Toni Morrison's Beloved: An Exploration of Slavery's Legacy

Dr.Nripendra Singh

Deptt. of English,

H.C.P.G.College

is

's fifth novel. Published in 1987 as Morrison was enjoying increasing popularity and

success,

Beloved

became a best seller and received the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Its reception by critics was

overwhelming, and the book is widely considered Morrison's greatest novel to date.

Mythic in scope,

Beloved

is an attempt to grapple with the legacy of slavery. Morrison based her novel on

a real-life incident, In which an escaped slave woman who faced recapture killed her children rather than allow

them to be taken back into slavery.

In the novel, the protagonist's near-recapture follows the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, part of the

Compromise of 1850,

which stated that escaped slaves, as property, could be tracked down across state lines and retrieved by their

old masters.

In

Beloved

, Morrison explores themes of love, family, and self-possession in a world where slavery

has only recently become a thing of the past. Beloved is the ghost of

's murdered child, returned

 for unclear reasons, embodied as a full-grown woman at the age that the baby would have been had it

lived.

Part history, part ghost story, part historical fiction, the novel also seek to understand the impact of slavery,

both on the psychology of individuals and on the larger patterns of culture and history. Morrison was drawn to the

historical account, which brought up questions of what it meant to love and to be a mother in a place and

time where

life was often devalued. The novel powerfully portrays the meanings of what it means to be owned by another

and the

difficulty of owning oneself.

In 1873, Sethe and her daughter Denver live in 124, a house in a rural area

close to Cincinatti. They are ostracized from the community for Sethe's past

and her pride. Eighteen years have passed since she escaped from slavery at

a farm called Sweet Home. Sweet Home was run by a cruel man known as

schoolteacher, who allowed his nephews to brutalize Sethe while he took

notes for his scientific studies of blacks. Sethe fled, although she was

pregnant, delivering the child along the way with help from a white woman

named Amy. Sethe's husband, who was supposed to accompany her,

disappeared. After her escape to Cincinatti with her four children, Sethe

enjoyed only twenty-eight days of freedom before she was tracked down by

her old master. Rather than allow her children to be returned to slavery, she

attempted to kill all of them, succeeding only in killing the baby girl. Rejected

then by her master, who saw she was no longer fit to serve, Sethe was also

saved from hanging and was released to raise her remaining three children at

124. The ghost of the dead baby began to haunt the house.

The two sons,

 Howard

 and Buglar

, 

left after having particularly frightening encounters with the

ghost.

The grandmother,

 Baby Suggs

, died a broken woman. Baby Suggs had been a great positive force

in Cincinatti's

black community, regarded by many as an inspiring holy woman. After what happened to Sethe,

she gave up her

preaching and retired to bed, asking only for scraps of color. Years after her death, Denver and

Sethe continue to live

in the house alone. Sethe works as a cook, and Denver spends her days alone. Denver is terribly

lonely but is also

afraid to leave the yard

‹even though she is eighteen years old

.

In 1873, two visitors come to 124. The first is

Paul D

 a man who was a slave with Sethe back at

Sweet Home.

Paul D, like Sethe, is haunted by the pain of the past. He witnessed and suffered unspeakable

atrocities before the end of t

he Civil War brought him his freedom, and he has survived by not allowing himself to have

strong feelings for anything or anyone.

He has particularly dark memories of time spent in a prison for blacks, where he worked in a

chain gang by day and was

 kept in a box in the ground at night.

The second visitor is a girl named

Beloved

. It gradually becomes clear that she is the

ghost of the dead baby come

back to life, at the age that the baby would have been had it lived. Awkward, unable to

speak like

an adult, and dressed in strange clothes, Beloved seems vulnerable at first but proves

to be powerful and malicious.

Her purposes initially seem benign and are never fully understood, but by the end of

the novel her presence is deeply destructive for the living people of 124.

Paul D becomes Sethe's lover, staying for a time despite friction between him and the

two young girls.

