died were thrown overboard.

alleha

Thus the images of ingestion are present in various parts of the of

ars

novel. OW " h e

ither a
in Beloved.
Q.21. Show the evil of slavery as exposed Atftred,
Or
The
In what way is Beloved a woeful saga of millions of black
people? uggs,
a
Ans. Beloved, set in post-Civil War Ohio, is a haunting narrative
of slavery and its aftermath. It traces the life of a slave woman,
Sethe, who has kept a "terrible memory" at bay only by shutting .2.
down a part of her mind. The novel depicts Sethe's former life as a Sel

slave on Sweet Home Farm, her escape with her children to what
seems a safe haven, and the tragic events that follow. She lives on W
the edge of the town with her daughter Denver and her mother-in- de
law Baby Suggs.
AR
The novel hinges on the death of Sethe's infant daughter, protag
Beloved, who mysteriously reappears as a sensuous young woman. whole
Beloved's spirit comes back to claim Sethe's love. Sethe struggles to enclos
keep Beloved gaining full possession of her present and to throw oft Sweet
the long, dark, legacy of her past. Morrison attempts to show the Garne
horrors of slavery through its effects on the characters. She does this tortur
by showing how desperate the characters are to get themselves and about

their loved ones away from that awful life of slavery. Sethe shows and u
this desperation when she sends her children away from Sweet
to
Home, when she travels, alone and pregnant, from Sweet Home
Ohio, and when she tries to kill her children to keep them safe from mak
schoolteacher. The mere fact that she is saving milk for her baby giri cu
ha
 229
sroad Questions with Answers

love for her

is living with her grandmother, proves her deep
sho avoid slavery for
and she is desperate to do anything to
hildren she sees schoolteacher
and for her children. That is why when
terself kill her own
and attempts to
she becomes extremely desperate She defends
succeeds in kiling only the baby girl.
children and
"I and put my babies where they'd be safe". This
g herself saying, took
hoYror of slavery.
is proves the of
replete
is description
with the of suffering
Further, Beloved here. Baby
black-people. A few examples will suff+ce
millions of
e mother-in-law of Sethe, had eight
children by different white
Suggs, of them were taken from her. However,
one
fathers but all except
freedom for his mother Baby Suggs after five long
ne Halle had bought black woman recalls
Another example, Ella, a

years of hard struggle. in a house where she was shared by

w a s spent
how "her puberty how the black prisoners in
Paul D remembers
father and son." Again coerced into fellating the white guards.
were
Alfred, Georgia in the of Rahy
words
k The evil of
slavery 1s
clearly manifested had or dreamed, and
have taken all Ithe oke
Suggs. "Those white things whitefolke
Is n o dad luck in world but
too. There
ve my heartstrings
an, a women's quest for identit
In what
way 1S
BeDveu
ng Q.22. self-empowerment?

a Or
nat o n ' s concept of the role of commnitv in th
216 Toni Morrison Beloved
been exiled. Her last words Me? Me?' in
110gesti on that she herself is
response to Paul D's
ner own best
thing,
Dossibility of an identity otner than tne suggest the
mother. self-imposed role of a

Q.11. Discuss the images of sexual abuses in Beloved.

Ans. Toni Morrison's Beloved is haunted
and ghost that embodies
a
both. yet it would
by history, memory
be proper to
haunted by the history
is and memory of say that it
Morrison depicts abuses rape specifically. While
of
slavery ike
lynchings, the depictions of and allusions to brutal arebeatings and
rape of
primary
importance. Sethe kills her child so that no whiteman will
her dirty, so that no young ever make
man with "mossy teeth" will
child down and suck her breasts. ever hold the

