Published 1987 / Length 275 pages
‘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 …’
Toni Morrison’s masterpiece focuses on the tale of Sethe, a nineteenth-century African-American slave-woman. At the start of the story she is now free, living in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her teenage daughter, Denver. Sethe once had two sons, long vanished, and a baby daughter whom she murdered eighteen years earlier, known only as ‘Beloved’ (the single word on her tombstone, which Sethe paid for by prostituting herself with the engraver). Now living in an isolated house haunted by the vengeful child’s spirit, Sethe is visited by Paul D, a fellow former slave who had worked alongside her at the ironically named Sweet Home Farm in Kentucky. Through a series of conversations and flashbacks, we gradually learn the circumstances that led both characters to their current positions, as well as Sethe’s motives for killing her daughter. The narrative circles warily around the traumatic events at the heart of the story – we catch hints and glimpses, but then it wheels off again in another direction before suddenly, horrifically, bringing the incidents into sharp focus. It is an experimental technique that gives the novel a mythical resonance.
‘If there were any doubts about [Morrison’s] stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser.’ – MARGARET ATWOOD, The New York Times
• In the terms of the book – leaving morals aside – did Sethe do the right thing when she killed Beloved? Were the local community right to shun her afterwards?
• ‘To love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children’ – do you think the story supports Paul D’s view? Compare Sethe’s view of motherhood.
• Why do you think Morrison tells the story in a fragmented way, juxtaposing past and present? Do you think this impressionistic style undermines the historical accuracy of her depiction of mid-nineteenth-century African-American life?
• Sethe’s story is loosely based on the life of an escaped slave, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 killed her two-year-old daughter rather than see her returned to slavery.
• The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1988.
• The Color Purple by ALICE WALKER (see here) – another harrowing classic of African-American literature.
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE – 1852 bestseller which helped to alert the world to the evils of slavery, though now dated by its stereotyping.
• To the Lighthouse by VIRGINIA WOOLF – an experimental novel with shifting perspectives and time frames. Morrison wrote her master’s thesis on the works of Woolf and William Faulkner.
• Wuthering Heights by EMILY BRONTË – ambiguous use of the supernatural.