Toni Morrison’s Beloved is
a highly regarded novel first published in 1987. Set
in postbellum America, the novel is inspired by the real story of an
African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery. Beloved was
a critical success, it received prestigious awards including the Nobel Prize
for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and it drew public attention.
Although Morrison has written many novels, plays, non-fiction, and
essays, Beloved remains the most widely regarded work in her
oeuvre and has achieved the greatest acclaim.
Written in the late
twentieth century, Beloved has successfully employed features
and thematic possibilities of the modern tradition of the
novel. In
this essay, I will be examining the use of multiple narrators, magic realism,
and the stream of consciousness in this novel. I will highlight how these
features of the twentieth-century novel have contributed to the telling of
African-Americans history in a way that had not been said before.
Beloved starts with a
house named 124 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sethe, a former slave,
lives with her daughter Denver in 124. The presence of
Sethe’s killed child, Beloved, haunts 124 and leads the two teenage boys,
Howard and Buglar, to escape the house. Later, Mother-in-law, Baby Suggs has
died, and Paul D, a former slave has joined the family. The
disturbance becomes more intense by the appearance of a strange young woman who
calls herself Beloved. The novel consists of various inner stories which
require narration from a variety of angles.
Morrison employs multiple narrators to create a comprehensive narrative
in Beloved. The narrative perspectives are mostly switched between
omniscient and less objective omniscient third person; however, Morrison also
uses the first-person narrator. The novel begins in third-person: “124 was spiteful. Full of baby's venom.”[1] These opening sentences are
narrated in the omniscient point of view. In contrast, in the following page, the narrator changes: “Baby Suggs didn't even raise
her head. […] She used the little energy left her for pondering color.”[2] In these instances, the omniscience of the narrator is limited to detail
about Baby Suggs.
The narration of the
novel also involves the first-person narrator. Throughout the novel various
passages and a whole chapter are narrated in the first person: “BELOVED, she my
daughter. She mine. See. She come back to me […] I don’t have to explain. I
didn’t have time to explain,”[3] Morrison
chooses this range of narrators to achieve more comprehensive narration. In her
interview with the literary magazine Granta, Morrison explains that
she writes for black people as Tolstoy “was writing for Russians.”[4] However,
Morrison admits that she has to make it “good enough [to be] read by and
appreciated by people who are not African-Americans.”[5] Employing multiple
narrators to represent a multi-perspective story is a characteristic of the
twentieth-century novel and Morrison applies it to invite a wider range of
readership.
Morrison uses the stream
of consciousness to awake the memories of slavery. Sethe does not merely want
to justify the murdering of her baby Beloved as an act of love, but she also
wants to possess the young woman- Beloved: “How if I hadn't killed her she
would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her.”[6] Morrison writes long monologues, and
through engaging Sethe's stream of consciousness, divulges her memories and
desires. The author uses the stream of consciousness significantly; however,
comparing to Virginia Woolf’s novels To the Lighthouse (1927), Beloved exemplifies
more historical issues. By using the stream of consciousness, Woolf's novel is
more focused on the inner meaning of life than its outward reality, while
Morrison applies the stream of consciousness to unravel the chaotic memory of
Sethe to tell the burdened history of slavery.
Morrison
employs magic
realism to illuminate the history of
North America in relation to the African-Americans’ slavery. When Denver asks, “where
you were before?”[7] Beloved
answers “Dark,”[8] and she
further explains the place as “Hot. Nothing to
breathe […] no room to move in […] A lot of people […] Some is dead.”[9] As
always, Beloved gives an enigmatic answer, nevertheless, the reader has no
difficulty in visualising the detailed image of an
unspoken and neglected history of slavery. Furthermore, for Sethe, the titular
character of Beloved embodies in the flesh the spirit and quality of her killed
baby girl. In other words, Beloved is the incarnation of Sethe's child. So,
Sethe has come up to believe that Beloved is supernatural and reads her mind.
Beloved never heard of Sethe’s earrings, and yet she asks: “Where your diamonds?”[10] Sethe never got diamonds, but as
she talks about some crystal, “she found herself wanting to, liking it.”[11] The novel amalgamates the reality
and the desire in Sethe's life with the strangeness and magical appearance of
Beloved. This is the function of magic realism as the
narration transits between the practical world and fantastic without breaking the characters' consciousness. Morrison applies magic
realism in the manifestation of the character Beloved to illuminate the history
of slavery in North America.
The novel Beloved employs various features of the twentieth-century novel to depict the untold history of slavery in North American. Morrison believes that despite being “interesting,”[12] the history of African-Americans remain unacknowledged. In the mentioned interview, Morrison explains that black people drew the world's attention to America through their “jazz and language”[13] and yet there are not that much written about them: “there’s no book in there about me! So, if I wanted to read it, I would probably have to write it.”[14] The author complains about the absence of an important part of history and declares her dedication to this critical exigence. Beloved is a successful and perfect commitment in the tradition of the novel, as it employs the features of the twentieth-century novel and illustrates creatively the story of African-American and urges that the historical legacies of slavery must be recognised.
The novel Beloved employs various features of the twentieth-century novel to depict the untold history of slavery in North American. Morrison believes that despite being “interesting,”[12] the history of African-Americans remain unacknowledged. In the mentioned interview, Morrison explains that black people drew the world's attention to America through their “jazz and language”[13] and yet there are not that much written about them: “there’s no book in there about me! So, if I wanted to read it, I would probably have to write it.”[14] The author complains about the absence of an important part of history and declares her dedication to this critical exigence. Beloved is a successful and perfect commitment in the tradition of the novel, as it employs the features of the twentieth-century novel and illustrates creatively the story of African-American and urges that the historical legacies of slavery must be recognised.
References
Kaiser,
M, and Ladipo, S. “TONI MORRISON IN VONVERSATION: Various Contributors.” GRANTA
Magazine, June 29, 2017. https://granta.com/toni-morrison-conversation/
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Reading Guide edition. London: Vintage Classics, 2010.
Woolf, Virginia, and Bradshaw, David, Editor. To the Lighthouse. New ed. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
[3] Ibid., 236.
[4] Kaiser & Ladipo, “TONI MORRISON IN CONVERSATION”.
[5] Ibid.,
[7] Ibid., 88.
[8] Ibid., 88.
[9] Ibid., 88.
[10] Ibid., 69.
[12] Kaiser & Ladipo,
“TONI MORRISON IN CONVERSATION”.
[13] Ibid.,
[14] Ibid.,
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