Category: Beloved

Newton’s third law states that every action has a reaction. If someone were to push over a cup, it would fall. The cup would not stay stationary; it would react to the force being exerted upon it. If someone were to enslave another person, declaring them property and prohibiting their liberty, there would be a reaction as well, on a much more profound level. Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which encapsulates American history in the emotional story of former slave Sethe and her family, serves as a testament to this. Morrison suggests that the dehumanization of slaves causes their loss of identity, resulting in some succumbing to insanity, others burying their memories, and others suffering a complete severance from their true purpose.

Morrison uses the character Halle, who is driven insane by slavery, to illustrate slavery’s destruction of identity. Halle, Sethe’s husband, in many ways, is different from the rest of the slave community. While many see freedom as an unattainable dream, Halle believes that freedom is possible and that there is a reward for hard work. His hopeful nature is reflected in his buying his mother, Baby Suggs, freedom through extra labor. His perspective changes, however, after he witnesses Schoolteacher’s nephews rape Sethe and take her milk. Powerless to defend Sethe, Halle experiences for the first time the helplessness of slavery. In realizing his inescapable reality, Halle’s optimism, an inherent part of his identity, is thwarted, leading him to insanity. In defeat, he sits down at the butter churn and smears butter all over his face, no longer the strong man he was. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass illuminates Morrison’s suggestion about slavery’s destruction of identity. In the narrative, he tells the story of slave masters’ use of alcohol as a tool to manipulate their slaves into believing slavery is better than freedom. In the slave masters doing this, slaves experience a temporary state of insanity, believing that “there was little to choose between liberty and slavery,” and that they “had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum” (Douglass, 84-85). Their belief is similar to that of Halle, who succumbs to the belief that freedom is impossible, causing him to stop pursuing it. In a broader sense, Morrison employs the character of Halle to show a truth that Douglass recounts in history as well: slavery robs one of their identity.

Another character who Morrison uses to exemplify slavery’s destructive nature on one’s identity is Paul D, who buries the memories of his past. Paul D, who has endured immense hardships, represses his memories by figuratively putting them all into a tobacco tin in his chest in place of where his heart used to be. Morrison’s use of the tobacco tin in Paul D’s chest demonstrates slavery’s theft of identity, as well as humanity, for Paul D, believes he, like tobacco, is a mere product of slavery, and that all he is defined by is his enslavement. In other words, the tobacco tin serves to show that Paul D is psychologically branded by slavery. Paul D describes to Sethe how the events at Sweet Home dehumanized him, saying, “Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub” (Morrison, 86). Paul D’s tobacco tin is rusted shut and “nothing in this world could [can] pry it open” (Morrison, 133), which prevents him from dealing with the pain he suffered and from moving past it. Essentially, Morrison suggests that the dehumanization that Paul D experiences as a slave renders him numb, and therefore unable to develop a sense of self.

Once again, Morrison shows how the dehumanization of slavery takes one’s identity through Sethe’s loss of motherhood. An inherent part of Sethe’s identity is her children. Time after time, she makes sacrifices for the well-being of her children as they are “all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful” (192). Sethe is stripped of that identity when the Schoolteacher comes to 124 to recapture her and her children. Faced with the potential of slavery unforgivingly breaking apart her family, like many other slaves experience in the novel, Sethe tries to kill her children. She succeeds in killing her baby girl, and by doing so, psychologically scars her other children who bear witness to it. Thus, her efforts to shield her children from a life of certain trauma and dehumanization inadvertently break the bond of trust between her and her children. Morrison reflects on this break of trust in Sethe’s sons, Howard and Buglar, leaving 124 because they are haunted by the baby ghost and by the memory of Sethe trying to kill them. The distrust is also apparent in Sethe’s youngest, Denver, as she warns Beloved, “Don’t love her [Sethe] too much. Don’t. Maybe it’s still in her the thing that makes it all right to kill her children” (Morrison, 243-244). The fear Sethe’s children feel for her drives them away from her, robbing Sethe of the motherhood that defines her, which Morrison crafts to show slavery’s destruction of identity.

Whether enslavement causes insanity, emotional repression that strangles the self, or a permanent loss of one’s primary identity, the result is always that it severs the person’s ability to connect with others and to her or his true self. It robs the person of her or his authenticity and humanity. Without their authentic identities, Halle, Sethe, and Paul D are denied access to their souls and to the human connections that would help sustain them. The dehumanization of slavery destroys who they are. These characters are left to find their best selves under trauma and duress, and while Morrison’s novel does not tell us the outcome, likely, Sethe and Paul D do not likely recover, and, certainly, Halle does not. There is no “happy” ending under slavery, only profound loss.

In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Morrison writes about the horrific events that take place for a former slave, Sethe, the protagonist, and her family. Morrison utilizes Biblical symbolism, allusions, and direct quotes to alleviate the reader’s understanding of the novel. These Biblical references implicate the spiritual faith of Sethe and her family. Morrison incorporates these literary devices to strengthen the overall theme of the story and its characters.

All through Beloved, Morrison makes direct references to the Bible to make the presence of the theme, of Christianity known. The novel opens with an epigraph quoting the Epistle to the Romans. The quote “I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” from the Epistle to the Romans is present to alert the readers that the theme of Christianity will be present throughout the story. The epigraph taken from the Epistle to the Romans alludes to Hosea 1:6 which states God will have mercy upon the prostitute and her children. The verse from the Book of Hosea suggests that God will be merciful towards Sethe and her children, despite her actions. In Chapter 26, Morrison references the Ten Commandments when stating how Beloved should honor her parents. While discussing Beloved’s wrong doings and defiance, the quote “Honor thy mother and Father” from the Book of Exodus is stated. Morrison references this because it states the fifth of the ten commandments mentioned in Exodus. This reminds the readers of the theme of Christianity in the novel. All things considered, Morrison references the Bible to strengthen the characterization of Sethe and her family to clarify the theme of the novel.

In Beloved, Baby Suggs is symbolically connected to Jesus Christ to depict the Christ-like figure Baby Suggs is represented as. From the murder of Beloved, Baby Suggs “cleanses” Sethe before she allows Sethe to see her older children. Morrison intentionally stated that Baby Suggs “cleansed” Sethe to express her Christ-like personality. The washing of Sethe is symbolically connected to Jesus Christ washing the feet of his disciples, as a sign of respect for them. Later in the novel, Baby Suggs makes an abundant amount of food at her gathering when her few pies grow too many. Morrison purposefully illustrates the significance of the increasing amount of food that Baby Suggs cooks to correlate her gathering with Jesus Christ as he feeds the multitude of people. As Jesus is said to have multiplied the small amount of fish and bread into enough food to feed thousands, Baby Suggs seems to have done the same. Baby Suggs’ “reckless” generosity is resented by the community gathered at her event as they see it as a sign of her pride. The offense taken by the community only further relates Baby Suggs to Jesus Christ. This is on behalf of the first century’s religious leaders’ jealousy and resentment towards Jesus Christ. In all, these happenings illuminate the theme of Christianity as Baby Suggs is depicted as a Christ-like individual.

