Source:Beloved (Book)

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Beloved (Book)
Instance of	book
Author(s)	Toni Morrison
Publication date	1987
Access	N/A
Quotations	2

Written by Toni Morrison, the novel Beloved is set in the post-civil war America and recounts the story of Sethe, a formerly enslaved mother haunted by her dead baby.

Plot summary

The year is 1873. Sethe and her daughter Denver live at house No. 124 on the edge of Cincinnati, a house supposedly haunted by the presence of a dead child, causing two other children of Sethe to run away.

One day, Paul D, who was enslaved at the same plantation as Sethe two decades ago, arrives at house No. 124. He makes romantic advances on Sethe after dinner, to her pleasing. He moves in with the mother and daughter, kind of completing the family. Shortly after, a woman, who calls herself Beloved, having the appearance of being one of the numerous formerly enslaved African Americans wandering around America seeking family and a better life after liberation from slavery, arrives also at the house and is received by the newly formed family.

For the first few days, Beloved sleeps most of her time away, eating no food, and drinking only water. Paul D decides to not question on Beloved's past, sensing that she must have experienced important trauma leaving her in an extremely vulnerable state. Denver, loving the presence of Beloved at the house, insists on taking up exclusive care of Beloved, changing her bed sheets and bringing her water.

Beloved begins to recover and started eating. Strangely, she eats only sweet things, like candy or honey. She also claims complete ignorance of her past, but somehow knows intimate details about Sethe's life, such as a pair of earrings that Sethe received as a gift decades ago. Paul D, suspicious of the mysterious behaviour of Beloved, asks Sethe if she plans to host Beloved indefinitely. In contrast, Denver, loving the company of Beloved as a sort of sister figure, pleads Beloved to stay and the latter agrees, to Sethe's implicit approval.

The presence of Beloved at the house continues to turn things around. Sethe and Paul D, who both tried hard to put their traumatic past behind themselves, burying the painful memories in the process, begin to have frequent, traumatising flashbacks. Paul D, in particular, becomes increasingly restless. He starts sleeping downstairs in a rocking chair, instead of in Sethe's bed. One night, he fails to fall asleep in the rocking chair, and moves over to the spare bedroom, then the storeroom, and finally the shed behind the house, "the cold house".

One day, at the slaughter house where Paul D works, a colleague by the name of Stamp Paid, who also knows Sethe since two decades ago, shows Paul D a news clipping from two decades ago. It reports on an escaped female slave, who when about to be recaptured by slave-catchers, chose to kill her own baby instead of letting her grow up to become a slave. Stamp Paid reveals that Sethe was the escaped female slave featured in the news clipping. Paul D refuses to believe in it.

Nevertheless, Paul D confronts Sethe about the news clipping. Sethe responds evasively and begins explaining that she had no idea how to raise her children on the Sweet Home plantation, being the only enslaved woman with a harsh master. In the end she admits to being the subject of the news clipping, claiming that she was trying to send her children to a better place.

Paul D, shocked by the revelation, tells Sethe that her love was too thick and suffocating. He moves out of house No. 124 shortly after.

Heart broken by the abandonment, Sethe retrieves herself back into her bedroom to "think about colors", which she recognised as a real luxury in her life, both physically and figuratively.

On the other side, Paul D is also further saddened by the separation. He begins sleeping in a church and burying him in the sorrow of his woeful past, such as witnessing his friend Sixo being burnt alive by the slave master's men after a failed escape attempt. Stamp Paid, having learnt the impact his sharing of the news clipping had on the life of the two, tries to make up. After great hesitation, he knocks on Sethe's door but no one answers. He then finds Paul D at the church where he was rough sleeping to tell him about the full context in which Sethe killed her own baby, emphasising that it was an act of love.

Soon after, Sethe notices a scar on Beloved neck where she has cut her baby's throat. She becomes convinced that Beloved is the incarnation of her dead baby, as she grows weaker and weaker. Denver, also accepting the hypothesis that Beloved is the dead baby coming back to haunt her mother for the killing, leaves the house to seek for help out of worry.

Denver first pays a visit to Lady Jones's, her former school teacher's house, where she is warmly received. She asks Lady Jones's to help her find work, so she can provide for her mother, but Lady Jones says all she needs is to ask the local church committee for help. Denver refuses, as she does not want to live on good graces of people.

Nevertheless, Lady Jones mobilises the local community herself to donate food for the mother and daughter. Through out the spring, Denver finds food deposited on a tree stump outside house No. 124, sometimes with names written on it, so she can visit the donors to thank them, sometimes completely anonymous.

Denver finally finds work through the Bodwins, a charitable local couple devoting much of their time and resources on helping former-slaves setting up their new life. In the meantime, Ella, a former friend of Sethe who broke up with her after she murdered her baby, convinces local women that Beloved is a devil-child, and that they should help Sethe escape from Belove's haunting. They pay a group visit to Sethe's house to pray and sing, in an attempt to drive away the devil.

Sethe comes out of the house. Hallucinating, she mistakes Mr. Bodwin, who happens to also be there to pick Denver up for work, as her former slave master and chases after him with an ice pick. The women manage to restrain her in time. In the chaos, Beloved, sensing the hostility of the crowd towards her, flees from the house and disappears.

Paul D, having calmed done over time, overheard the news of Beloved's departure. He comes back to house No. 124 and finds Sethe humming in the keeping room. He tries to converse with Sethe, but Sethe seems to be completely absorbed by the departure of Beloved, who she insists is her daughter. Paul D then makes the remark that "We got more yesterday then anybody, we need some kind of tomorrow."

Gradually, the townspeople forget about Beloved and move on with life. At No. 124, things also start to slowly move back towards normality. The haunting has stopped. Denver continues to work for the Bodwins and prepares to go back to school. Sethe never fully recovers, but Paul D, having finally reconciled with her and his own traumatic past, promises to care for her.