Beloved

Citation

Morrison, T. (2004). Beloved. Vintage. (First published 1987.)

Chapter Summary

Background and Frame

Beloved appeared in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the next year. The novel is dedicated to "Sixty Million and more," a reference to the Africans and their descendants who died because of the Atlantic slave trade, and its epigraph is from Romans 9:25. Its story is loosely drawn from Margaret Garner, who fled slavery in Kentucky to Cincinnati in 1856 and killed her two-year-old daughter when slave catchers arrived. Morrison came across the case in an 1856 newspaper article while editing The Black Book in 1974, and she did not write a historical retelling. The Vintage paperback runs to about 350 to 370 pages depending on the listing, and the author's own note on how the novel began accompanies recent editions; publishers describe it as a foreword or as an afterword depending on the printing. This guide follows the plot in stages.

124 Bluestone Road, 1873

The story begins in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the formerly enslaved Sethe lives with her eighteen-year-old daughter Denver in a house known as 124. They believe the house is haunted by the ghost of Sethe's youngest daughter. Denver is shy and housebound. Sethe's sons Howard and Buglar left home by the age of thirteen, and Baby Suggs, the mother of Sethe's husband Halle, has died.

Paul D's Arrival

Paul D, a man from the Sweet Home plantation where Sethe and Halle were enslaved, comes to the house and drives out the spirit. He persuades Sethe and Denver to go to a carnival, and when they return, a young woman who calls herself Beloved is sitting in front of the house. Sethe takes her in, and Denver cares for her, coming to believe she is her sister returned.

The Story Sethe Tells

Paul D's memories of Sweet Home and a chain gang return, and Stamp Paid shows him a newspaper clipping about a fugitive woman who killed her child. Sethe tells him what happened after her escape: four horsemen came, led by Schoolteacher, and she ran to the woodshed and killed her baby daughter, saying she was "trying to put my babies where they would be safe." Paul D tells her that her love is "too thick" and leaves.

Beloved in the House

Sethe comes to believe that Beloved is the daughter she killed, whose tombstone carries the single word "Beloved". She spends all her time and money on Beloved and loses her job. Beloved grows demanding, and Sethe grows thinner. Denver understands that she must leave the yard and ask the community for help.

The Women Come

Local women come to the house to drive Beloved out. At the same moment Mr Bodwin, the white landlord, arrives to pick up Denver for a job, and Sethe, mistaking him for Schoolteacher, attacks him with an ice pick. The women and Denver hold her back, and Beloved disappears. Paul D returns to find Sethe in bed, and he tells her that she herself is her "best thing". Those who knew Beloved gradually forget her.

Key Concepts

The Story

• Rememory: Sethe's word for the way a past event can persist and be encountered again, which shapes how the characters live with what happened at Sweet Home.
• Haunting: the ghost at 124 turns the past into a presence in the house, and Beloved's arrival gives it a body.
• Mothering under slavery: the novel asks what love and protection mean when children can be taken, and Sethe's act is both defended by her and condemned by the community.
• Community and isolation: the Black community around 124 withdraws from Sethe, and Denver's step outside the yard is what breaks the house's hold.
• Naming and recognition: the single word on the tombstone, the men of Sweet Home who share a name, and Sethe's question "Me? Me?" at the end all concern who gets named and seen.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Recognised on publication and since. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award, and was ranked first in a New York Times survey of writers and critics as the best American fiction of 1981 to 2006.
• Rooted in history. Its link to Margaret Garner and to the Fugitive Slave Act gives readers a documented case to compare with Morrison's fiction.
• Rich in critical discussion. Critics have read it through memory and trauma, psychoanalysis, motherhood, manhood and the recovery of Black history, so a student can find a research question quickly.
• Publisher-quoted praise. The Penguin Random House page quotes the Chicago Sun-Times ("Toni Morrison's finest work") and the New York Review of Books (calling her a major figure in national literature).

Limitations

• Deliberate ambiguity. Whether Beloved is a ghost or a real young woman is debated; Ann Snitow's 1987 review found the ghost "too light", and Elizabeth House argues that the novel is really about mistaken identity. A reader wanting a settled explanation will not find one.
• Disturbing material. The novel includes the killing of a child, sexual violence and the brutality of slavery, and the plot is told through fragments and flashbacks, which makes the order of events hard to follow on a first read.
• Little apparatus. Beyond the author's note, the listings for this edition mention no historical notes or critical essays, so background must come from other sources.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the American literature course, Beloved is the contemporary novel on the list and the one most directly about slavery and its aftermath. Richard Wright's Black Boy is an autobiographical account of growing up under segregation, and the two make a natural pair on race, memory and storytelling. Moby-Dick (Hershel Parker's Norton Critical Edition) is a nineteenth-century novel with documents and criticism. Gray's A Brief History of American Literature and Klarer's A Short Literary History of the United States place Morrison within the nation's literary history, the Norton Anthology of American Literature supplies primary texts for comparison, and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden is a critical study of a different strand of American writing.

How to Use This Book

No background reading is required, but some knowledge of American slavery and Reconstruction helps. Read the novel slowly, allow the timeline to assemble itself, and accept that some questions stay open. Before or after reading, look up the Margaret Garner story and read one slave narrative. Reread the scene in the woodshed and the last pages.

For discussion, trace the word "rememory," track who is isolated and who is welcomed at 124, and compare how Sethe, Paul D and Denver each deal with the past. Use the critical debates (is Beloved a ghost?) as essay topics once you have finished.