Images of sexuai abuses lie scattered all

character of Beloved is not through the book. The
just the ghost of Sethe's
dead child, she is
a
succubus, a female demon and
nightmare
sleepers. She resembles a figure
assaults male that sexually
incorporated into Afro-American folklore vampire that was
in the form of
shapeshifting witches who scared victims at
assaults, Beloved drains Paul D of semen night. In separate
and Sethe of
symptomatically, Beloved's body swells as she also feeds vitality:
victims' horrible memories of and off her
violations that occurred in their recurring nightmares about sexual
as more than enslaved past. But Beloved
the receptacle of functions
sexual violation and thus remembered stories; she reenacts
to survivors of figures the persistent nightmares common
trauma.
Morrison uses succubus figure to
institutionalized represent the effects of
rape under siavery. When
bodies were violated the the enslaved
Just as rape reproductive potential persons
dehumanize enslaved commodified.
was
was used to
succubus's assault robs persons, the
victims of
psychological. vitality, both physical and
There are two
memories of rape that
mossy-toothed" boys hold Sethe down andfigure prominently: (1) two
Paul D refers to Alfred, suck her breast milk (1)
white guards Georgia where prisoners are forced
every morning. Again Ella is
raped by a father and son she locked up and
to
fellate
calls "the lowest repeatedly
yet", and Stamp
 groad Questions with Answers
217
d's
Paid's wife, Vashti is forced into sex by her enslaver. Baby Suggs is
nmpelled to have sex with a straw boss who later breaks his
ercive promise not to selll herchild and again with an
sethe's mother is "taken up many times by the crew" during overseer
the
niddle passage as are many other
enslaved women. There are also
scts of desperate prostitution that are akin to rape. Sethe's exchange
of sex for the engraving on her baby's tombstone is another example
of rape.
These incidents of rape justify Sethe's excuse for killing her
d baby daughter. Sethe tries to tell the furious Beloved that death
y actually protected the baby from the deep despair that killed baby
e
Suggs.
0.12. What nicture of racial violence do you get in Beloved?
Q.3. Diseuss Beloved as a treatment of the plight of the black
woman in nineteenth-century America. [DU. 1998]
Ans. Toni Morrison's Beloved as well other works centre
as
round the predicament of the blacks in the past and the present, but
censure of the whites
avoids an
she avoids any
direct
vere victims of
During the period of
economic slavery with various
them. Thev
upon them.
imposed They were forbidden to
restrictions
consent
their
off their
o white
white
masters. The black marry
without the conand mothers of
the

s slaves and
mothers of th
their mulatto women were
children. They were
whitemen
children so that the owner's
breed stock of slaves
m a d e
could
206 Toni Morrison :
Beloved
increase. The black woman was subjected to sexual assault
feeling of without
any guilt because she was considered the
personal property. whiteman's
Beloved offers a most realistic picture of the
black life
from within. Its story is based on an
actual incident portrayed
across in a Morrison
newsclipping she found while
compiling
came
blacks. It says about the incident of a slave
woman
a
history of the
a
Kentucky slave, who killed her child because Margaret Garner,
children to suffer as she had in her she did not want
her
life. Morrison was
impressed and agonized by the account in the deeply
mother's act was an act of love news
clipping. The
and courage
and put my babies though was criminal in
the eye of law. "I took it
novel revolves round this where they'd be
incident and its safe." The
mother whose heart is at consequent effect upon the
times filled wvith
remorse. It makes the a sense
of guilt and
child in the novel is past unspeakable. The mother who kills the
Sethe and her
Sethe is convicted for mother-in-law is Baby
seven
years. Suggs.
The novel
house at 124 begins long after the incident of
Bluestone Road, the infanticide. The
her only
daughter place where Sethe now
Denver is lives with
dead. Howard and spiteful place. Baby Suggs
a
is
from home out of Buglar, the two sons of already
fear of the Sethe, have run
Beloved
Baby's ghost. away
narrates the woeful saga of the
black women. The
novel is replete with suffering of millions of
wrongs. Baby Suggs had the
them except eight description of such
children by various
Halle were taken
away from her.
fathers, and all of
women also recalls Ella, another black
how "her
was shared puberty
by father and son.
was
spent in
Sethe
a
house where she
assaulted by the two was
unable to assault the young men with "mossyseXuallyteeth"
abused and
white but she was
take away her schoolteacher who with the
had come to
Home. children and herselt to slave-hunters
slavery in Sweet
Sethe is the idecal of a black
romanticized, even though her act ot
mother, ler
mlanticke character is
but her plight symbolizes the plight cannot be
stripped, beaten and olten subjected
ot he
blaek-women in justified,
to the general-
onslaughts of racism
sexism. and
 Questions with Answers 207