Another Biblical symbol present in Beloved is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Morrison alludes to the Four Horsemen by comparing the four white men to the Horsemen, to show the horrors that these men brought upon the characters’ lives in this novel. Unclear of which Horsemen represents which, Morrison directly compares School Teacher and his crew to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. At the beginning of this chapter, Morrison alludes to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Famine, War, Death, and Conquest. Morrison suggests that the cause of Beloved’s death and the events after are the result of the Four Horsemen’s actions. The Horsemen of Death is the root cause of Sethe’s “mercy” towards Beloved by out hurting the hurters. The imagery of death caused by the Apocalypse leads to human choices. The “Apocalypse” leads Sethe into murdering her child, Beloved to prevent her from experiencing a life of torture. After the murder, Baby Suggs is forced to put her work above family when she takes Sethe’s two boys and not Denver. After the event of Beloved’s death, Baby Suggs comes to take Sethe’s children. Morrison purposefully states how Baby Suggs had to take the two boys as they were the only ones old enough to continue working. Baby Suggs had to exchange Denver for the dead child as Sethe was being taken to jail. Ultimately, Morrison makes a direct reference to the Horsemen to explain Sethe’s actions and to provide justification for them.

As expressed, In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Morrison makes Biblical references to illuminate the overall theme of Christianity. These references provide clarification to the characters and their actions and show how each character is related to God in some way, shape, or form.

In the second half of the novel, the readers can see a desire in the main characters to possess and lay claim to Beloved upon her emergence from the river. This desire is not surprising to the readers since learn early on in the novel that Sethe has had and lost Beloved and that being a slave prevented individuals from being able to possess something and claim it as their own. So, being able to “possess” Beloved is integral to Sethe and vice versa for Beloved. Sethe mostly focuses on her desire to be a mother she was never able to be for her Beloved.

Being a good mother is important to Sethe since many slaves were separated from their families and were sold off and these events result in her being afraid and it leaves her thinking that she is unable to be the best mother for her children. Before escaping Sweet Home, Sethe was never able to claim anything as her own. Her marriage to Halle and having her children is the first chance that Sethe can finally claim something as her own. Having a family of hers leads to her needing to protect it when she finally gets Beloved back. This changes after Halle’s death and Sethe’s escape from Sweet Home. When she arrives at 124, she and her children enjoy their newfound freedom before the harsh reality of her past comes back to haunt Sethe. To spare her children, Sethe commits the ultimate sin, and kills one of her children, to prevent her from becoming a slave like Halle and herself. As a result of Beloved being taken from Sethe at an early age, her reappearance at 124 several years later prompts Sethe to take a protective claim over her daughter.

Sethe states “Beloved, she is my daughter. She is mine” (Pg.230) which demonstrates that her love for Beloved is different than her love for her other daughter Denver. This could be the result of when she had and then lost Beloved. Upon her daughter’s return, Sethe shows more of a protective, possessive type of love towards Beloved. The relationship between Sethe and Beloved is a dependent, almost parasitic one that concludes in Sethe’s deterioration. Throughout the novel, Sethe is blind to this, since she desires to possess Beloved even if this means that she must forfeit her well-being to achieve this. This type of possessive love that Sethe displays is the result of Sethe eagerly wanting to possess something that she had lost and Sethe exhibits this type of love that is unlike the love she showed to Denver. Sethe latches on to Beloved and will do anything that Beloved wants her to to keep her. Beloved’s presence allows Sethe to see and enjoy these things, and Morrison writes, “Because you mine and I have to show you these things and teach you what a mother should” (222). Sethe not only wants to call Beloved “hers”, but she also shows her daughter a compensatory type of love that she has never needed to show her other children to make up for her actions that took her daughter’s life.

Beloved shows the reader that people will forever be haunted by harsh times in their lives, specifically slavery. Although Beloved was not the reason slavery was so horrific for Sethe, her murder happened because of the trauma slavery caused. Beloved haunts Sethe and doesn’t allow her to move on from her past. Paul D’s tin can represents his heart, forcing him to remember all the memories he tried so hard to keep away. Beloved haunts Sethe and the family as an actual person, but her presence is meant to bring back traumatic memories, combining the past and present. Beloved as a ghost is a constant reminder to Sethe of the mistake she made, and of the traumatic memories, she will never forget due to slavery. Using Beloved as a ghost gave a supernatural figure to 124, giving it a creepy setting. It was able to make the family afraid in their own home. Establishing this supernatural setting was important because it showed how the family would always be uncomfortable.

The supernatural is a way for any lingering spirit or emotions. As Beloved’s purpose is to remind people of slavery and that the past can always come back to haunt you, the supernatural is a great way for that to be seen in the novel. Most of the time, people are afraid of ghosts even though they can’t physically hurt you and a ghost may not be at peace with what happened in their physical life on Earth. These ideas are similar to Beloved because she took offense to Sethe killing her and could not let it go. More importantly, her connection with slavery haunts Sethe and that memory can occur at any time no matter how far she thinks she is from her past. By Morrison making Beloved a ghost, she can convey the idea that the past will always stay with someone. Sethe killed Beloved, but that doesn’t mean that it will be left in the past just because it happened in the past. Beloved signifies that the past will come back to haunt you and you cannot avoid it. Also, Beloved represents how the times of slavery in her past will haunt her life forever, the fear that drives many of her actions. The idea of 124 being haunted by a ghost brings a strange feeling to the novel, as it is clear that Sethe is being haunted by her dead daughter. However, the fact that she comes back from being a ghost to a girl, is the most important moment in the novel. It brings together the theme that everything in the past can come back to haunt you. By making Beloved a ghost in the novel, Morrison highlights things coming back from the past to haunt you. In this case, it is slavery that is coming back to haunt Sethe and the other characters in the book. As much as they try, they cannot get rid of the horrible memory of slavery.

By making Beloved a ghost, the past can never really be forgotten and pushed down. Since Beloved was murdered as a baby, I believe that she uses her evil spirit to voice her feelings about how she feels about her mother murdering her. Her aggressive spirit also shows readers that she cannot let go of her past and wants to haunt her mother for the choices she has made. She also wants to seek revenge against her mother. Overall, the spirit of Beloved shows that people will forever be haunted by dark times in their personal lives as well as in history, dark memories cannot just disappear.

Toni Morrison’s critical approach, described in Playing in the Dark, often involves the scrutiny of the binary and the denaturalization of those racial binaries. In her novel Beloved, the racial binary is accompanied by the idea of family, where the dominant group can achieve the ideal family while the subordinate group cannot. As a form of othering, the white patriarchal structure marginalizes slave families by making it seem as though the heteronormative family structure—husband, wife, and children—is unattainable by them. Most importantly, it is understood that the production of kin allowed by the heteronormative family structure is unattainable to the black family. This is the environment in which Beloved was murdered, and her soul lingers in this turmoil. Beloved represents the need to confront the past to move on, and more specifically transcend the past that prevents the black family from achieving kinship.

In “Kinless or Queer: The Unthinkable Queer Slave in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and Robert O’Hara’s ‘Insurrection: Holding History’,” Rebecca Balon establishes several important ideas relating to slave family dynamics. To explain the nonnormativity of slave sexuality about queer theory’s common practice of equating nonnormativity and queerness, Balon refers to David Halperin’s work in Saint Foucault. By definition, “queer” is whatever is at odds with the normal, dominant ideology, delineating any positionality against the normative. It is not restricted to lesbians and gay men but rather is available to any sexually marginalized group or person. This definition includes black slaves because of their sexual disqualification. As queer individuals face oppression through the idea that they do not live as “normal” men and women, black individuals are also deemed as not-normal for their gender. When Garner of Sweet Home is talking about his slaves, the man he is conversing with says, “Ain’t no nigger men” (Morrison 12). If black men and women are not perceived as truly being men and women, they cannot form an acceptable heteronormative family.

