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African folklore traditions connect
with the American present in Beloved:
the character of Beloved herself appears
to embody the belief that the dead
return to Earth in the form of spirits.nephew to list her human and
animal characteristics, and the
occasion when his boys pinned her
down and drank her breast milk.
Paul D keeps his memories in a
rusted “tobacco tin buried in his
chest where a red heart used to be.”
Baby Suggs remembers the births
of seven children from different
fathers and losing them all.Beloved
The embodiment of the hurtful
past is Beloved, a young woman
in unspoiled shoes and a silk dress
who insinuates herself into the
household after Paul D drives
away the baby poltergeist. This
attention-seeking woman with
baby-smooth skin is violently
selfish and has an inexplicable
knowledge of Sethe’s past. Sethe is
slow to recognize what for Denver
is obvious. Beloved is a revenant (a
person who has died but come back
to life): Sethe’s dead baby grown to
womanhood and craving the love
she has been denied. She is thepersonification of Sethe’s guilt,
both destroyer and enabler, who
coaxes out stories that have been
too difficult to articulate. Her own
story in child-speak recalls the
cramped hold of slave ships and
bodies tipped into the sea. Beloved
seems to embody the suffering
of the 60 million and more, but
nothing is certain.
The true element to be “beloved”
is a sense of self. Reclaiming self,
a central theme in Morrison’s work,
is an imperative as there is nothing
in the landscape for ex-slaves to
own. Robbed of normal family life,
mated, traded, and their offspring
sold on, slaves are defined by
their enslavement. Starting with
these first tentative steps taken
in freedom, the events in the novel
presage the long road ahead. In the
1950s the protagonist of Ellison’s
Invisible Man was still in search
of a self, and we can hear the first
notes of Martin Luther King’s civil
rights rhetoric in Baby Suggs’
sermon in the forest: “in this here
place, we flesh; flesh that weeps,
laughs; flesh that dances on bare
feet in grass. Love it.” Pride in
race, sex, and self is the healing
medicine, because, as Paul D tells
Sethe, “you your best thing.” ■CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is one of the
America’s most powerful
literary voices, and the first
African-American woman to
win the Nobel Prize in
Literature (1993), among her
numerous other awards. Born
Chloe Anthony Wofford in
1931 into a working-class Ohio
family, she grew up with a
love of reading, music, and
folklore. She earned a BA from
Howard University and an MA
from Cornell. She was married
for a short time to Jamaican
architect Harold Morrison,
with whom she had two sons.
Morrison wrote her first four
novels while working as an
editor in New York. Her fifth,
Beloved, was widely acclaimed
and made into a movie. From
1989 to 2006 Morrison held
a professorship at Princeton
University. In 2005 she wrote
the libretto for Margaret
Garner, an opera based on the
story that inspired Beloved.
She continues to write, and
to speak against censorship
and repression of history.Other key works1970 The Bluest Eye
1977 Song of Solomon
2008 A Mercy
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