Cethe's murder of her own child justified? Discuss in the

t of your reading of Beloved. [CU. 2003]

Ans.
Toni Morrison's Beloved centres round the fantastic story
ppalling slaughter of a daughter by her own mother in an act
cessive love and anguish for safety and protection from the hell
affered
by the slaughterer. The mother is Sethe and her daughter
nOwn as Beloved. Sethe, though ruined by repeated rapes and
ald humiliations by the white masters, considers her children the
and the clean thing of herself, and hence, she would not let
gbody taint that part of her. Sethe
would go to any extent to
self to retain the purity of her children and this dirty
e agrees to offer sex for
is evident when
ten minutes to the
oung son, as a
price to
be paid for engraver before his
he tombstone of her dead engraving the word "Beloved" on
sere more daughter. And those ten minutes for her
unbearable than even her
Sethe is the killing of the small daughter.
nd the mother of daughter-in-law of Baby Suggs, the wife of Halle
nown as an
Howard, Buglar, Beloved and
ew master
iron-willed woman from the Denver. She is
to whom
she is sold, beginning. However, her
ethe's eyes"
(showed "punched the
glittering iron out of
ther slaves of extreme cruelty). As
Sweet Home result, Sethe and the
a
and not
found; chances are flee, during which Halle is
Sethe has to run there that he
might have dislocated
with her three children been shot
dead.
However,
She
when the white and
masters find her,
the fourth in the womb.
stops them by instead
this way she cutting the throat of her of
surrendering,
terrible world,ruthlessly refuses to send backdaughter by a handsaw. In
her
Above ali, whatwhich has fully sucked her daughter to the same
imposed on her
a
black woman virginity and
by
whitcman.
a vitality.
considers heinous
torced is a
However, Toni sex
Morrison
philosopl1y behind the act ot seems to show
murdering one Own child murder in Beloved. Justutication
s
The
tor the
courage. It is the needs lot ot moral physical aet of
a

which survival is outcoe o a

conpelling and
uncertan
lest every second of survival.Cvety ioment, situational emotional
Is
ad background
putting her daughter to salety.Therelore, Sethe digity is put to in
where they' d be safc." She conclles tha acid
This says, "I took hat killing
sViewpont of Selhend puul my bubies
is

Supported by
 Toni Morrison :
Beloved
208
Sethe in her escape, when
ex-slave who had helped
Stamp Paid.
an
and mistakes Sethe as mad. Stamp
horrified at this
news
Paul D is action a s the expression of her love for
Sethe's
to him
Paid explains to outhurt
the hurter". Remarkably, this
"She was trying collective
her children.
the hurter" is present in the
"outhurt
instinct to throughout history.
As far
primal suPpressed
Negroes
blood
consciousness
of the much in her
ancestral
is very
children borm of
infanticide

Sethe is concerned,
had killed all the
as mother love-child.
her own
she was a
in fact, because
that Sethe was spared child. She
only her own

a c t of killing
whitemen-

Bluestone
for her h o u s e at
124
has to pay own
But S e t h e in her m u r d e r e d baby
but also of her
only in prison the ghost
suffers
not h a u n t e d by ar
w h i c h is
being
o n her.
Road, revenge
t o take
institutionalized

come cap
who has portrays
an

Beloved

E l u c i d a t e .
the
M o r r i s o n ' s

to
Toni
slaves. done of b
Imanization
ofthe
wrongs
hands
Q.5. o f the the
a y a r e
f f e r
at clea
 Beloved
teveral critics are curious about Beloved.
They want
Reloved?" Is the ghostly child a Supernalural being or a torealknow 'who i
appears and chooses to accept the person who
identity that Sethe is
ascribe to her? The name "Beloved is inscribed on the determined to
haby but not that of Sethe's own tombstone of the
funerals and weddings, thus signifying both daughter. It is a word
used both at
can also be seen as the past and future. Beloved
embodiment of sBavery itself.
If we assume that
Beloved is Sethe's executed
come back to life, then she
is willed into
existence
daughter who has
Bluestone Road. Sethe announces by the women of 124
only come back she would be able ominously that if her daughter would
craves
companionship
to
explain her actions to her. Denver
and takes her sister's
actual. But Denver is to presence both ghostly and
learn that she is of little
After the importance
departure
iove. guilt and
of Paul D,
Beloved and Sethe
to Beloved.