For Baby Suggs, her sexual relationships and the production of offspring do not reflect heteronormative patriarchal values. As the narrator says, “Men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen, or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers” (28). Sethe has a much different experience. When she arrives at Sweet Home, the male slaves make a symbolic gesture of civilized, manly restraint and they “let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose even though each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her” (Morrison 10). They wait for a year for her to choose a husband, battling to control their sexual urges, so the sexual agency and self-determination of all parties are reaffirmed. The plantation master establishes Sweet Home as a place where the conditional humanity of slave identity relies on heterosexual monogamy (Balon 144). She further exercises her agency in the making of her wedding dress, asserting her humanity through the performance of legitimacy usually denied to slaves: “When he asked her to be his wife, Sethe happily agreed and then was stuck not knowing the next step. There should be a ceremony, shouldn’t there? A preacher, some dancing, a party, something” (Morrison 31). Her relationship with Halle embodies heteronormative ideals of choice, monogamy, and childbearing. Sethe’s humanity is most complete once she is “Halle’s woman. Pregnant every year” (Morrison 10). In the context of the novel, humanity, manliness, motherhood, and heteronormativity are mutually constitutive, and the reader witnesses the damage this causes when reality breaks the heteronormative façade established at Sweet Home.

While Balon mostly agrees with Halperin’s definition of queerness, she argues that the lack of kinlessness compounds its relation to blackness: “The kinlessness of slaves is represented as a traumatic experience of involuntary nonnormative sexuality” (143). Women give birth to their children knowing that they will see them forced into slavery and that their children will have no choice but to go on producing more stock for their masters. In Beloved, Baby Suggs explains to Denver, “Slaves not supposed to have pleasurable feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them. Still, they were not supposed to have pleasure deep down. She told me not to listen to all that. That I should always listen to my body and love it” (Morrison 247). “Sexuality” as a term of implied relationship and desire is unsubstantiated in its ability to define any of the familiar arrangements under a system of enslavement (Balon 221). Experiencing sexual pleasure means possessing at least a degree of sexual agency, which by association means human agency. The commodification of black bodies strips the slaves of their ability to have socially acceptable relationships with their sexual partners and with their families and therefore establishes kinlessness. Beloved is a casualty of this kinlessness. As Balon discusses, the lack of futurity—renewed or continuing existence—allows Sethe to murder her daughter. Morrison writes, “I’ll explain to her, even though I don’t have to. Why I did it. How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her” (Morrison 236). The dynamic between the slave mother and child is at odds with the normal mother/child relationship because of their marginalized positionality.

After murdering her child, Sethe and her family are further othered in their new community after escaping slavery. The past is always looming over 124 because of Beloved’s ghostly presence, but that is a past that no one wants to remember. That is, seemingly, until Paul D arrived. Sethe’s daughter, Denver, witnesses as the narrator says, “They were a twosome, saying ‘Your daddy’ and ‘Sweet Home’ in a way that made it clear both belonged to them and not to her. That her own father’s absence was not hers… Only those who knew him (‘knew him well’) could claim his absence for themselves” (Morrison 15). Sethe is more resistant to this “memory” at first which, as she relays several times, is painful for her to address. When he arrives at 124, Paul D asks Sethe, “No man? You here by yourself?” (Morrison 11). Paul D requests that Sethe and Denver make room for him in the family, and he reminds Sethe of what life could be with a man to assume the role in a heteronormative family: “What she knew was that the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else’s hands” (Morrison 21). The central conflict of the novel occurs between the patriarchal father figure and heterosexual husband, Paul D, and the nonnormative, overly-sexual spark or perverse desire, Beloved. She represents the failed imitations of kinship bonds created among slaves and their lasting destructiveness on the black psyche, while Paul D signifies reproductive futurity (Balon 143). Paul D, as a positive influence about Beloved, wages a battle against the ghost upon his arrival at 124, causing various physical destruction to the home: “‘God damn it! Hush up!’” Paul D was shouting, falling, reaching for anchor… ‘She got enough without you. She got enough!’ The quaking slowed to an occasional lurch, but Paul D did not stop whipping the table around until everything was rock quiet….It was gone…” (Morrison 22-23). It appears as though Paul D has won ownership of the house, and Denver miserably watches the fallout: “Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of the only other company she had” (Morrison 23).

In the silence left behind by Beloved, Denver, and Sethe begin to allow Paul D to infiltrate the space. In her work “Reconstructing Kin: Family, History, and Narrative in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’,” Dana Heller discusses Sethe, Denver, and Paul D’s assumption of a family form as they head towards the carnival, passing a fence where “Up and down . . . old roses were dying…. The closer the roses got to death, the louder their scent, and everybody who attended the carnival associated it with the stench of the rotten roses” (Morrison 57). This association of the new family with decay and death serves to foreshadow Beloved’s resurrection. Heller asserts that Morrison evokes the fragile new freedom that Sethe experiences through the restoration of kinship (110). On the way into the carnival, Sethe notices the shadows of the three of them—Paul D, Denver, and Sethe—holding hands. Denver is pleased that Paul D’s presence seems to humanize her and her mother in the eyes of their community. People say hello to her, smile at her mother, and make conversation with Paul D. The narrator says, “Sethe returned the smiles she got. Denver was swaying with delight. And on the way home, although leading them now, the shadows of three people still held hands” (Morrison 59). As the family previously lived in the shadow of Beloved’s murder, they find light in Paul D’s ability to fill the missing patriarchal role in their family.

From the moment of her arrival, Beloved is enamored with Sethe. The narrator describes, “Sethe was licked, tasted, eaten by Beloved’s eyes” (Morrison 68). When she asks Sethe to tell her a story, the interaction is sexually charged. Sethe was “sliding into sleep when she felt Beloved touch her. A touch no heavier than a feather but loaded, nevertheless, with desire. Sethe stirred and looked around. First at Beloved’s soft new hand on her shoulder, then into her eyes. The longing she saw there was bottomless. Some plea barely in control” (Morrison 69). Morrison’s plot does not require this reading of homosexual interactions between the mother and daughter; however, as Balon points out, the suggestive language that describes their infatuations with each other incorporates homoeroticism to the nonnormative sexualities Beloved displays.

Interestingly, Balon also argues that Beloved’s nonnormative sexual influence on the other characters of the text represents the perversity of Sethe’s attraction to the trauma caused by kinlessness (143). It appears that Heller would agree with this, as she suggests that resistance to moving on from the past will result in the haunting by the spirits of that unresolved past (106). Beloved’s ghost is a repercussion of this unresolved past, the kinlessness caused by the nonnormative sexuality of slaves. The struggle between Paul D and Beloved is caused by his desire to re-establish heteronormative patriarchy by banishing her ghost. Beloved as a casualty of kinlessness reacts to the presence of the heteronormative patriarchal figure in a way that represents a queering force; she is nonnormative by existence and works in opposition to normativity. As Sethe is given the opportunity at a future, we see Beloved’s infatuation with the past, displaying her determination to not let her mother forget: “Sethe learned the profound satisfaction Beloved got from storytelling. It amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost” (Morrison 69). Heller argues Beloved will continue acting as the undoing of the kinship structure until she understands the structure, and the way she reaches it is by demanding that the past be remembered through stories (108). She has this need for stories that without which Sethe can never move on, take hold of her life, and establish true kinship.

