Beloved, novel by Toni Morrison was published in 1987 and is winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The book showcases the destructive legacy of slavery as it chronicles the life of a Black woman named Sethe, from her pre-Civil War days as a slave in Kentucky to her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. Although Sethe lives there as a free woman, she is held prisoner by memories of the trauma of her life as a slave.
Sethe flees with her children from an abusive owner known as “schoolteacher.” They are caught, and, to save her children from the servitude of slavery, she tries to kill her children. But she manages to only kill her two-year-old daughter, and the schoolteacher, believing that Sethe is crazy, decides not to take her back. Sethe later has “Beloved” inscribed on her daughter’s tombstone.
The novel is based on the true story of a Black slave woman, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband and their children. They sought refuge in Ohio, but their owner and law officers soon caught up with the family. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to save her from slavery.
In the novel, many years after the incident of her daughter’s death, Sethe is living in the house with her other daughter, Denver; and the house is haunted by the dead daughter, Beloved. As the events unfold, we realise that Sethe in her mind is never truly free of slavery as the past keeps haunting her by way of memories and her daughter’s ghost. Sethe tries to explain to the ghost of her dead daughter why she killed her but the ghost manipulates her.
“But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.”
Beloved
Toni Morrison has weaved a story which showcases the brutal reality of slavery. Sold off like feeling less objects, the slaves faced many hardships throughout their lives and though some managed to escape, their minds were forever enslaved.
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