Women have been forced, over time, to deal with the challenges of motherhood as well as society's expectations of relationships of a mother with her child. The novelist Agatha Christie said of the relationship between mother and child: “The love of a mother for her child is like nothing else in the world. He knows no law, no pity, he dares everything and mercilessly crushes everything in his path. In Beloved, Toni Morrison examines the same idea; ultimately showing that the mother's desire to protect her child at all costs often puts the mother herself in danger. Beloved is set in the late 1800s, but Sethe's experiences as a mother ring true with the experiences of mothers throughout time, because the act of being a mother is timeless. As a child, Sethe was separated from her mother both physically and mentally due to slavery. So when she has children of her own, she is determined to keep her family together. In her attempt to free herself and her children from slavery, Sethe finds herself separated from her daughter, Beloved, following Beloved's death. When Beloved returns, Sethe's guilt causes her to overcompensate for the lost time. Her attempts to make up for this lost time with Beloved lead her to become overly dependent on her children's happiness and abandon all of her own activities to ensure that her children are satisfied. She gives her children everything she has, but eventually she gets sucked in and has nothing left to give. This struggle is akin to that of modern women who must abandon their children while they work and then try to make up for lost time when they are at home. From the time they are girls, women are led to believe that their answer is more important than their happiness...... middle of paper ...... children for a short time, but as Sethe discovers, they can't continue. do this forever, otherwise it will leave them with nothing to give and no energy to take care of themselves. Modern mothers must heed the warning in Beloved and accept that it is sometimes necessary for a mother and child to be separated and that a mother should not try to compensate for this separation and risk getting lost in the search for the happiness of his children. The relationship between mother and child is unbreakable no matter how much time has passed, but it must be treated with caution because it has the power to exclude them from the rest of the world and allow them to destroy themselves. Quotes from the author: Agatha Christie (1890-1976). Quotationspage.com.The quotes page, and Web. December 26, 2009. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print.