ABSTRACT
It is understandable too that the response of the writers to such contemporary concerns as the tenuous nature of our conceptions of history and identity and the instability of the language system itself is especially problematic. Along with this central concern with history and memory, there is also a compelling emphasis in the novel upon the survival of women within and beyond the structures of slavery – on their struggle to establish continuity through the protection of their children, their men and the community – and upon the possibilities for the shaping of the self within these changing structures. The melting away of both body and self is experienced by Amy Denver as the accumulation of all the losses she has sustained, death and leaving understood in terms of one another. The same sense of disconnectedness is once more conveyed through historical reference when Beloved first appears at 124.
