Character Development in Beloved

In Cynthia S. Hamilton’s “Revisions, Rememories, and Exorcisms: Toni Morrison and the Slave Narrative,” she explores many different themes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. She specifically focuses on the importance of storytelling and how Beloved differs from the “classic slave narrative.” She talks about how this different format in literature can have a completely different effect from the more common slave narratives, which typically tell the story of the only the hardships of slavery. Beloved, on the other hand, focuses on the psychological effects that slavery can have on all of the characters, whether they are former slaves or apart of the next generation.

In part I of her article, Hamilton simply focuses on the art and importance of storytelling. She does this through explaining how the characters’ development is influenced by their story. Beloved is told in a series of flashbacks, as opposed to classic chronological order. Morrison perhaps does this so that the characters’ personalities are revealed slowly throughout the novel, one bit at a time. For example, it is not revealed how Baby Suggs got her name until very far into the book, when it is revealed that Baby Suggs calls herself this because it is what her husband called her, and not her slavemaster. This one fact says a lot about Baby Suggs’ character. When she was a slave, she was called Jenny, but decided to abandon this name in order to develop her own sense of self. Throughout the novel, Baby Suggs, although not alive at the present time of the story, is attempting to come to terms with her past and develop her own sense of self. Her struggle is revealed through a series of flashbacks, mainly Sethe’s, which are not in chronological order and are spread throughout the book. By choosing to call herself Baby Suggs, it is clear that this was her own way of developing her personal identity, and not the one that her slavemaster created for her. Hamilton also points out that, while Baby Suggs was trying to create her own sense of self, in doing this she also decided to ignore her past, as though it was no a longer a part of her. This is shown to cause conflict with her character later in to the book. She completely ignores her past, until it resurfaces on its own and she does  not know how to deal with it. After Sethe murders her daughter, Baby Suggs is forced to come to terms with her past of slavery, and she discovers how much she is still haunted by it. Unlike Sethe, however, Baby Suggs cannot overcome her past. Instead, she goes to bed, and stays in bed for years until she dies.

Hamilton also analyzes the differences between the “classic slave narrative” and Morrison’s Beloved. In novels such as Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, the story is mainly focused on the victimization of the slave. This is because, Hamilton theorizes, during the 1840’s and 1850’s, the main goal of slave narratives was to promote the abolitionist movement. Due to this, many slave narratives were almost persuasive in a way, fighting for a specific cause. After slavery was abolished, the narratives of former slaves focused on the progress that has been made since they were liberated. Beloved, however, tells a former slave’s story in a different light by focusing on character development. It tells the story of former slaves being forced to confront their past, because they will never truly be able to escape it. It lets us know that, after becoming free, the lives of former slaves did not become easy, as classic slave narratives suggest. They were instead haunted by their past, portrayed quite literally in the novel through the baby ghost and the character of Beloved. Sethe, unlike Baby Suggs, is able to come to terms with her past. Instead of ignoring her past, Beloved forces her to come face-to-face with her past. After years of being a social outcast, after Beloved disappears, Sethe is finally able to accept that fact that murdering Beloved was wrong, and that she cannot escape her past as a slave. Beloved symbolizes the past of slavery as a whole for various characters as well. While Paul D has all of his memories locked in a “tin tobacco can” deep in his heart, he is forced to come to terms with them when he has sex with Beloved. All of his horrible and traumatic memories resurface, and he runs away at first because he cannot face them. During this time, Beloved is still with Sethe, so Paul D feels as if he cannot return. This symbolizes that, because Beloved is still there, he has not yet accepted his past. The disappearance of Beloved symbolizes that he and Sethe have finally accepted their pasts. He returns to Sethe after he has decided that he can finally move on with his life and let go of what has previously happened to him. He also helps Sethe, who is stuck in bed just like Baby Suggs was, get her life back in order so that the two of them can build a new life together.

Oprah and Danny Glover as Beloved and Paul D in the 1998 film "Beloved."

Beloved by Toni Morrison, through the historical and biographical lens displays the nourishment of being a single parent and how far one would go to show affection to their kin. Sethe in the beginning of story already has a dead child that wasn’t named because she was forced to kill her baby daughter because Sethe didn’t want her new baby to be forced into slavery like her. Just like Sethe, Morrison also raised a child by herself without a presence of a father. Both women, would go out of their ways to make sure their children get to live a happy life because they each what the best for their own child. Unlike Sethe, Morrison didn’t have to worry about being sold into slavery, as well as her child.

After the baby died, Sethe wanted to show how she regrets killing her child by getting a tombstone so the dead baby can actually have some peace. In this part of the story, Sethe doesn’t have any money to buy her daughter’s tombstone. In order to gain her daughter’s tombstone, Sethe made a deal with the engraver buy selling her body for it, “She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible—that for twenty minutes, heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely engraved on her baby's headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered” (1.15) What was illustrated in Sethe’s story is the need to show the affection that a mother shows to her first newborn all their lives but since the child had it’s throat slit, Sethe feels really guilty about killing her child that never had a chance to grow up. 