retribution. Beloved cannot engage in a tug of

crime, just like Sethe who
cannot forgive herself.
forgive her mother for her
Further we find Beloved
and
living through the humanarriving at 124 Bluestone
life cycle. At first her
Road as an aduit
gratification and her mother's She
needs are for oral
her own head gaze. is unable to bear the
point of physical
and can not walk or
talk properly. Thus weight of
from the view
She remains development
at the
or of emotion
she
appears to be an infant.
differentiate herself from herstage of
primary identification, retusing to
stay she becomes a mother: "her face is my own".
the usua! vindictive and unrelenting During her
rules that teenager,
regulate a parent-child relationship. untouched by
emotional Beloved takes
advantage ofadvantage
of Denver
Paul D by by befriending her, and physical
Degins to take her seducing him. She becomes Sethe's
"her over. She wears
her clothes, imitates judge and
laugh". Denver begins to have her, and
laughs
Beloved dominates Sethe, swelling difficulty in telling thenm apart, as
physical embodiment in size as her
mother shrinks. A
of the
presence, who would as spiteful ghost, Beloved is a
Of course
soon
strangle Sethe as sootlhe her. malignant
the author does
Beloved appears and not say
anything in the text about
where she why
whether she
really goes atler her
disappearance or
characters in the disappears.
novel. By the However, we find reaction of
epilogue Beloved is forgoten
other
dia
 40
Toni Morrsn
of the characters can remember
assumed that perhaps she only anything that
she
said and
themselves thinking. This allows us Said
of Beloved's
were
a though
ofpsychoanal
presence as the incarnation
and her
unforgiving memory, with which Sethe's yica
fSethe'sto comeSense
before she can
accept the future that Paul she has
to
D offers.
From another
history of slavery,angle Beloved can be seen
with her
haunting the reader in the same memories of the
as
Amein
herself before she way as it hauntedMiddle
produce. embarked on thenovel that took Toi M
the Although Beloved's her
guilt-ridden Sethe, who presence is a negative six ye
redemption. Denver recounts theneeds punishment in orderone, it
provoke Beloved's in to
outrage, with way which her mother sens
masochistic desire for
a

penanc:

Denver, a dynamic
shared pain of character is
Denver
happened to
the
older without a past, and
tells it she Sethe
switches
and protagonists.
although Her birth isexcluded from
as
Sethe. Her from a Denver loves the something
drowned. So narrative
much of
is third-person narrative to wne
overpowered story,
its
dissolution
aware of the and
the novel by the experien cing
is

bondconsequences depends on past and her:voce

ferociously.
identity. She
that unites that
Denver s most Paul DDenver
the life at
is set Sweer Hom
sensitive her aside. She neersel
to drank her and
Baby Suggs
clains that the glhosthorror. sister' s blood to mother and ents
As child, asalong Beloved and reso
a
broken by the is, she with her
necds Belovedsound of the b plays with "lonely Sethe's milk much
baby girl and
witness her
She fecls
in the

desolalion same
way Beloved,
irying to nd
rebuked' as she
her deatness
that she has when
lost her
as

scloved Belove. erawlWl up the

the steps.
sibility
she realises for her own lile at selt, and disapr rsneeds Sethe,step Sn
she has selt
a die it is in the and we
own toistigation only whencold house.
ot her
From various look ou or en she
development in viewpoints, tlie advent takes
Denver s ot
sick guest makes chatacter iand Belove.
her become way ot
patieil, while livin"Preser
while her catal. st
Nure: for a
desireNursi
to ng their
can
 41
M a j o r C h a r a c t e r s

and divert
makes
her makes become dutiful in the
her becom
attention
Beloved's to do together
togethe to pass the time. In the
chores

Beloved and Sethe finally become

inventing
house, in which
of love
deadloc realises that she
is of no importance. Originally
Denver
involved,

