February 2020: Beloved (Morrison)

Post date: Mar 21, 2020 8:51:49 PM

In February, we read a novel that is almost universally recognized as a modern classic: Toni Morrison’s Beloved. This haunting account of the traumatic legacy of slavery deserves its place in the pantheon of great literature. In describing their experiences, more than one member remarked that they had been “blown away” by the story and by the power of Morrison’s prose, a reaction that seemed the same whether individuals were reading the book for the first time or rereading it after a break of a few years. (If you have not yet read the book, be forewarned that the following description contains a spoiler or two.)

Morrison based her book on the true story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who murdered one of her children and attempted to kill the others, in order to save them from being returned to bondage by the slave hunters who had found them. In an interview that she gave to the BBC’s World Book Club, Morrison explained that she had been thinking about the sacrifices that women make in caring for others. When she read of Garner’s case, she tried to get her head around how something so horrible and grotesque as murdering one’s own child could come from something as lovely and nurturing as a mother’s love. She began her writing with that question, but the story really took shape when she realized that, as she puts it:

“the person who ought to answer that question would be the girl she killed. Nobody else had that legitimacy. And so, when she surfaced, then everything else was clear. That is to say, I knew that I had to have a ghost, but I also wanted her to have a plausible real life. And, you know, everything emanated from there."

(To hear the interview: go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00qbnhs)

The novel that grew from this starting point beautifully explores this dichotomy between otherworldly elements and reality, leaving the reader constantly struggling to figure out which is more terrifying and which the more likely source of sanity and redemption. Set in the years just after the end of slavery, the narrative begins with a description of a house that is full of the spite of a murdered child, an ominous, invisible, and restless spirit that breaks things and causes unease. The family that live in the house deal with the spirit as best they can, until two sons run away and the elderly matriarch dies, leaving only Sethe, the middle-aged mother of the long dead child, and Denver, her teenaged daughter. Into this haunted household, walks Paul D, a man who was enslaved at the same farm as Sethe in Kentucky years before. Angered by the spirit’s hijinks and the effect that they have on the women of the house, Paul D orders it to leave. Surprisingly, it obeys his command and the three of them settle down into what might become a normal family life, until the day a strange young woman appears at their home, a young woman who remembers nothing of her past except that her name is “Beloved,” the same word that is carved on the tombstone of Sethe’s murdered child.

Beloved is not an easy novel to read. Not only is the subject matter difficult, the narrative shifts back and forth in time and from the point of view of several different characters. As we learn details about Paul D and Sethe’s lives, we realize that the murdered infant is only one of many things haunting the characters in the novel. Their experiences have left behind traumas that shape their thoughts and emotions in ways that no supernatural force could achieve. We come to learn about these traumas in bits and pieces. Some we come upon unexpectedly, some are hinted at but withheld so long, we are not sure that we’ll ever learn the truth. The result is disorienting and sometimes confusing. Morrison planned for the reader to struggle with the book. As she wrote in the foreword to the 2004 edition:

“I wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment as the first step into a shared experience with the book’s population—just as the characters were snatched from one place to another, from any place to another, without preparation or defense. [… ] In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and our of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietude of everyday life would be disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must get out of the way.”

In our discussion, several members commented on the book’s confusing nature, though most found it suitable to the subject matter in the ways Morrison describes. We felt that the book understood the nature of trauma and was able to explore themes of loss, love and recovery in ways that a non-fiction book, or a more straightforward novel, could not. We also talked about whether we thought Beloved was a ghost. Morrison provides another possible account for her origins, and we discussed how much would change, if she had a non-supernatural, though equally troubling, backstory. We were glad that Morrison kept both options open, leaving it for the reader to decide for themselves, or to leave it an open question, if they choose.

In the BBC interview, Morrison mentions that she never wants to write a book without a happy ending and Beloved is certainly not devoid of hope. About two-thirds of the way through the book, Sethe asserts that Beloved’s return has made everything all right. Sethe can forget about everything that has happened to her and about everyone outside of her house. All she wants to do is to explain things to Beloved, to tell her what happened, though she reassures herself that no explanations are needed, that Beloved already understands. However, her focus on Beloved brings Sethe close to madness and, eventually, to starvation. In the end, the real hope for Sethe is to be found in the living. It is her daughter Denver, her lover Paul D, and the members of the community in which she lives, that can save her from the pain of her memories.

As outlined above, Morrison began the novel with questions about how women can lose themselves in their love for others and with the idea that only the dead might be in a position to judge the living. However, the novel ends with Paul D’s call for Sethe to value herself before others. “You your best thing, Sethe,” he tells her, and it seems possible that one day she might actually believe him. Rather than passing judgement, it seems, Beloved has merely passed on. The book closes with the claim that she will be forgotten, but as a reader who had been drawn so masterfully into the world of these characters, I found it hard to believe that part was true.