Lesson: Toni Morrison Lesson Developer: Jeetumoni iBasumatary

Toni Morrison
Lesson: Toni Morrison
Lesson Developer: Jeetumoni iBasumatary
College / Department: Ramjas College, University of
Delhi
1
Toni Morrison
Contents
 Early life and career
 Writing Career
 A Brief View of African American Literature
 African-American Women‟s Writing
 Beloved (1987)
 Themes
 Narrative Structure in Beloved
 Conclusion
 Bibliography
 Images
2
Toni Morrison
Early Life and Career
Toni Morrison was born as Chloe Ardelia Wofford on
February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She was the
second of Ramah and George Wofford‟s four children.
Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a
welder, but held several jobs at once to support the
family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker.
As a child, Morrison read fervently, and among her
favourite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.
Morrison's father told her numerous folktales of the
black community. Morrison later credited her parents
with instilling in her a love of reading, music, and
folklore. The songs and stories of Toni Morrison‟s
childhood undoubtedly influenced writing. Indeed, her
oeuvre draws heavily upon the oral art forms of
African Americans. According to a 2012 interview in The Guardian, she became a
Catholic at age 12 and received the baptismal name "Anthony", which later became the
basis
for
her
nickname
"Toni".
In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University, where she received a B.A. in English in
1953. She earned a Master of Arts degree in English from Cornell University in 1955, for
which she wrote a thesis on suicide in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.
After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in
Houston, Texas (1955–57), and then returned to Howard to teach English. It was while
teaching in Howard University that she met Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect and
fellow faculty member at the university. They married in 1958 and had two children,
Harold and Slade. They divorced in 1964, after which Toni Morrison moved to Syracuse,
New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. A year and a half later, she went to
work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House. She also taught
at Yale University and Bard College during these years.
3
Toni Morrison
Writing Career
It was in Syracuse that Toni Morrison began her
writing career. She began to work on a story that
she had conceived of when she was in Howard.
This story about a young black girl, who
desperately wanted blue eyes, was published six
years later in 1970 by the name of The Bluest
Eyes. Meanwhile, she had moved from Syracuse to
New York in 1968, and became an editor with
Random House.
Slavery in America originated with
Dutch shippers selling African slaves to
th
the colonists. By the 18 century, it
developed into a legal institution of
chattel
slavery.
Although
the
international slave trade was prohibited
from 1808, internal slave-trading
continued, and the slave population
would eventually peak at four million
before abolition.
The Bluest Eyes was followed by Sula (1973), a
novel that addresses the mysteries of human emotions and relationships, and deals with
the universal theme of good versus evil. Song of Solomon followed Sula, and was
published in 1977. It is a commemoration of the past, of the African-American ancestors.
But it is also overshadowed by a mood of restlessness and rootlessness of the living
African-Americans. Tar Baby (1981), which reveals the pain, struggle, and compromises
confronting Black Americans seeking to live and love with integrity in the United States,
was published next.
In 1987, Toni Morrison‟s fifth novel Beloved
became a critical success. Toni Morrison‟s
other novels are Jazz (1992), Paradise
(1998), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), and
Home (2012). She also wrote a few
children‟s literature with her son, Slade
Morrison. They are The Big Box (1999), The
Book of Mean People (2002), and Peeny
Butter Fudge (2009). Apart from the above
mentioned, she also wrote several nonfiction books.
A Brief View of African American
Literature
Phillis Wheatley (May 8, 1753 – December 5,
1784) was both the first published AfricanAmerican poet and the first African-American
woman poet. She was sold into slavery at the
age of seven and transported to North
America. She was purchased by a family called
Wheatley in Boston, who taught her to read
and write, and encouraged her poetry when
they saw her talent.
The Beginning: Slavery may be the biggest
blot on the history of America. But the
system of slavery also provided a fertile
ground for a new kind of literature in
America, rich in oral and folk tradition. The
birth of African-American literature is an
The publication of her Poems on Various
evidence of the irresistible human urge for
Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought
freedom. It is a literature of pain and
her fame both in England and the American
survival, of struggle for freedom and equality
colonies.
and of the quest for identity. It is a literature
that records the collective triumphs and
defeats, fears and dreams of the African Americans oppressed by an inhuman system.
4
Toni Morrison
The oral tradition of African American literature began
in the form of spirituals, blues, ballads, sermons and
folktales. Phillis Wheatley, who published her poetry in
1773, is believed to be the first African American poet
to be printed and published. She dedicated her Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral to proving
that the blacks were not inherently inferior to whites
in matters of the spirit and thus could be spiritual
equals to whites. Composing poems in a wide range of
classical genres, Wheatley was determined to show by
her mastery of form and metre, as well as by her
pious and learned subjects, that a black poet was as
capable of artistic expression as a white poet.
