This is an essay I wrote for an African-American Literature
class. Toni Morrison's Beloved can a difficult book to
read and understand, but I recommend it to everyone.
Versions of Violence and Aftermath in Beloved:
A Woman's Perspective
"This is not a story to pass on."(1)
With these enigmatic words, Toni Morrison brings to a conclusion
a very rich, very complicated novel, in which slavery and its
repercussions are brought into focus, examined, and reassembled to
yield a story of tragedy and redemption.
The "peculiar institution" of slavery has been the basis for many
literary works from Roots to Beloved, with particular
emphasis on the physical, mental, and spiritual violence
characteristic of the practice of slavery in the South.
A far greater shame than slavery itself is the violence that was
directed against slave women in the name of slavery. Slave women bore
the heaviest burden of slavery, forced to be not only fieldhands and
domestic workers, but to satisfy their masters' sexual appetites.
Frederick Douglass wrote that the "slave woman is at the mercy of the
fathers, sons or brothers of her master."(2)
Slaveowners considered their slave women to be fair game, forcing
themselves on their female slaves with impunity, and any resulting
children were considered property, to be sold like the calves from a
cow. The family institutions of the slaves meant nothing to their
owners; the children of slaves were likewise considered property and
could be sold at their owners' whim. Schoolteacher referred to Sethe
and her children as "...the breeding one, her three pickaninnies and
whatever the foal might be..."(279) Slave children often did not know
who their fathers or even their mothers were. Such basic instincts as
maternal love, however, were impossible to eliminate from the slaves,
who grew to treasure and guard what little they were able to get - the
core of the novel Beloved.
At the center of the novel is Sethe, a former slave who escaped
to the North before the Civil War. When the novel begins, a dark,
terrible secret hangs over Sethe that keeps her apart from the rest of
the people in her neighborhood. As the novel progresses, the story of
her life emerges in a complex patchwork.
Sethe's life for the most part, had been relatively sheltered;
at fourteen, she was sold to Sweet Home, where she was a domestic
servant rather than a plantation worker. She also had the "amazing
luck of six whole years of marriage to that "somebody" son who had
fathered every one of her children"(29) - a rarity for a slave in the
South. Given these circumstances, the abrupt arrival of schoolmaster
and his tyrannical methods was a shock to the sensitive Sethe. For the
first time in her life, she is whipped; even worse, she is subjected
to a forced suckling by schoolmaster's nephews for no reason other
than that her husband Halle might have unconsciously challenged
schoolmaster's domination - "Maybe Halle made the mistake of saying
'my wife' in some way that would put a light in schoolteacher's
eye."(276)
Immediately after the incident, Sethe flees to the North to join
her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, holy, whom Halle had bought out of
slavery years earlier. It is then that the sequence of events
that form the backbone of the novel is set into motion.
Schoolmaster, backed by the Fugitive Slave Law, hunts her down.
In response, Sethe tries to keep her children safe the only way
she knows - by killing them, and her eldest daughter dies as a
result. This unpardonable sin drives a wedge between her, the
community she lives in, and her own children, that remains for 18
years until her surviving daughter intervenes.
Sethe knew what lay in store for her children, particularly
her daughters; the slaveowners would "[n]ot just work, kill, or
maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like
yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and
couldn't think it up."(308) Something inside Sethe died when she
was whipped and her milk was taken from her; her sense of self,
and of self-love, already fragile when she lived in Sweet Home.
This was the fate she wanted to save her children from, the only
way she knew how. And death, Sethe felt, was preferable to
slavery. Because, Sethe explains in her monologue, "...if I
hadn't killed [Beloved] she would have died and that is something
I could not bear to happen to her."(246)
No one in Sethe's community could or would understand how
she could bring herself to kill her children. Paul D accused her
of thinking like an animal. But what mother animal would kill her
own young to save them from the slaughterhouse? This reaction was
born of love. Misguided love, to be sure, but still love, because
Sethe considered her children to be "...all the parts of her that
were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed,
dragged them through the veil, out, away, over there where no one
could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would
be safe."(200) Death was a gift, and after they were dead, she
would kill herself and join them, and Baby Suggs, and Halle. Ms
Morrison paints the situation in a manner that illustrates how
Sethe's actions, although in no way acceptable or justifiable,
are understandable.
A number of questions pull at the reader when the story of
Sethe's deed is known. Why did Sethe try to kill her children,
instead of simply hiding them? Why did she not attack the
approaching horsemen instead of her children? Why did she not run
to Baby Suggs, holy, and Stamp Paid for assistance? For that
matter, why did she not even scream for help? Had she been so
thoroughly stripped of faith in her fellow human that she could
not turn to them for help, even after twenty-eight days of
freedom?
Under and after their captivity, slaves were made to doubt
their own humanity. "Was that it? Is that where the manhood lay?
