Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Alfred Knopf, 1987

ISBN: 978-1400033416

321 p.p.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison, tells the story of Sethe, an escaped slave, and her daughter Denver. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and was the finalist for the National Book Award. In a New York Times survey of writers and literary critics, Beloved was ranked the best work of American fiction from 1986-2006. I think what makes this book so powerful is a combination of Morrison’s poetic writing style and her ability to craft Sethe as a compelling character.

Sethe escaped Sweet Home; her two boys, her young daughter, her husband, and her mother-in-law had already escaped the farm while Sethe herself ran, pregnant and afraid, all the way from Kentucky to Cincinatti. The novel is set 19 years after her escape, when one of the Sweet Home men—Paul D.—comes to visit the family. I love this novel because it depicts the life of an escaped slave truthfully, rather than simply depicting the heroic escape and happy-ending. Sethe may be free from Sweet Home, but she is constantly haunted by the demons of her past.

Morrison perfectly depicts Sethe as a powerful woman with passion and ambition, coupled with apprehension and regret about her past. In some ways, it does seem like Sethe is afraid of the ghost that resides in her house. When Paul D. first walks into Sethe’s house, he immediately notices Beloved’s presence: “What kind of evil you got in here?” to which Sethe replies, “It’s not evil, just sad.” Morrison based Sethe’s character on Margaret Garner, an escaped slave famous for killing her two-year-old daughter in order to protect her from recapture. Sethe killed Beloved to save her, but since she was able to escape, her daughter is vengeful. She lives in every fiber of Sethe’s home—the home that Sethe built as a free woman—the home that Sethe built with her children who survived. Beloved is filled with rage and wants revenge, but she is still just a baby so she does not fully understand her anger.

“Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought a little old baby could harbor so much rage?”

As a reader, one can see that Sethe is merely a mother who wanted to protect her child from the evil of the world, but Sethe herself feels trapped. She has to live with the memory of killing her daughter and has to live in a house haunted by her daughter’s ghost. After her escape, Sethe was never able to set her mind free because she was still enslaved to her own children. Her escape was largely based on giving her children a better life rather than herself. For this reason, her mind is still trapped by Beloved because she was never able to let her daughter go. Sethe is almost able to achieve some sense of self through her relationship with Paul D., but even this relationship is interrupted by Beloved, who will not let Paul D. stay. Later, Sethe’s life becomes even more complicated by the reappearance of Beloved in human form.

Denver’s relationship with Beloved is different from her mother’s relationship with her. For Denver, Beloved is at first terrifying, and then a playful sister. The banging on the floorboards and the whispers in the walls keep Denver from venturing outside of her house. She writes of the sense of loneliness she feels and misses her grandmother, brothers, and even her sister whom she never met. Denver, unlike Sethe and Paul D., has never been enslaved. This could explain why she is more afraid of the ghost of Beloved than her mother. Denver does not understand why her brothers and her grandmother had to leave her and, at first, she is resentful towards Paul D. for coming between her mother and her. Denver eventually becomes enamored with Beloved when Beloved strangely appears to play with her. Unfortunately, this is just another form of Beloved attempting to take control of Sethe’s life and Sethe is unable to stop her because of her own guilt.

Sethe is very protective of Denver and is terrified of her capture. As a result, Denver is a recluse and only achieves her own sense of identity towards the end of the novel. During slavery, mothers learn to not become too attached to their children because they could be taken from them at any time. Sethe was so fiercely protective of her children that she lost herself. This is shown through her murder of Beloved, her attempted murder of the rest of her children, and later, her overprotection of Denver.

“Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.”

Sethe’s character speaks to the psychological impacts of slavery. Du Bois wrote about this type of double consciousness in his essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Du Bois writes that African-Americans always feel like two people, “the American and the Negro… two warring ideals in one dark body.” Sethe cannot let go of her feelings as a slave. She is free, but she struggles to free her mind. Part of this is the kind of life she had as a slave. She worked inside of the house at the plantation and she had a daily routine. The family was not particularly cruel to her, but she was never free. She still had to face the daily torment of witnessing her friends and children being beat by the plantation owners. She still had to recognize that every child she had could be sold away from her, and her marriage would never be legitimate. Sethe should be able to breathe freely, but she cannot let go of her past life and take control of her freedom.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

Only when Sethe exorcises Beloved from her home and fully lets go of her guilt is she able to become her own individual person and have a relationship with Paul D. Sethe is finally able to have her happy ending, but only after years of literal and figuarative enslavement.

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Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor. She is famous for such classics as: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Morrison has received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the American Book Award, and the Nobel Prize for her novel Beloved. In 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Morrison serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. She worked as an editor for Random House and is celebrated for promoting black authors like Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Gayl Jones. Morrison is recognized as one of the greatest writers and social figures of our time.