Beloved despises him, and she tries to divide Sethe from Paul D. Paul D eventually

leaves when he learns that

Sethe murdered her own child. Sethe, on discovering Beloved's identity, believes she

has been given a second chance. She tries to make

amends for the past, but the girl's needs are devouring. The ghost does not forgive

Sethe for her actions. Beloved

settles into the house like a parasite, growing ever stronger as Sethe grows weaker.

Sethe's sanity begins

 to unravel, and Beloved only grows more demanding. Denver is forced to go to the

community for help.

A group of women, led by

 Ella

, a former agent of the Underground Railroad, go to 124 to

exorcise Beloved's ghost.The ghost is forced to leave, but Sethe's spirit has been nearly broken.

 Paul D returns to her, vowing to help Sethe heal herself. Denver, Paul D, and Sethe will build a

new life, one in which they learn to deal with their  painful past while focusing on the future.

Beloved is a haunting and dark novel, full of gothic elements and acts of terrible violence.

 The ghost represents the power of the legacy of slavery, which continues to trouble Sethe eighteen

 years after she won her freedom.

Beloved is the spirit of the dead baby returned but she is also an embodiment of all suffering under

 slavery; her memory extends back to the slave ships that first carried blacks to the Americas.

 The question of the rightness of Sethe's terrible act is a difficult one

‹moreover, it is a question that the

 novel does not attempt to answer in a definitive way. Morrison is more concerned

 that we understand why

 Sethe did what she did, as well as the ways that her decision has haunted her ever since.

The novel effectively conveys the brutality and dehumanization that occurred under slavery,

 putting Sethe's act in context without necessarily condemning it or excusing it.

The structure is fragmentary, closely tied to the consciousness of each character and

weaving suddenly between past and future.

More time is spent describing past events than the action of the current moment,

reinforcing the idea of the past lingering and

shaping life in the present. The novel is often repetitive, telling the same stories of

the past again and again, giving more

information with each repetition. All of the characters of the novel, former slaves

and the children of former slaves, suffer a

 troubled relationship to their own past. Their relationships to their past often make

it impossible for them to live for the

present or plan for the future, and slavery has often damaged the ways that they

experience love and think

about their own worth as human beings.

                                                      Memory

Memory,  is an integral part of 

Beloved

. Morrison uses the characters’ memories and

fragmented

 remembrances of the past to compose her story. The result is a novel that oftentimes flits

back and forth

 across space and time. For example, though the story opens at 124 in 1873, much of it

takes place at

 Sweet Home plantation before the Civil War. Sights and sounds as innocuous as a dog

lapping at water or the back of a sleeping man trigger horrible and painful memories for

many of the characters

 .

 Once triggered, characters then serve as a gateway to the

past, where the real story lies. This method of storytelling is demonstrated when

Paul D recounts the story of Sixo and the Thirty-Mile Woman. Paul D’s memory of

his friend was triggered by seeing Sethe cross her ankles. This is a perfect

example of how a pedestrian motion can hold a wealth of meaning and memory

for the novel’s characters.

Memory is also important because of the role it plays in the relationships between

characters. Sethe and Paul D have a fraught shared history because of Sweet

Home and the horrible memories it generated. So when they reconnect years after

the Civil War, their new relationship exists in the shadow of these memories. As

Sethe says, the hurt of the shared memories between herself and Paul D “was

always there-like a tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left”

(Morrison 107). Memory also influences Sethe’s relationship to Denver.

Mother- Child Relation

In many respects, 

Beloved

 is a story about motherhood and how slavery impacted Black women’s ability to

 be good mothers. Starting with Baby Suggs, who had all but one of her children sold to plantations far

away from her, it’s clear that slavery erected many physical barriers between a mother and her children.

Sometimes these barriers existed even on the same plantation, as Sethe and her mother demonstrate.

 As Sethe’s 

mother

 toiled in the fields, another woman assigned to look after the plantation’s children

raised Sethe. This left little time for Sethe and her mother to bond and build a relationship.

