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be measured by the schoolteacher, and to be treated as animals. She killed the baby girl and would have killed all her children if not stopped by others. Her motherly love was so deep that she believed death would be a better place for her children compared to being slaves all their life. This kind of love could not find normal way to be realized in the slavery society and led to the tragic death of the baby and the distorted and isolated life for Sethe and Denver.
2.3 The Emasculated Black Men
The black men also suffered in the anthropocentric white society. Their physical and psychological sufferings shared similarities and differences with women. As they were also influenced by the androcentric beliefs, they bore even heavier burden than black women in their search for an identity that transcended both the anthropocentrism and androcentrism. They were physically and psychologically deprived of manhood.
For the slave owners, black men were also the reproductive machines. In Baby Suggs’ comparison between Sweet Home and other plantations: “He didn’t stud his boys. Never brought them to her cabin with directions to ‘lay down with her,’ like they did in Carolina, or rented their sex out on other farms. ” Sweet Home was different from other plantations in that Mr. Garner, the owner, did not treat the black men as stud like other slave owners did. Instead, he labeled his slave men as men, in the time black people were not treated as human. He even bragged about his possession of “nigger men”:
“Y’all got boys,” he told them. “Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stropping boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every one.”
“Beg to differ, Garner. Ain’t no nigger men.”
It seemed to be a great progress compared with other white slave owners’ attitude toward black men. And this treatment did influence the men at Sweet Home. They waited for Sethe to choose one of them as husband except raping her or fighting with each other for her, “only because they were Sweet Home men ”. They looked up to the treatment of men, or so-called “men-bred slaves ” instead of animals. However, Baby Suggs worried about this “special kind of slavery ” the Garners ran. And Mr. Garner, though bragged about his Sweet Home men, never let them out of the farm without his company. Baby Suggs realized that his order “was not so much because of the law, but the danger of men-bred slaves at loose. ” The rest of the society would not allow black men to live as men. And the fake freedom that these men seemed to enjoy was only illusion.
And such improvement was ultimately subverted after Mr. Garner’s death and schoolteacher’s taking over. These Sweet Home slave men who had looked up to be a man just like their master, were crushed when the atrocity of slavery fully manifested by the schoolteacher. With desire to live like real men, they escaped, and paid heavy prices even lives. Sixo died with mockery to that dream he had for freedom. Halle was broken by seeing what the nephews doing to Sethe and could not do anything to protect her.
Paul D, “the last of Sweet Home men ”, told Sethe, “Mister, he looked so…free. Better than me. Stronger, tougher. Son of bitch couldn’t even get out of shell by himself but he was still king and I was… ”. Even physically weaker than Paul D, the white man, his master was still the perfect manhood model for him. He could not help despising and admiring the master