In 1789 Olaudah Equiano, Wheatley‟s most famous
black literary contemporary, published his two-volume
autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African,
Written by Himself. A British citizen who had
experienced
enslavement
in
the
Americas,
Equiano has been
After the establishment of the United States of
traditionally
America, northern states began a process of
regarded,
along
abolition beginning with the 1777 constitution of
with Wheatley, as
Vermont, followed by Pennsylvania's gradual
the founder of
emancipation act in 1780. The first attempts to end
African literature
slavery in the British/American colonies came from
in
English.
He
Thomas Jefferson and some of his contemporaries.
pioneered
the
As President, on March 2, 1807, Jefferson signed
slave narrative, a
the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves and it took
first-hand literary
effect in 1808.
testimony against slavery which, by the
early 19th century, earned for AfricanAmerican
literature
a
flourishing
readership in Britain as well as in the United States.
The nineteenth century saw an increasingly fervent
antislavery movement in the United States, which
sponsored firsthand autobiographical accounts of slavery by
fugitives from the South. From 1830 to the end of the
slavery era, the fugitive slave narrative dominated the
literary landscape of antebellum black America. The
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, Written by Himself (1845) gained the most
attention, establishing Frederick Douglass as the leading
African American man of letters of his time. By predicating
his struggle for freedom on his solitary pursuit of literacy,
education, and independence, Douglass portrayed himself
as a self-made man, which appealed strongly to middle-class white Americans.
5
Toni Morrison
Harriet Jacobs‟s is an important name when we
talk about antebellum American literature by
formerly enslaved African American women. Her
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861),
candidly describes her experience of the sexual
exploitation
that
made
slavery
especially
oppressive for black women. Her work, describing
her tenacity and courage with which she gained
freedom for herself and her two children, and the
antislavery and feminist oratory of Sojourner Truth
enriched early African American literature with
unprecedented models of female eloquence and
heroism.
Slave narratives recounted the personal
experiences of African Americans who
had escaped from slavery and found
their way to safety in the North. An
essential part of the anti-slavery
movement, these narratives drew on
Biblical allusion and imagery, the
rhetoric of abolitionism, the traditions
of the captivity narrative, and the
spiritual autobiography in appealing to
their (often white) audiences. In
addition to publishing their narratives,
former slaves became anti-slavery
lecturers and went on tour. They told
their stories to audiences throughout
the North and in Europe. Frederick
Douglass was the most famous, but he
was joined by others such as Sojourner
Truth and William Wells Brown.
While, in the nineteenth century African-American
literature reached early high points with slave
narratives, African Americans also entered the
world of prose and
dramatic literature. In
1853
William
Wells
Brown, authored the
first black American novel, Clotel; or, The President’s
Daughter, and five years later he also published the first
African American play, The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom.
The first African American women‟s fiction The Two Offers
appeared in 1859. It is a short story by Frances Ellen Watkins
Harper dealing with middle-class women whose race is not
specified. In the same year Harriet E. Wilson‟s Our Nig; or,
Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, an autobiographical
novel about the life of a working-class black woman in the
North, was published. With such remarkable works as
mentioned above, the 1850s emerged as the first AfricanAmerican literary renaissance.
Harlem Renaissance: As educational opportunity expanded among African Americans
after the Civil War, a self-conscious black middle class with serious literary ambitions
emerged in the later 19th century. The abandonment of Reconstruction for the blacks
that had begun after the war in the South forced African American writers to argue the
case for racial justice to an increasingly indifferent white audience.
The post-Reconstruction era was characterised by racial
segregation, disfranchisement, exploitation and violence towards
the African-Americans. Rampant racial injustices, led by weekly
reports of grisly lynchings, during the early decades of the
twentieth century, gave strong impetus to protest writing. From
the editor‟s desk of the Colored American Magazine, Pauline E.
Hopkins (1859-1930) wrote novels, short stories, editorials, and
social commentary in the early 1900s that attempted to revive the
fervour of the antislavery era. In his landmark collection of
6
Toni Morrison
essays, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963),
a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, advocated civil and voting rights for
African-Americans. Under Du Bois‟s leadership (1910-1934), The Crisis, a magazine
brought out by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
became the most widely read African-American magazine of its time. By 1917, Harlem,
in New York was well on its way to becoming what James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)
called “the greatest Negro city in the world,” attracting key intellectual leaders and
artists such as Du Bois and Johnson himself, not to mention thousands of migrants from
the South and Midwest whose talents and aspirations would fuel in the 1920s the second
great renaissance of African American culture. This second renaissance that represented
the flowering in literature and art of the New Negro movement of the 1920s is known as
the Harlem Renaissance. Some important writers of the period were Countee Cullen
(1903-1946), Nella Larsen (1891- 1964), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Claude McKay
(1889-1948), Rudolph Fisher (1897-1934), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), James
Weldon Johnson, Sterling Brown (1901-1989), Dorothy West (1907-1998), Jessie Fauset
(1882-1961) and Jean Toomer (1894-1967).
Civil Rights and Social Protest: The Great Depression of 1929 had in a way silenced
the voice of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1932, after being elected the President of the
USA, Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a programme of economic measures called The
New Deal. As part of this New Deal, the Federal Writers‟ Project was initiated in 1935 to
enable writers to earn a living while they continued to write. Many established AfricanAmerican writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, as well as new writers
like Richard Wright (1908-1960),
Robert Hayden (1913-1980), Frank
Yerby (1916-1991) and Margaret
Walker (1915-1998) participated in
this project.