As a result, the physical barrier became an emotional one as well.

 Looking at Sethe, we see

slavery’s impact on Black mothers at its most extreme. Rather than watch her

children become slaves, Sethe attempted to kill them. At first glance, Sethe’s

actions seem opposite to our expectations of a mother’s behavior. Everyone who

witnessed her behavior, from Stamp Paid to the schoolteacher, struggles to

comprehend her seemingly evil and barbaric act. However, if we consider the

idea that a slave’s life is a fate worse than death, Sethe’s actions become easier

to understand. She believed she was being a good mother by sparing her

children from slavery and all its horrors. However, since Sethe became a social

pariah after her actions, it’s clear that very few agree with her reasoning.

 Sethe also struggles with her guilt and has a strained relationship with her

surviving children. Her children have been raised in a world where they are free,

and thus they cannot comprehend the fear that fueled their mother’s actions. So

both sides keep their distance, further widening the divide between mother and

children. By the end of the novel, Sethe’s relationship with Denver seems to be

improving. This is mostly because Denver recognized the damage Beloved

inflicted on Sethe and assumed the responsibility of caring for Sethe. This is a

reversal of the traditional mother-daughter relationship where a mother cares

for her daughter, and it gives us a poetic sense of closure. Sethe is finally

receiving the type of mothering that slavery had kept from her.

Slavery

Slavery is the novel’s core theme and plays a critical role in the lives of each character.

Slavery and its horrors are what led Halle to pay for Baby Suggs’ freedom, sentencing

himself to a crushing debt to 

Mr.Garner

. Later on, slavery and the concomitant sexual

abuse drive Halle insane. Furthermore, slavery and the abuse Sethe suffered under it

compelled her to commit infanticide rather than see her children also suffer. These

examples all demonstrate slavery’s powerful hold over the enslaved.

 Slavery also caused devastating emotional and psychological wounds in the

enslaved, and 

Beloved

 is one of the first novels to explore this aspect of

slavery. Similar to the schoolteacher’s comparison of Sethe to a horse that

needed to be tamed, most novels gloss over the inner workings of an enslaved

person. By delving into the consciousness of slaves and former slaves,

Morrison exposes slavery’s crippling legacy beyond its physical impact. Sethe’s

complicated decision to kill her children shows that slaves were far from the

mindless cattle or livestock their masters took them to be. Rather, they were

complex human beings capable of making bitter decisions in the name of love.

Similarly, after his experiences at Sweet Home and the chain gang, Paul D

suffers from PTSD. To cope, he replaces his heart with a metaphorical tin box

where he locks away his traumatic memories. Again, this contradicts the

stereotype of slaves as beings with no emotional or psychological sentience.

Halle is the only son whom Baby Suggs is able to raise

herself and create a traditional mother-son bond with.

All her other children were sold away to other

plantations, never to be seen again. Therefore, it’s

tragically ironic that by buying his mother’s freedom

Halle is also ensuring that they will never see each

other again. For Baby Suggs, what does freedom mean

if she remains separated from family and loved ones?

For a time, she’s able to carve out a life for herself by

giving sermons in the Clearing. But even that freedom

and newfound sense of self is stolen from Baby Suggs

when the schoolteacher catches up to Sethe at 124. In

the end, Baby Suggs dies of a broken heart, and

slavery is partly to blame. Even after Halle’s sacrifice,

his mother is never quite free from slavery’s reach.

Throughout the entire novel, Sethe struggles with her

sense of self because the wounds she carries from

slavery never healed. She doubts her own worth and

holds up her children as her "best thing," or the pieces

of herself that she can be proud of. In this quote, Paul

D recognizes Sethe's lack of self-worth and tries to

instill in her a sense of self-love. Sethe's disbelieving

question of "Me? Me?" demonstrates that her path back

to the self she claimed in the Clearing won't be easy,

but the novel closes with the hope that she will one

day treat herself as beloved.