In the naming done by a whiteman who was supposed to know?"(154)
wondered Paul D, pondering the circumstances that had led to his
being known as "a Sweet Home man" instead of the all-pervasive
"Boy". Slavery took away the slaves' capacity to love themselves
and each other, replacing it with hostility and mistrust, even of
their own people. The longevity of ingrained suspicion is not so
easily diminished - the morning after the big party at 124, the
formerly enslaved townspeople feel resentful and jealous of Baby
Suggs, holy, and her daughter-in-law and "[w]hispered to each
other in the yards about fat rats, doom and uncalled-for pride
...because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by
excess."(169-171) They The result is that "not anybody ran down
or to Bluestone Road, to say some new whitefolks with the Look
just rode in..."(193) Baby Suggs, holy, and Stamp Paid, unaware
of the threat, trusting in their neighbors to warn them if
anything was amiss, went about their business as usual. But
Sethe, seeing the approach of her former owner, did the only
thing she could do - gather up all her children and take them as
far away from him as possible. She could not call for help,
because she felt she could not trust in anyone to come to her
aid. Her ability to trust had been lost, when she was violated in
Sweet Home where she thought she was safe, and when Halle failed
to meet her to run away together.
Baby Suggs, holy, is characteristic of the slave women who
lived through the abuses forced on them. She has had eight
children, six by different fathers forced on her; of all her
children, she has been allowed to bring up only one, Halle, who
eventually bought her out of slavery. Baby Suggs, holy, held
assemblies in the Clearing to encourage her fellow freedmen to
love themselves again, by giving of her "great big heart". But
she does not preach forgiveness - she goes to her grave hating
the whitefolk for what they had done to her and her people.
Denver, Sethe's surviving daughter, led a charmed life; her
birth was a miracle of circumstances, and her mother was
unsuccessful in killing her when she was a baby. Denver has not
had to know slavery, but she has grown up witnessing the
aftereffects it had on her mother and grandmother, who isolate
her from the outside world in an attempt to protect her from what
they had to survive. When the story opens, Denver is an 18-year-
old girl, but she acts more like a child than a young woman. As
the novel progresses, Denver matures visibly. When her mother is
manipulated by Beloved, Denver stands firm, and braves her fears
to go outside of 124 and seek employment, while trying to protect
her mother. By the end, Denver represents the hope of the free
black woman - to be both educated and self-sufficient.
Beloved, for whom the novel is named, is an enigmatic
figure. Who or what she is is never fully explained. The people
in the novel are firmly convinced that she is the physical
manifestation of the ghost that has haunted Sethe for the past 18
years, and this seems to be the only explanation for the mystery
that surrounds her. (Stamp Paid does, however, mention the
intriguing possibility that she may be an escaped sex slave(289)
but her appearance and memories seem to belie this idea.)
Beloved, the woman/ghost/"devil-child"(321), has memories filled
with violent acts that seem to follow the path of the slaves
brought from Africa in chains. Her foremost desire, born of her
violent past, is for revenge against Sethe; revenge for killing
her. Beloved behaves as a disruptive force in the lives she
touches - she is intent on destroying Sethe's relationships with
Denver and with Paul D, and on exploiting Sethe's guilt and
insecurity. Beloved is the personification of the aftermath of
slavery, carrying within her all the hurt, the pain, the anger of
past enslaved generations.
Morrison peoples her narrative with characters who have been
through the worst of slavery's atrocities, and have survived - or
run away. Ella, a minor character who leads the other women
against Beloved, "considered love a serious disability...
[because]...[h]er puberty was spent in a house where she was
shared by father and son, whom she called 'the lowest yet.'"(314)
Stamp Paid ran away and left his wife behind because he could not
bear to accept the thought of her as the master's paramour.
The helplessness foisted upon slave women in their
captivity was sometimes paralyzing. Some women were able to rise
above it, like Ella and Baby Suggs, holy; others, like Sethe,
remained in the chains of their past. "To Sethe, the future was a
matter of keeping the past at bay."(52) She lived her existence
from day to day, focusing simply on keeping herself and Denver
fed and clothed, not daring to allow herself a moment to reflect,
because that would mean remembering. When Beloved comes back into
her life, Sethe tries to recreate the past and make up for what
she had done, spoiling Beloved to the point of absurdity in order
to create new, better memories that she can live with. More than
anything, Sethe wanted forgiveness for killing her child, a
forgiveness that no one but Beloved could give, and Beloved
denied it to her. Emotionally, Sethe still needed to gain the
approval of a separate other; this was a remnant of her
dependence at Sweet Home. Here lies the difficulty: no one else
will or can forgive a mother who kills her own child, least of
all she herself.
At the end, Sethe attempted to kill Mr Bodwin, whom her
exhausted, unbalanced mind had identified as schoolteacher come
once more to take Beloved away from her. She saw this as a second
chance, a way to redeem herself, by attacking the predator rather
than disposing of his prey. This final act of violence on her
part is her turning point. After this, she no longer hates
herself - she has protected her child, and set things right. The
guilt and shame represented by Beloved no longer has any hold on
her; consequently, Beloved disappears.
With the end of the Civil War and the issue of nationwide
emancipation, female ex-slaves were expected to pick up the
pieces and move on as if nothing had happened. As if the memories
of rape and violation were something that could be easily left
behind; as if life could be normal again, if they even knew what
a normal life was. The difficulty in maintaining such a facade is
the main theme of the novel Beloved.
"It was not a story to pass on"(336), and yet it is. What
happened in this story cannot be allowed to happen again.
Beloved is an unsanitized picture of slavery and its
consequences, a condemnation of the violations that humans impose
upon each other. That the presence of Beloved is still felt, long
after the players have left the stage, is representative of the
scars that remain on the hearts and minds of women, that such
horrors could be visited upon their sisters once.
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