Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel, Beloved, is another great work. Inspired by the historical Margaret Sanger, a runaway slave who killed her infant child rather than have her child return to slavery with her living, was the historical basis for the novel’s character, Sethe, and her deceased daughter, Beloved. The historical Margaret Sanger stood up for her freedom and did what she thought was necessary to preserve it, by any means possible. In fact, her sanity and lack of repentance for murdering the infant (and trying to kill her other children) made her a cause celebre for abolitionists opposed to the Fugitive Slave Act (Morrison xviiI). Morrison’s book, set in the years after the Civil War in small-town Ohio, focuses on the impact of slavery on the ex-slaves and their families. Beloved is a powerful portrayal of slavery’s destructive effects on black families as well, dividing couples by not recognizing slave marriages as legitimate and selling or trading slaves to divide parents and children. Thus, the novel personifies slavery by giving characters born out of the institution and showing how their lives were harmed by it decades after emancipation. Furthermore, Morrison again employs elements of magic realism, stream of consciousness prose, and poetic language to share the world of Sethe, Denver, Paul D, Beloved, Baby Suggs, and Stamp Paid.
Morrison’s novel treats slave resistance and abolition in a fascinating and historically accurate manner. Sethe and her husband’s method of escape was through individual forms of resistance, running away. Sethe’s husband, Halle, worked to save up money to purchase his elderly mother’s freedom on the plantation in Kentucky, Sweet Home, which is a very ironic name for a plantation. His mother, Baby Suggs, moves to Ohio, and waits for Sethe and Halle to flee the plantation and join her later. Unfortunately, things do not play out well for the family. Sethe manages to escape while pregnant with her two sons, Howard and Buglar and Beloved. With a little help from a white woman who helps her give birth to Denver while fleeing to Ohio alone, she eventually crosses paths with Stamp Paid and his nephew, black conductors on the Underground Railroad, who ensure her safe passage across the Ohio River. The fact that Stamp Paid is a black man serving as a conductor on the Underground Railroad illustrates the importance of black agency and abolitionism during the antebellum period. Too often the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement is presented as if only whites, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglas were involved. Countless unnamed individuals participated in the Underground Railroad to free blacks during the dangerous last decades of American slavery.
The brutality of slavery is also closely analyzed here. Sethe is separated from her mother and never learns who her father is because she is sold and brought to a different plantation. Her only recollection of her mother is being violently struck by her while a young child, which initially confuses her until she herself realizes the brutality of a system that denies women the right to be mothers. Obviously anyone with a basic understanding of the history of slavery (except maybe Michelle Bachmann and conservative pro-life organizations) understands that the slave trade divided families and was unbelievably detrimental to black family structures. Obviously infanticide became common as a method of resistance since mothers knew their children could be taken away at any time. Rather than raise a child that one will never actually get the chance to love and who could be separated from her at any time, many enslaved mothers chose to kill their children rather than raise them in slavery, as the historical example of Margaret Sanger illustrates. Sethe’s attempt to kill her children when slave catchers come for her in Ohio, however, earns her the scorn of the black community, many thinking she is insane for attempting to kill her children and succeeding to do so in the case of Beloved. Even Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, distances herself from Sethe and interacts with the town’s local black community more. Sethe’s sons abandon her at age 12 and 13 to find their own way in the world, knowing that there was something wrong with their mother and the house in which they lived. And they were correct: the ghost of Beloved returns initially as a friend of Denver in the home, and later, once Paul D and Sethe start a relationship, as the family returns from a harvest festival. Beloved is taken in by the family despite Paul D’s reservations, and although Sethe does not know at first, they all realize that she’s the same daughter killed several years ago.
The impact of slavery on Paul D is also presented as a cause for his independent, drifting lifestyle. Never having control of his own body due to white men controlling his labor first through slavery and later chain gangs, Paul D’s conception of freedom is the ability to roam and decide what to do with his own life, which affects his relationship with women as well. His drifter lifestyle prevents him from spending too much time in any place, so he inevitably leaves his lovers in the dust to continue his solitary existence, but with Sethe found temporary solace because of their mutual experiences at the plantation. Living with Sethe for several months almost settled him down, but his desire to control his own life and ultimately Sethe and Denver is resisted by Beloved, who eventually gets Sethe and Denver to completely devote themselves to her care. Perhaps Morrison is criticizing black masculinity defined as male control of the family and women here, since Paul D cannot stand Beloved, although with some good reason.
Beloved does appear out of the blue, and the novel never answers the question of her ultimate origin. A white man in the area had molested a black woman who later escaped, but the novel never establishes if Beloved is that black woman in question, thereby illustrating Morrison’s use of magic realism in Beloved like in so many of her novels. The question of her being the same girl she killed is never doubted by Sethe and Denver, who devote their lives to her happiness as a result of love “too thick” and guilt on Sethe’s part. Beloved herself provides an interesting example of how the characters see her as a part of Sethe’s fractured psyche and their own histories and identities, forcing blacks to remember slavery in their own pasts. Perhaps that is another reason Paul D could not stand her because her existence is a constant reminder of his slave past, when white men controlled every aspect of his existence.
In addition, slavery’s destructive impact on black lives manifests itself through the imposition of false identity. Sethe, Paul D, Halle, and others lived through imposed identities that dehumanize. For some, succumbing to imposed identities of worthlessness overcome, as Halle succumbs instead of fleeing. He ends up lying in the butter, forgetting his autonomous agency as a human being. For Sethe, who never accepted racial inferiority, defines herself by running away from the plantation and living her own life, regardless of what any whites or men say. Baby Suggs, a slave for most of her life who had most of her children sold, uses her liberty to serve the black community of her new home, dedicating herself to her fellow oppressed blacks. Baby Suggs service to the community belies a belief in black equality and humanity, which deserves better conditions beyond the forced labor of slavery that denied blacks control of their own families.
Beloved is a dense work. I read it near the end of summer 2011, so I think I need to reread it before I can write a proper critique or essay. My recollection of events and characters is poor, so I cannot construct a truly good critique. Nevertheless, the novel is based on something that really occurred, and is a powerful testament to endurance of human spirit under the most harrowing of conditions. Morrison’s treatment of slavery is also more realistic in that it considers various black responses to the system as well, including black agency through runaways, Underground Railroad black conductors, and the traumatic experience of being separated from one’s children. For Sethe, she does not look back on her decision to kill her child, knowing fully well that it is better to die rather than submitting to a dehumanizing system. The presence of magic realism is also everywhere in the novel since it is never established who Beloved truly is. Is she really the daughter of Sethe who was killed several years ago? The ambiguity of Beloved identity perhaps symbolizes the ambiguity of our individual identies, or how the past is often forgotten despite its powerful connection to the present. Indeed, at the end of Beloved, nobody in the town can recall her, despite several interactions with her. We ignore our past and fail to learn from the mistakes, but they always remain a part of us, even if we are not aware, which has obvious implications for African-Americans, who may not know their own slave roots but remain a part of our collective consciousness.
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