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ETD Abstract Container

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The Fruits of Our Labor: Reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved as an Oneiric Space

Sosan, Bisola
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1535374202976194

Abstract Details

2018, MSARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture.
This thesis aims to understand the ways in which Toni Morrison has created an oneiric house in her novel Beloved. Using the novel’s primary setting, 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, as a vehicle to apply Gaston Bachelard’s theory of the oneiric house, it explores the ways in which Morrison’s house depicts spaces where traumas are reinscribed and then transformed. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to reveal alternative methods and sites to mediate traumas in Black-American communities. Additionally, it is important to recognize the ways in which Morrison utilizes experiences and narratives from the slave and post-Civil War eras to comment on issues currently impacting Black-American communities and draw connections to the present. This work will expand Morrison’s concern with “freedom” to the concept of the House, which applies to both 124 and Sweet Home, the plantation from which Sethe escapes. Where she is concerned with “responsibility” in the novel, this thesis invokes the Garden, which plays a central role in understanding slavery as well as the events in her narrative. Finally, to expand upon “women’s place,” this work discusses the Body, more specifically constructions of Black feminine bodies and the question of autonomy over one’s self. The Poetics of Space by French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard serves to contextualize these overlapping themes in architectural history. Bachelard discusses the potential for houses as sites for phenomenological studies of intimate spaces. This is most evident through his notion of the oneiric house, in which houses contain daydreams and store memories. Whichever place of dwelling one resides, one relives the sum of all previous experiences and memories oneirically. Discovering what exactly is contained in that House which cradles us is Bachelard’s primary project. Here we also find an intersection with Morrison’s work. Her narrative journey to conceptualize freedom in womanhood leads us to 124. The traumas these characters experience resurface within 124, yet, contrary to Bachelard’s theory, Morrison’s characters had been cast into a violent world before having the opportunity to be embraced. This tension exposes just one of the ways in which slave traumas effectively subvert conventional theoretical discourse, and it informs the discourse of this study.
Rebecca Williamson, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Carolette Norwood, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
James Roane (Committee Member)
90 p.
Architecture
Morrison; Bachelard; Beloved; Oneiric

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sosan, B. (2018). The Fruits of Our Labor: Reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved as an Oneiric Space [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1535374202976194

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sosan, Bisola. The Fruits of Our Labor: Reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved as an Oneiric Space. 2018. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1535374202976194.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sosan, Bisola. "The Fruits of Our Labor: Reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved as an Oneiric Space." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1535374202976194

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.