Making a connection from Sethe to Toni Morrison, Morrison experienced racism in the early stages of her life. Unlike her character, Morrison moved to Ohio to escape southern racism and got an education there. Sethe was born into Southern racism as a slave during the early start of slavery with no education. Throughout the book we see the history of slavery popping up in different parts of the story. The message that keeps recurring throughout this novel is the idea of, can slavery be forgiven since even 148 years later this is such a serious issue in America.

My Purpose for the Biographical/Historical lens

Biographical/Historical lens was interesting to me because I wanted to know more about the author’s influence for writing Beloved. In the past I used to research about the author before hand in order to have a better sense of reason about the author’s purpose for writing their book, by analyzing the text and comparing it to the author's life story/experiences. While looking at the time period that is being presented to us in Morrison’s story of Beloved during the end of the Civil War, 1860-1865, we can see the racism that has scared America’s history though strong vivid scenes throughout the book. The most disturbing part about Racism is that most of the country and the world think racism ended with after the civil rights movement ended during the 1960’s, while open racism has steadily declined over the years, there is still old customs that still plague our society today. That’s why I chose to use the Biographical/Historical lens because I wanted to see what message Toni Morrison is trying to explain about America’s past through her noble award winning phenomenon Beloved.

Equality in Beloved

“‘No more powerful than the way I loved her,’ Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones; the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I’ll do it for free” (5).

Reading the novel Beloved through the biographical / historical lens requires the reader to know about the author, Toni Morrison’s life and time time period in which the novel was written to figure out what message she is trying to get across in this book.

Beloved was written by Toni Morrison in 1987. Toni Morrison grew up to black African-American parents who moved to Ohio to escape racism in the south, similar to Sethe, the book’s main character. Many of her books have a common theme of gender and racial equality.

Beloved author Toni Morrison.

Sethe murdered her daughter in panic to save her daughter from slavery when the slave catchers came after her and her family. In this passage, Sethe is prostituting herself in order to get the word “Beloved” inscribed on her murdered daughter’s headstone. In 1873, not too long after slavery was abolished, black people were discriminated against (especially if they were former slaves) and were not seen as equal by whites. Sethe, who has just escaped slavery, is a black woman who cannot afford to get anything inscribed on her daughter’s headstone. So, she basically goes with the only option: she sells her body. In the forward, Morrison explains what was going on around the time she wrote the book in 1987. She talks about how it was a time for women’s rights and equality (“equal pay, equal treatment”), although throughout the entire novel, there is nothing but inequality shown for Sethe and her family. Whether it be because of her gender or because of her race, Sethe is struggling for equality, just like women were fighting for in 1987.

This passage also shows that Sethe cannot escape the horrors of her past. Also in the forward, Morrison talks about the concept of freedom, and how she felt free after she finally left her job to become a novelist. She wonders “what ‘free’ could possibly mean to women.” A major theme of this book, and this passage specifically, is freedom. Sethe can never truly be free. She is not longer bound by chains to slavery, but she cannot escape her past. Merely talking about her daughter brings up nothing but awful memories of slavery, and even after she escaped slavery, she can never be free. She is constantly running from memories associated with her daughter, and is literally being haunted by her. After she escaped slavery and murdered her daughter, she had next to nothing; she couldn’t even afford to get one word inscribed on her daughter’s headstone and so she has to sell her body for it. She then becomes a social outcast, and no one can truly understand why she murdered her daughter, not realizing that infanticide was really not an uncommon occurrence during the times of slavery.

When Sethe talks about how much she loved her daughter, she is perhaps referencing the reason for her murdering her daughter. Throughout the book, Sethe is seen as a social outcast. No one cares to understand or even ask her why she did what she did; they just see her as heartless, and exclude her from society. But, further into the book, it becomes clear that Sethe murdered her daughter out of love; she would rather anything happen to her children than for them to see the horrors of slavery.

Why I Chose This Lens

I chose the biographical / historical lens because history is one of the most interesting things to me. I also love to research biographies and then link the way that the author’s life has affected his or her writing. My life and experiences definitely do affect my writing, so I’m interested in analyzing how this comes into play with other authors. Specifically in this case, the author has written a book in a time period completely different from the one that she actually lived in. So, not only will her life affect her story, but history will also play a very important part. What she has written about is probably partly based on experience, and partly based on history. When reading this book, I will need to make sure that I have researched the author’s life in order to look out for any events in the book that might possibly mirror her life. I also will probably have to have basic knowledge about the settings in the time period described, because different places in the U.S. had vastly differentiating views regarding slavery in the mid to late 1800’s. Also, this book was inspired by a woman named Margaret Garner, so it’s important that I know how and why Morrison was inspired by her and thought that her story was important enough to share.