you will."
   (Rawick, Unwritten History 287)

When Fannie declared, as would Brer Rabbit, "I'll go to hell or anywhere else, but I won't be whipped," Jennings decided to send his unbeatable slave out of his Eden, but he told Fannie she could not take her infant, his "property," with her. Truly Garner's (and literarily, Sethe's) sister of struggle, on the day she was to leave, Fannie took her infant, held it by its feet, and, weeping, "vowed to smash its brains out before she'd leave it." Cornelia concludes, "Ma took her baby with her" (Rawick, Unwritten History 288). And yet Fannie was not exiled. She and her husband returned from Memphis to Eden and their children with "new clothes and a pair of beautiful earrings" (Rawick, Unwritten History 289). Fannie lived the rest of her life in as much peace as her Aje and an oppressive society could afford her. Indicative of biological acquisition of Aje, Cornelia grew to be just as Aje-influenced as her mother.

Cornelia's oral testimony about her mother is included in George P. Rawick's The Unwritten History of Slavery. Morrison corrects the ostensible oversight implied in Rawick's title when she writes the history and sprinkles the spirit of Fannie--from swooping vengeance to whip-grabbing standoff to beautiful earrings--throughout Beloved. Using the methodology of the traditional Yoruba Eye Oro, Sethe's actions in her sacred space blend the lives of both historical Iya, Garner and Fannie. Sethe, as did Margaret Garner, succeeds in killing her third child, the oldest girl. When schoolteacher and his men enter the woodshed, Sethe holds Denver by her feet fully prepared to bash her newly born head open on the rafters. It is apparently important to Sethe, Margaret, and Fannie that the girl-children be made safe, first and foremost. They are the ones who can grow to have their milk stolen, their wombs defiled, their womanhood mocked.