Works Cited

1. Balon, Rebecca. “Kinless or Queer: The Unthinkable Queer Slave in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ and Robert O’Hara’s ‘Insurrection: Holding History’.” African American Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 2015, pp. 141-155, The Johns Hopkins University Press, www.jstor.org/stable/24589733. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.
2. Heller, Dana. “Reconstructing Kin: Family, History, and Narrative in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’.” College Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, 1994, pp. 105-117, The Johns Hopkins University Press, www.jstor.org/stable/25112107. Accessed 10 Oct. 2019.
3. Morrison, Toni. Beloved, Random House, 1987.

The novels Eva Luna authored by Isabel Allende and Beloved by Toni Morrison have both shown great character development, through the overcoming challenges they went through.

In both literary works, the main characters struggle with “love”. Sethe in Beloved is an independent woman who made her way through life on her own, due to severe troubles with slavery, which took control over her life, trying to protect her children and herself. Clarisa is a short story in the novel Eva Luna, Clarisa being the protagonist of this story was freer than Beloved, even though she was still responsible for her two children with difficulties, she had a safe home, and a life of friends and family. Both works were written around the period of the 1980s. Thus sharing similar aspects and perspectives of gender norms, inequality, and justice.

Toni Morrison portrays Sethe to be this broken, incompetent black slave who over time we learn was a very strong woman, who got hurt too many times and went through enormous trauma, not only as a slave but as a human who has lost many loved ones and ought to have many emotional and physical issues after having experienced this. Morrison depicts Sethe as a mother whose death is far more disenthralling than life in the bonds of slavery. The novel is a faithful representation of the experience of a black enslaved woman. Married at the age of fourteen, and expecting her fourth child at the age of nineteen, Sethe was forced to bear this responsibility during the early stages of her life. The slave owner’s intention of using slave women was for childbearing. Furthermore, the novel is significant for the role that the mothers play, depicting the prosperity that the mothers had for their children.

Sethe manages to run away from the slave house, this is the first step in changing her life. Slavery strips individuals of their freedom, families, and sanity. Sethe was bought into slavery at the age of thirteen by Mr Garrner. When having lost her child/murdered her daughter she needed to mourn in some way, she wanted “beloved” to be engraved on a gravestone “Ten minutes for seven letters. She thought it would be enough rutting along with the tombstone” (Page 5), she had to have sex with a man who was going to engrave the name on the stone for free. This is one of the disgusting events that Sethe sacrificed for her family. Sethe’s endeavor to murder her children may be a coordinated result of the abuse she endured during the time she was a slave. Being a slave shatters one’s self-esteem, self-worth, and pride. “Anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore.”(Page 125) Here, Sethe wants Beloved to understand the decisions she had to make. That being “dirty” is much worse than death, and living is greater torture than being killed, which would justify her killing her children, she never planned to be impregnated, yet chose a better option for her children than for them to experience what she had gone through. Over everything, in such a world, life beneath slavery compared to no life at all, death wins.

Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law is a fostering spiritual leader within the community. Sethe, however, is traumatized by her happenings as a slave and her maternal instincts become warped. As a consequence of this Denver; her daughter, took action, doing all the work to cover the expense of the house, as Sethe became too distracted in her love affairs with a former slave, Paul D. Denver took the initiative to confront Beloved when nobody could, this shows character growth, and the ability to overcome challenges. Denver who is only a child became mature, independent, and like a mother figure to Beloved. She transformed as a person and succeeded in dealing with a problem; communicating with Beloved. Sethe may have seen Beloved as a reminder of the crime she had committed, the spirit of Beloved could have been an analogy of the past haunting her. Ghosts symbolize a lingering warning to beware of adverse circumstances.

The short stories of Eva Luna look at gender norms, the concept of balance and justice, corruption, and lies. The novel is based on the personal experience of Isabel Allende. Clarisa explores the theme of gender norms in Latin American culture. “If you refuse your husband your body, and he falls into the temptation of seeking solace with another woman, you bear the moral responsibility.” (Page 53) This only applies to the men, if the women seek temptation it is considered a sin. Clarisa ensured the best lives for her children and the community. She does all kinds of jobs to help support her family, even in poverty, she contributes to others and practices charitable acts despite her poverty. Even when being robbed she was not scared on the contrary she was wise. She asks the robber jokingly “What will u possibly steal from me” (Page 46) she makes him realize that stealing is not the solution, he threatens her life and she makes him tea and gives him money. She was a saint and her only sin was that she had failed to please her husband. She had sex with another man, only so that her lastborns were strong and would help her take care of the family, due to her husband being in self-isolation all the time and never helping. Clarisa never accepted charity from others, many did not know her financial problems, yet she made sure to give to those who needed help and support moreover ensured that people received donations from larger companies.

Clarisa was obliged, to get rid of all their possessions and acquire multiple jobs, to keep her family sustained. As her husband was locked up in his office all day long, she brought him food and left it by the door for him. “Clarisa married him because he was the first person to ask her” (Page 44) This demonstrates that she was desperate for a family and her mother approved of him, as he is a Judge, indicating that he is smart and wealthy. However, he turned into a recluse, due to not being able to bear the disenchantment of having sired two “disabled” children, and is doomed to a life of self-imposed seclusion. Intimating justice, implicit in the theory of compensation, is that every advantage and disadvantage is balanced, and tilts a certain direction depending on how that person reacts to a situation. He could have had a life of joy with his family but decided on a life of self-pity and misery. “God maintains a certain equilibrium in the universe, and just as he creates some things twisted, he creates some straight; for every virtue, there is a sin, for every joy in affliction, for every evil a good.” (Page 48)

You are the only person responsible for your life. Nothing will change in your life if you are not working towards it, both Novels portray this in a way. The authors dispute Clarisa and Sethe to both be independent and fight for themselves, Clarisa needed help in the house and thus found a solution by giving birth to two strong and healthy boys, even if this meant sinning. Nevertheless, she did everything in her power to try and make up for having cheated. Sethe was distraught and chose to run away. Fighting the battles of rape, discrimination, and anguish, she chose love above all. Both of these characters fight with a sense of wretchedness, Sethe does not hide this, and Clarisa on the other hand seems too perfect. Having to care for two “disabled” children and being disregarded by her husband, pleasing everyone else, and seeming selfless must take a toll on her mentality. Beloved overcame the challenges of slavery, feeling alienated and the past quite literally haunting her. Likewise, Clarisa overcame the challenges of her alienated husband, the gender norms faced, and justice.