Beloved from her saw-wielding

mother, she now
oenared to protect s a v e her mother from
Beloved. She reacts, not
must
realises that she resentment she feels when Paul D arrives, but as an

with the sullen find work. When Paul D

forced to leave the yard and
adult. She is of the novel she is composed
in the penultimate chapter
meets her and treats and is second job,
searching for
a
She is
and mature. she is successful in
fellow adult. Finally
by Paul D
as a
treated self-destructive circle of family
out of the narrowly defined,
breaking Bluestone Road.
relationships in 124

Paul D
and
Sethe provides the details of oppression
Paul D together with his
white domination. The novel alludes to
Suftering as slaves under time spent in the
travel to the North, War,
experience in the Civil to
of Sweet Home, he attempted
the break-up
prison camp, etc. After taken to a prison camp.
He escaped along
nis new o w n e r and was
KIl and they found
themselves in
wIln other members of the chain gang the to leave
of Cherokee Indians. He was the last of the men

a Camp fights on both sides of the Civil

Cher camp. He goes to North,
rOKee Delaware with a weaver woman.
and eighteen months in
spends
been denied roots by the system
I e s extended families, having his sense of manhood
so
sla ver same system
undermines
is moved
that e I s dispossessed. Although he
loves the land and
bui he has no right to
.

s exture, he is fully aware that

he is a generouS anu
he has dreadful experiences,
SO
in angn emotions in
others. There
is

1an, with an ability t0 provoke into

minutes of his entry
24 ething
Blueste blessed in his
manner. Within

Sethe and Denver cry,

andSethe weeps
both his
gan in CKoad
the the novel. At
the carnival

good humour penultimate Section of

is infectious.soHe has learned to
focus affection
his
disturbed
on
nanimate s "loving
objects: Small and in
secret", and he is
oy the ensity Sethe after
leaves
love. He
Stamp P'aid tells nd
him about
at her murderous
nim
power of Sethe's
act, not
because of
what
 E
.
S. O . g

.
Major Characters
43

example of the brutality of the Slave system: the way men and women

were moved around like draughts on a board.

Baby Suggs son pays for her freedom. As a slave she has been
dispossessed of her sense of identity, and only upon being freed does she
regain it. In the carriage she feels her heart beating for the first time.
Liberated from oppression, she becomes a formidable and strong
woman. While she lives at 124 Bluestone Road, it is a focal point for the
community. When Denver begins to meet her neighbours, she is regaled
with tales of 124 Bluestone Road as it used to be. In Book One, chapter
9, Sethe describes the services that Baby Suggs held in the clearing,
which eamed her the right to be called "holy". Her 'great heart' beats in
the presence of men, women and children, and she speaks a subversive
message of self-love and worthiness. She urges her hearers to love
themselves, in contrast to their evaluation by white people: "And O my
people they do not love your hands. They only use, tic, bind, chop off
and leave empty." She gave Denver the same message, authorizing her
right to "pleasurable feelings" and commanding her to love and respect
her body. She was a central figure in the community, but, after Sethe's
actions she gave up her role of *unchurched preacher" and retreated to
her bed in order to contemplate colourto indulge in a little sensuou-
Shess-regressing to a child-like state. The fact that the system of slavery
and the Fugitive Bill permitted schoolteacher to enter her yard to fetch
Sethe-thus precipitating the terrible chain of events-results in Baby
Suggs losing faith in the God she had believed in. Denver paraphrases
what her grandmother felt: "She had done everything right and they

in her yard anyway." The CivilWar and the disappearance of her

aine devotion to colour
erandsons hardly affect her, instead there is her quiet
which she admires because it does not hurt' anything
spite ofa all her strength and wisdom, she is destroyed by
5ut inactions,
etne's fact that Sethe herself acknowledges. The last
cars of her life and her last words show her awareness of the terrible
POWer that white people had over black. The destruction of a woman

left intact atter a lite

OWned and loved for her heart, the one thing
Stavery, is as tragic as Sethe's reaction to that institution. Bby
due to a rule invented b
58 cannot even be buried in the clearing Betore aying
whites and her funeral is a scene of divisive spite.
C intorms Sethe and Denver that: "there is no breaking the wo
bad luck in
Whitefolks". She holds them responsible for her neart,
dreamed.
rstealing all that she owned or for which she