Rememory In Toni Morrison's Beloved

“Thank God I don't have to rememory or say a thing because you know it all,” Sethe says on page 115 of Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved. “Beloved” deals with the trauma and aftermath of slavery in Reconstruction era Ohio, while introducing the idea of “rememory,” which main character Sethe describes as the experience of remembering and engaging directly with a memory (Morrison, 21). This concept of rememory has become a formidable critical tool for understanding how trauma continues to haunt literary and historical characters, by allowing their thoughts and experiences to transcend the boundaries of time. This concept will be applied to Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, to uncover how the aftermath and trauma of World War I affect and live through the character of Septimus. Though Morrison’s novel and thus the concept of rememory came after “Mrs. Dalloway,” the experiences of Woolf’s character Septimus are, in fact, that of rememory, showing the importance and versatility of Morrison’s concept. The lingering effects of memory
Hirsch did not use rememory as a tool for uncovering Woolf’s work; and her mention of the novelist is brief, as are most mentions of Woolf when thinking about “Beloved” or rememory. Instead, Hirsch argues that “male intervention” disrupts the mother-daughter relationship of the concept (Hirsch, 98). While this argument holds well for “Beloved,” the applicability of rememory extends beyond this and should be applied to Woolf’s work of Mrs. “Dalloway.” With rememory as a critical tool for analyzing “Mrs. Dalloway,” new facets of the novel begin to be