Both literary works of the 1980s have shown how two very different people, with different situations, can have very similar triggers and emotional struggles. The protagonists of Beloved and Eva Luna have fought for a better life, finding ways to cope with their wretchedness and live at peace. Through labor, strain, difficulties, and the overwhelmingness of being a woman fighting against the norms, Sethe and Clari

Although Morrison attempts to provide a more complete understanding of the sexual abuse that female slaves were subjected to, she also uses the trope of silence to indicate the impossibility of fully disclosing and voicing such a traumatic event. In Beloved Ella, a former slave, refers to her sexual abuse at the hands of white males as the ‘lowest yet,’ but does not speak about her experience in great detail when recounting it. It is evident, however, that the memory of this abuse remains present in Ella’s mind as she ‘remembered the bottom teeth she had lost to the brake and the scars from the bell were thick as a rope around her waist.’ However, Ella does not succumb to the past as Sethe does, she has ‘been beaten every way but down.’ Ella remembers, with a new sense of power, her rape when approaching Sethe’s house with a group of women. She concentrates her anger on the resistance against Beloved, and the master narrative that has paralyzed Sethe. Both Ella and Denver recognize that Beloved’s return marks the importance of the story of Sethe’s past, a story that implores to be told because ‘nobody was going to help her unless she told it – told all of it.’ Morrison emphasizes the fact that there are people who ‘believed none of it’ or ‘believed the worst,’ of the testimonies that have been recounted, but there are also individuals like Ella ‘who thought it through.’ This, therefore, indicates that although the slave narrative was scrutinized and questioned by a wealth of people, for individuals who can comprehend the suffering of the survivors, there is no doubt within their stories. Ella then disrupts the master narrative, and the silence around the victims ‘humanity’, by becoming a listener that enables Sethe to move on from her past that has continued to haunt her. Beloved who is a reminder of a history that can never be fully recovered, is forgotten ‘like a bad dream,’ precisely because ‘Remembering seemed unwise.’ Whereas ‘in the beginning, there were no words,’ the community in Beloved creates a new narrative that allows Sethe to acknowledge her past and live in the future.

Although in the closing of Beloved Morrison testifies to certain experiences that are unable to be re-remembered, there is a sense of encouragement for the community to keep hold of their memories despite their desire to forget these traumatic experiences but to do this in a way that is not debilitating. Although a wealth of literary criticism has defined Morrison’s novel on its basis as a healing or cathartic narrative, this reduces Beloved, and Morrison’s complex strategies, to something exceedingly simplistic. By adopting several characteristics of the slave narrative and attempting to recover the missing parts, there remain examples of silences and omissions within Beloved. This is precisely because it is not possible to attain a full, comprehensive knowledge of the experiences of each individual who was subjected to slavery. This, therefore, raises the question of why there remains an importance to write, and break the silence, about a history that remains predominantly buried. Neo-slave narratives remain important precisely because victims of slavery were silenced for so long by the inscriptions of the master narrative and by the trauma of their own experiences. Morrison, through Beloved, therefore, emphasizes the importance of remembering the suffering of these individuals because they, themselves, found it too painful to voice and those who inflicted this trauma upon them thrived on their continued silence. Morrison, instead, emphasizes the struggles of voicing a traumatic experience and how this remains covered within the slave narrative but can be seen in other documents, such as Jacobs’s letters. Therefore, rather than reading Morrison’s narrative as a form of “healing” or under the assumption that she is claiming to be able to effectively speak for those who are silenced. Morrison’s narrative is more concerned with the survival of individual, and communal, spirit in the face of inhumane situations, and the fact that the silence will remain.

Genre is a set of conventional constraints on the production and interpretation of meaning; providing a set of characteristics and conventions for authors to use as guidelines when writing their texts. Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved written in 1987 can be seen as a form of magical realism in terms of genre because it can be seen as being a distortion effect that points out the realistic view of the modern world while interconnecting the fantasy realm into it; which is what magical realism does to texts. It shows an alternative to reality and usually goes against political regimes; making readers question what is real and what is not. Hence why, Beloved includes both historical and supernatural elements throughout the text; made apparent through the usage of analepsis and prolepsis to make the transition from the present to the past apparent.

Beloved was set in Ohio and based on the editing Black Book in the 1970’s; which was written by Margaret Garner who reported the murder of her children to end their suffering instead of letting them go back to slavery, as she couldn’t reconcile the fact that they were to go back to the place that had to be endured during the slave trade.[footnoteRef:1] Similarly, the main protagonist, Sethe was an ex-slave who fled to South Ohio with her children after her act of infanticide; leading to her ostracisation in the community. Soon after a ghost was deemed to be haunting their house, known to be the daughter that she killed for the same reason Margret killed hers. In the final chapters, Paul D another slave who escaped and endured slavery with Sethe drives out the malicious spirit ruling the house. In its place, a more promiscuous and grown-up version of the ghost possesses the house. This is the title character, a mysterious, strangely child-like young woman of untold origins who does not explain herself clearly. Denver and Sethe soon conclude that this is the murdered infant, has returned, and assumed real-life proportions. [1: Sierra Walton, ‘Beloved: Parallels Between Sethe And Margaret Garner’, Imarreis, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019].]

Therefore, because ‘Beloved’ is based on a true story, the text can be seen as being historical. However, it can also be deemed as being a gothic horror as the incorporation of what is perceived as being ‘Beloved’s’ ghost by the other characters makes it supernatural. This results in the novel having a magical realism genre as it can be seen as implementing the amalgamation of realism and fantasy. This allows for a hydrazation of the natural and the supernatural by focusing on specific historical moments to portray the present day as being a disjunctive reality. Presenting an outward direction toward postcolonial culture as the African diaspora is mythical and magical elements to express experiences without Western notions of history we are failing to address, by using a decolonizing tool; enabling readers to reimagine relationships, land, and the state. When applied to ‘Beloved’ the decolonizing technique is displayed through magical realism conventions such as myths, facts, religion, and historical elements of the piece. Allowing the genre to both enable, yet also restrict meaning.

Firstly, the novel can be seen as enhancing the text via the most important characteristic found in Beloved which is myths. Morrison mainly focuses on the oral culture of African Americans and black historical experiences to enhance her literature by forming a political meaning. This can be accessed by incorporating myths into ‘Beloved’ which brings back the identity that the ancestors built; this was lost through slavery during the 1800’s. She is representing the invisible as contradictory to the real or visible by including folklore of the black rather than authorized beliefs from the Western world. As a result, she commits acts of defamiliarisation by including a mixture of old legends such as the Abiku, Bakalu, and Orisha of West African Yoruba mythology. [footnoteRef:2] Semantically, Abiku is the return of the deceased spirit of a baby, just like ‘Beloved’ does in the text, ‘124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it; as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake’ (pg.3)[footnoteRef:3]. The number ‘124’ connotes the restless spirit that has been left behind after being murdered by Sethe and her uneasiness for revenge. It acts as a marker for the haunting of their house with his of the supernatural, ‘handprints appeared in the cake’ pragmatically relating to the myth of the Akibu babies who torment their mothers when they become spirits. Furthermore, the description of the baby as one who, ‘spits venom’ draws attention to the magical and unnatural element of the play, as it semantically labels the baby as being animal-like as she spits out poison like a snake and seeks revenge on ‘house number 124’. [2: K.S. Krishna Duth and Dr. K. Balakrishnan, ‘Postcolonial Perspective Of Magic Realism In Beloved’, Rjelal.Com, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019].] [3: Toni Morrison, Hortense Chabrier and Sylviane Rué, Beloved (Paris: 10-18, 2015), pp. 1-289.]

To further this idea that the Akibu myth reinforces the hatred that Beloved seeks on 124, readers can also see her being reborn multiple times throughout the novel to emphasize the fact that she is a dangerous spirit. At first as a ‘baby’ then as a grown woman who tries to seduce Paul D, ‘I want you to touch me on the inside part’. This sexual innuendo is rather disturbing as it is assumed that she is meant to embody the spirit of a deceased child, yet even though she is an incarnation of the past, she is the manifestation of the present as she uses her promiscuity of present her desires to Paul D ten though she is meant to be a baby. This represents the abnormality created by magic realism as the Akibu spirits are always hungry, and never know the feeling of being fulfilled, as their life is left fulfilled after becoming deceased at such a young age. ‘It was though sweet things are what she was born for’ and ‘Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, or an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there’ (pg.288) represents her as never being able to leave and being stagnant; never being able to let go as ‘come and go’ suggests that even though she is shown as being gone at the end, she never really leave and is left craving revenge. Critics Duth and Barkishnan suggest that the African American heritage has an immense power to be transformative. It was able to break the assumptions of Western empiricism and question the contradictory terms that magic has from a real viewpoint of another narrative that lacks those assumptions and oppositions. Application of magic realism into the hegemonic Western native binary on which Western realism is based. Moving the discursive power from the comelier to the colonized.[footnoteRef:4] [4: K.S. Krishna Duth and Dr. K. Balakrishnan, ‘Postcolonial Perspective Of Magic Realism In Beloved’, Rjelal.Com, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019].]

However, this interpretation can be criticized for being too deterministic by looking only at the supernatural elements of magical realism. Instead, Beloved can be seen as being an amnesic runaway whom Sethe projects the identity of her dead baby girl as ‘especially her skin, which is so smooth it’s ‘like new’ it’s what a neighbor tells Paul D that there was a runaway girl who had been kept captive by a white man in a nearby house. Therefore, representing the death of an author theory by Roland Barthes, as the magical realism genre helps readers become more open-minded to interpretation.[footnoteRef:5] While the idea that she is an amnesic runaway is more realistic, the earlier interpretation involving the Akibu myth is juxtaposing because while one takes on a more realistic view, the other is more spiritual. [5: Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘From Work to Text’ in Image, Music, Text, ed and Trans Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 142-148; 155-164. ]

However, critic Hendrix claims that the incorporation of myths can be quite limiting for ‘Beloved’ as gothic horror is all about competition. Making experience visceral and immediate is not considered the territory of horror anymore unless you’re describing over-the-top violence. Writing to convey the immediacy of the felt experience is considered the purview of literary fiction, often dismissed as ‘stories where nothing happens’ because the author isn’t focused on the plot but on the felt experience of her characters. Horror has doubled down on its status as a genre, and that kind of writing isn’t considered genre-appropriate. Furthermore, the fact that Sethe, trying hard to ignore the ghost of slavery that threatens to destroy us if we think about it too long. But the bigger reason, as I see it, is that horror has walked away from the literary. It has embraced horror movies, and its pulpy 20th-century roots, while denying its 19th-century roots in women’s fiction. Horror seems to have decided that it is such a reviled genre that it wants no more place in the mainstream. Beloved could not be a better standard-bearer for horror, but it seems that horror is no longer interested in what it represents.[footnoteRef:6] Therefore, Beloved may only be seen as being that runaway girl, not the myth; limiting the interpretation and decolonization for readers. [6: Grady Hendrix and others, ‘Beloved: The Best Horror Novel The Horror Genre Has Never Claimed’, Tor.Com, 2016 [Accessed 3 May 2019].]

Yet, magical realism can be perceived as conveying meaning through the symbolic use of religion and nature; allowing the author to portray the trauma that the protagonist Sethe endures in a defamiliarising way. While the natural imagery of the trees serves primarily as sources of healing, comfort, and life. Denver’s ‘emerald closet’ of boxwood bushes functions as a place of solitude and repose for her. The beautiful trees of ‘Sweet Home’ mask the true horror of the plantation in Sethe’s memory and are used as a form of irony, due to the connotations of ‘Sweet Home’ representing a safe and happy place; yet being exactly the opposite where she was sexually assaulted by the boys who ‘took her milk’ and she was enslaved in. However, regardless Paul D finds his freedom by following flowering trees to the North, and Sethe finds hers by escaping through a forest. By imagining the scars on Sethe’s back as a ‘chokecherry tree’ Amy Denver sublimates a site of trauma and brutality into one of beauty and growth. But as the sites of lynchings and of Saxo’s death by burning, however, trees reveal a connection with a darker side of humanity as well. Furthermore, the religious aspect allows for Beloved’s epigraph, taken from Romans 9:25, to bespeak the presence that Christian ideas will have in the novel. The ‘four horsemen’ who come for Sethe reference the description of the Apocalypse found in the Book of Revelations. Beloved is reborn into Sethe’s world drenched in a sort of baptismal water. As an infant, ‘Denver drinks her sister’s blood along with her mother’s breast milk’ (), which can be interpreted as an act of Communion that links Denver and Beloved and highlights the sacrificial aspect of the baby’s death. Sethe’s act so horrifies the schoolteacher that he leaves without taking her other children, allowing them to live in freedom. The baby’s sacrificial death, like that of Christ, brings salvation. The book’s larger discussions of sin, sacrifice, redemption, forgiveness, love, and resurrection similarly resound with biblical references.[footnoteRef:7] Displaying the modern traits of magical realism as the novel is shrouded in gloom based on trauma. It is this trauma born out of post-Reconstructionism and the former slave experience that becomes the taboo and the guilty pleasure for many readers as they strive to understand the novel’s true meaning. [7: Sparknotes. Com,’ Sparknotes: Beloved: Motifs’, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019].]

Furthermore, the analepsis included in magical realism is seen as an effective technique for the text as it creates an innately visual through her inclusion of a series of cinematic flashbacks where the past intrudes on the present. Yet, while Morrison’s pen was able to omnisciently zoom in and out of her characters’ minds, Demme’s camera was confined to third-person observation, calling for selective scene adaptations and shifting close-ups to accommodate visual art historical timeline to map slave history within the continental United States; instead, the author addresses the impacts of slavery on the internal landscape. [footnoteRef:8] The declarative sentence, ‘Beloved, she my daughter. She mine. She comes back to me of her own free will and I don’t have to explain a thing. I didn’t have time to explain before because it had to be done quickly. Quick. She had to be safe and I put her where she would be. But my love was tough and she is back now.’ Represents Beloved as being taken for a character who reflects the real experience of native Africans who lived through the Middle Passage. In respect thereof, Beloved comes back to reclaim her past. Nevertheless, while Beloved is seen as a ghost by Sethe and other characters in the story, she is meant at the same time to be taken as an actual survivor of a slave ship. In this sense, she is flesh, a human being with her own horrifying story to tell: I am Beloved…I am always crouching the man on my face is dead’. As a traumatized victim, Beloved remains incapable of telling her story except in painful bits and pieces. But these fragments are worked in the text in such a way that what she tells Sethe and Denver and what they think she says are two different things – and yet the same. As a result of this interpretation Beloved can be seen as enabling trauma to be shown through the symbolic representation of a spirit, which Sethe uses as a coping mechanism to heal from slavery. Furthermore, because Beloved terrorizes them, it represents her as being more dominant and putting down those who once put her down; making history visionary and decolonizing the text. [8: Robyn Wilson, ‘Magical Realism In Application To Toni Morrison’s Beloved. – Ppt Download’, Slideplayer.Com [Accessed 3 May 2019].]

However, some critics do not believe that this is an empowering text, created to make ethnic minorities more dominant. Instead, they claim it is a postcolonial hangover, a category used by ‘whites’ to marginalize the fiction of the “other.”[footnoteRef:9]. [9: Derek Alan Baker, ‘Escaping The Tyranny Of Magical Realism? A Discussion Of The Term About The Novels Of Zakas Mda’, Postcolonial Text, 4.2 (2008), 1-20 .]

To conclude, ‘Beloved’ can be categorized as being a magical realism text as it incorporates the convention of the genre via the inclusion of myths, natural and religious imagery, and flashbacks. These conventions enable the text to reinforce the different realistic, supernatural interpretations that readers have of the main antagonist Beloved. Furthermore, it emphasizes her revenge on the house, while also representing Sethe and Paul D’s trauma and healing after encountering enslavement in ‘Sweet Home’. However, some critics do not believe that Beloved can be classed as being a gothic horror, therefore limiting it from having a supernatural and mysterious effect on readers. Additionally, other critics argue that Beloved was only written to marginalize the ‘white’ while excluding the black by incorporating the Civil War and the slave trade into the text. But, the limitations of magical realism are outweighed by the enabling mechanisms and conventions; making the genre more advantageous to the text rather than hindering it.

Bibliography

1. Alan Baker, Derek, ‘Escaping The Tyranny Of Magical Realism? A Discussion Of The Term About The Novels Of Zakas Mda’, Postcolonial Text, 4 (2008), 1-20
2. Barthes, Roland, ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘From Work to Text’ in Image, Music, Text, ed and Trans Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 142-148; 155-164
3. Hendrix, Grady, Stubthe Rocket, Tobias Carroll, Keith DeCandido, Keith DeCandido, and Natalie Zutter, ‘Beloved: The Best Horror Novel The Horror Genre Has Never Claimed’, Tor.Com, 2016 [Accessed 3 May 2019]
4. Krishna Duth, K.S., and Dr. K. Balakrishnan, ‘Postcolonial Perspective Of Magic Realism In Beloved’, Rjelal.Com, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019]
5. SparkNotes. Com,’ Sparknotes: Beloved: Motifs’, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019]
6. Morrison, Toni, Hortense Chabrier, and Sylviane Rué, Beloved (Paris: 10-18, 2015), pp. 1-289
7. Walton, Sierra, ‘Beloved: Parallels Between Sethe And Margaret Garner’, Imarreis, 2017 [Accessed 2 May 2019]
8. Wilson, Robyn, ‘Magical Realism In Application To Toni Morrison’s Beloved. – Ppt Download’, Slideplayer.Com [Accessed 3 May 2019]

Two of the most powerful bucks that I have ever read were The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Beloved by Toni Morrison. Both books have completely different plots where one book focuses on the trials and tribulations of the main character Celie and the other depicts the life of a black female slave in the pre-civil War days in Ohio. These two books have such different diverse plots, but both show the life and characteristics of not only black women but all women back in the 1800’s. From years back to the 21st century now it has been a struggle for black women being able to find their true identities and break the stereotypes put on them by both black men and white people. Where the black women in stories are always maids or housekeepers. Also, where black women who are very confident and independent tend to be seen in a negative light due to speaking up and being their person. 

In The Color Purple Celie was forced to drop out of school because of her stepfather following the death of her mother to take care of her family and the house. In Beloved, Seethe was born into slavery education was the last thing people wanted her to learn. All she was taught by the ones around her was to work the field and care for the house. Her mother didn’t have time to teach or educate her on anything due to being a slave herself. The concern of women having an education wasn’t a top priority, especially with being a black woman. A woman’s job was to reproduce, clean, cook, & take care of the family nothing else. They were taught the rules of the house and whatever a man told them was right. 

In Tony Morrison’s Beloved Grandma Suggs was the light in the dark tunnel. She was the one who tried to keep everyone positive and confident because no one else cared for them but themselves. She was always trying to get all the women to take control of their lives and live life to the fullest despite the circumstances of being in slavery. As a black woman in slavery who was struggling herself, managed to stay positive for not only herself but also the women around her and encourage them to take control showing her toughness and strength as a woman. Sophia, a character in The Color Purple is the same as Grandma shrugs, she just expresses her toughness in a different light. Sophia neglected every stereotype and role that the people around her tried to put on her. She didn’t cook or clean like every other woman and didn’t follow the demands of her husband either. She never allowed herself to be put in a box and lived her truth no matter what man or woman, black or white had to say about it. This type of woman was not common in the 1800s, she kept fighting to keep her identity showing us her toughness. Both characters give you hope in the story and show the true power & strength of a woman. 

 Although the struggles and hardships women were forced to go through in the 1800s were portrayed vividly in both novels, they both also show the sense of “girl power” through the different strong determined female characters. In the novel Beloved, all the women come together to stand up against the Beloved, Seethe’s dead unborn child who is haunting her. The banishing of the ghost brings all the women together to get rid of the ghost and save Seethe from her past while being tested by the pains of slavery just to protect one of their own. In The Color Purple, the strength of a woman is shown through Celie when she finally stands up to Mr. after she finds out he hid her sister’s letters from her for countless years. She finally threatens to leave him and follow Suge Avery, and sticks up for herself against a man who abused her emotionally and physically for years. 

In the 1800s, black people suffered from racial oppression and prejudiced actions, but black women were put into a worse position due to their gender. In both Beloved and The Color Purple rape and abuse was a common theme when dealing with women. In Beloved, the women were only seen as objects, baby makers, and maids, but not actual human beings. They were only seen as useful if they were able to reproduce for the sake of a slave owner’s wealth. In The Color Purple, in Celie’s case, her usefulness came from her lack of confidence in herself. She never questioned anything and did as she was told with no hesitation which made her husband continue to control her life. With that came abuse, which many women have faced throughout the story. In The Color Purple Sophie was an outspoken, independent woman that made her stand out. Compared to the rest of the women she didn’t comply with the rules of men and was her person. With her personality came clashes with many men from her husband leaving her due to not following his commands to her getting beat by the police for disobeying a white man. That led to her arrest and her becoming a personal slave. Black women were always torn down and belittled to break their confidence and not reach their full potential so it would always be possible to keep them under oppression.  

In reading both Beloved and The Color Purple it shows the hardships of women and everything they had to endure. Women were always looked down upon and seen as inferior to everyone, but still, we’re capable of standing strong individually coming together as a community, and keeping each other strong. In both books, the plot was completely different but equally diverse but through the female characters, the author was able to depict the life and characteristics of not only black women, but all women in the 1800’s. 

Sula from the novel Sula is an independent character who tries to avoid attachments and commitments to other people as much as much as possible. However, she violates this sense of independence twice with Nel and Ajax. She later feels rejected when Nel gets married and when Ajax leaves for good.

This form of betrayal leads her to sleep with Nel’s husband. Sula’s character makes the society shun her. She feels isolated and dies a sad woman. Just like Sula, Beloved is a strange character who is too selfish to care about other people’s feelings. Her mother tries to provide her with everything that she wants but she does not appreciate it.

Instead, she throws childish tantrums demanding more from her mother. Her mother goes to the extent of trying to starve herself to provide Beloved with what she wants. The society saw these two women as evil because they had no remorse for what they did. The society, therefore, tries hard to get rid of these women by isolating them. Nobody wanted to be associated with them apart from some close friends and family.

Nel is portrayed as a quiet and obedient girl right from when she was a little girl (Morrison 22). Even in her adulthood, Nel remains to be a calm and composed woman. She gets married after finishing high school because her family strongly believes in social conventions. After Sula had destroyed her marriage, Nel did not seek revenge.

Instead, she spends years thinking that she misses her husband while in the real sense its Sula that she misses. She forgives Sula at her deathbed and also realizes that Sula was not evil as people perceived it. Nel realizes that it was she who was evil by rejoicing in Chicken Little’s death while Sula was so scared about it. Nel accepts the fact that her friendship with Sula was the best thing that ever happened to her. Their friendship was a very strong bond characterized by a love so strong.

Sethe is a desperate woman who kills her children in the name of protecting her from slavery (Morrison 32). Initially, she wanted to kill all her children but succeeded in killing her eldest daughter. Sethe, just like Nel, maintains her calmness and strives hard to provide for her family.

She is obsessed by Beloved due to the guilt of killing her two year old daughter such that she goes without food to meet Beloved’s needs. It takes the intervention of Denver and the community to bring Sethe back to reality. Denver was Sethes daughter. It takes tough situations for Nel and Sethe to realize that something is not right in their lives. For Nel, she came to realize how wrong in life she had been when Sula was about to die. Similarly, had the society not intervened, Sethe would have died of starvation while trying to please, Beloved.

Plot

Beloved is a book that tells of a story of Sethe, a woman who has escaped from slavery in Kentucky to Ohio. Seethe has escaped together with her daughter Denver and settled at 124 Bluestone Road Cincinnati (Morrison 56). Sethe’s home is haunted by a ghost who is believed to be her daughter who died when she was two years old. Paul D a slave who has recently escaped tried to bring a sense of reality to the house by leading the family into a carnival outside the house.

When the family gets home from the carnival, they find a young girl seated outside the house. The girl calls herself Beloved just like Sethe’s dead daughter. Paul D and Denver have a terrible feeling about this girl but Sethe likes the girl so much that she takes her into her house. Sethe showers Beloved with a lot of love such that she goes hungry sometimes just to provide this girl with whatever she needs.

On the other hand, Beloved throws tantrums whenever she doesn’t get her way. Beloved goes as far as possessing Paul D and forcing him to have sex with her. Later, when Pail D finds out how Sethe’s daughter died, he leaves the town for good. Denver asks the black community to help her mother when Beloved’s tantrums become too much. While exorcising Beloved, it is discovered that she was pregnant as a result of the encounters she had with Paul D (Morrison 79).

Sula, on the other hand, is a book also by Toni Morrison exploring the lives of two black, American women Sula Peace and Nel Wright. The two women were best friends despite their different family settings. Nel comes from a stable home where they believe in social conventions.

Sula comes from a family that the society deems as loose. Sula and Nel’s friendship is very tight when they are young girls. Their friendship is affected when Sula accidentally causes the death of Chicken Little a small boy from the neighborhood. They decide to keep this as a secret. After completing high school, both women take different routes in life. Nel settles into the marriage life and becomes a wife and a mother.

Sula disappears from Bottom for ten years a time during which she had many affairs with different men. When she comes back to Bottom, people see Sula as a common enemy. This is because Sula had gone as far as having affairs with white men. They see her as an evil person. Sula kills her friendship with Nel completely when she sleeps with her husband Jade. Jade leaves his family as a result of this. Later, Sula apologizes to Nel on her deathbed (Morrison 210).

Symbolism

A symbol refers to an object, idea or action representing something other than itself. Symbolism is the act of using symbols to represent things. In the book Beloved, Toni uses a ghostly character to show the damage slavery did to the slaves. The character, just like slavery, creates a lot of emotional damage in the form of fear. We are told of how the ghost used to break mirrors and throw things around the house which is so scary.

The slavery just like the ghostly character, created a lot of fear due to the physical torture involved. In Sula, Toni uses Sula to symbolize freedom. Sula chooses to live an autonomous life where she’s free to do anything she pleases. This is because nobody can stop her. However, this freedom comes with its disadvantages because Sula ends up hurting the people around her while exercising her right of freedom.

Conflict

Conflict refers to a disagreement about something. First and foremost, the names of the main characters in both books bring a lot of conflict. Sula Peace name differs with her character. In fact, she is everything but peace. She is the complete opposite of peace. A peaceful person does not go sleeping around with other people’s spouses.

If she had any traces of peace in her, Sula should have confessed to causing Chicken Little’s death. Instead, she decided to keep it a secret (Morrison 34). Beloved should be something or someone that is adored by all because of good deeds. In my own opinion, Toni should have used the name trouble instead of beloved. This beloved character causes people a lot of sleepless nights with her childish tantrums.

In a normal setting, a family should love and protect one another. A family should guard one another because of that blood bond that binds them together. This is not the case in these two novels. In Beloved, Beloved lets her mother suffer by emotionally imprisoning her. She is not satisfied by what her mother offers her and is always asking for more. On the other hand, Sula watches her mother as she burns to death. She had the chance to help her but, she did not (Morrison 201).

Themes

Slavery is a common theme in both books. The whites dominated over the blacks. In Beloved, we are told of how the blacks used to work in the whites plantation. The blacks were underfed and subjected to hard labour. The punishments given to the blacks by their white masters were extremely cruel.

For instance, they were forced to put on a headgear that was so heavy (Morrison 76). In Sula, we learn of a certain master who gives his slave a piece of land convincing him that it was near heaven. After seeing how convenient location of the piece of land is, the whites want to take it and make it a golf course. This is totally unfair of them because they don’t care where the blacks will relocate to.

The blacks dreaded slavery very much, and that is why they took extreme measures to save their loved ones. For instance, Sethe murders her child because she does not want her to suffer in the hands of white masters. Likewise, Eva intentionally lets her leg be run over by a train in order to receive insurance money to support her children.

Immorality is also another theme that features in the novels. We are tempted to think that people involve themselves in immorality to cover the pain caused by slavery. Beloved possesses a man old enough to be her father and has sex with him.

She clearly has no respect for herself or the people around her. Sula, on the other hand, has many affairs with men. Her morals are rotten and just like Beloved, she has no self respect. Rochelle, Nel’s grandmother, used to be a prostitute. The society dislikes people with loose morals and sees them as outcasts.

Betrayal is witnessed in the two novels. Betrayal involves a violation of trust which brings a strain in a relationship between individuals. Both novels feature family and friendship betrayal. In Beloved, Beloved betrays her host Sethe by sleeping with her boyfriend Paul D. Paul D also to some extent betrays, Sethe by leaving for good when she opens up to him about how her daughter died (Morrison 230).

As a friend, Paul should have comforted her and supported her. In Sula, Sula betrays her best friend Nel by sleeping with her husband and consequently breaking up her marriage. Betrayal brings mistrust in a relationship. Once trust is violated, it becomes particularly hard to maintain the same relationship. Betrayal breaks friendships and families.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.

Morrison, Toni Sula. Michigan: Infobase Publishing,1999. Print.