The end of World War II brought
disillusionment to black veterans of
the military. On returning from war,
they pressed for full civil rights and
often led activist movements. The
main goal of these movements was
to end racial segregation and
discrimination
against
black
Americans and enforce constitutional voting rights to them. During this period, a number
of African-American writers responded to the civil rights movement. Richard Wright
protested the conditions and environment in which the blacks lived in the urban north in
his novel Native Son (1940). Langston Hughes protested against the discriminatory
social conditions by writing powerful poems like “Children‟s Rhymes”, “Let America be
America Again”, “Merry-Go-Round” and “What Happens to a Dream Deferred?”
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize wrote
many poems in the 1960s that reflect the civil rights activism of the period. In her
collection of poems published in 1960 titled The Bean Eaters, Brooks explores the racial
and economic tensions in the lives of the African-American people living in Chicago.
Other poets who contributed to the literature of the era were Melvin Tolson (1898-1966),
Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) and Ernest Gaines (1933- ). Among the novelists
7
Toni Morrison
William Attaway (1911-1986), Chester Himes (1909-1984) and Ann Petry (1908-1997)
wrote strong social protest novels.
African-American Women’s Writing
Though women writers were seen in the AfricanAmerican scene since its beginning, the 1970s and 1980s
saw a rise in their numbers. Two movements contributed
to this rise. One was the „Black Power‟ movement, which
grew out of the civil rights movement. Though not
formal, this movement instilled in the blacks a sense of
racial pride and self-esteem. Instead of aspiring to white
ideals of what they should be, the blacks were for the
first time encouraged to set their own ideals and be
proud of their heritage. As a sign of a new power, a new
African American slogan – “Black is Beautiful” was heard
across the country. The literature of this phase addressed
black audience.
The second influence on the rise of black women‟s writing
was the women‟s rights movement. The women‟s rights
movement led to an increased awareness of the
inequality of black women who in black folk wisdom were known as “the mule of the
world”. Many of the African-American writers such as Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995),
June Jordan (1939-1995), Audre Lorde (1934-1992) and Alice Walker (1944- ) had been
activists in the civil rights and women‟s movements, and they began to explore racism in
the women‟s movement and sexism in the black power movement. In 1970, several
important works by African-American women were published. Maya Angelou (19282014) published her autobiography called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an account
of her early life and how she overcame racism and trauma through her strength of
character and love for literature. Three important novels, The Third Life of Grange
Copeland, The Bluest Eye and His Own Where by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and June
Jordan respectively were published. All these novels addressed a black audience, and
were about black women and their relationships with black men rather than about the
relationship between blacks and whites. These novels
express the lives of black women who feel doubly
oppressed in a world which is both racist and sexist.
The feminist movement, mostly comprising white
middle class women more or less excluded Black
women. In such a state, they felt compelled to
reinstate their position vis-à-vis Black men, with whom
they struggled together against racism, and whom
they had to struggle with against their sexism. Alice
Walker coined the term “womanist” to define Black
feminist or feminist of colour, in her book In Search of
Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983).
African-American women not only gained success in
their creative endeavours, but also helped retrieve
some voices from the past. Alice Walker rescued from
8
Toni Morrison
oblivion, the classic work of Zola Neale Huston, especially her novel Their Eyes Were
Watching God (1937). In In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, she reclaimed and
commemorated the legacy of southern Black women by focussing on their art forms such
as quilting, gardening and storytelling. Toni Morrison edited The Black Book (1974), a
book about African-American history that includes folk recipes as well as historical
events.
Beloved (1987)
Set after the American Civil War (1861–1865), Beloved is inspired by the story of an
African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery during 1856 in Kentucky
by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. When a party arrived to retrieve her and her children
under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather
than allow her to be recaptured.
The protagonist of the novel, Sethe is based on Margaret Garner. Through flashbacks,
memories, and nightmares, we get to know that Sethe had escaped from slavery in
Kentucky by fleeing to Cincinnati, Ohio, to her mother-in-law. While she waits for her
husband Halle to make his escape and arrive at his mother‟s house, she is discovered by
schoolteacher, the manager of Sweet Home after Mr. Garner, her master. She decides to
kill all her children and herself before anyone could take her back to slavery. However,
she manages to kill only one of her
daughters before she is apprehended
and jailed for the murder.
Beloved begins by announcing the
malevolent presence of an abusive ghost
that has haunted the house at 124
Bluestone Road for years. In 1873,
Sethe has lived with her eighteen-yearold daughter Denver since her return
from prison. Sethe‟s mother-in-law,
Baby Suggs, lived with them until her
death eight years earlier. Just before
Baby Suggs‟s death, Sethe‟s two sons,
Howard and Buglar, ran away. Sethe
believes they fled because of the ghost.
Denver, however, likes the ghost, which
everyone believes to be the spirit of her
dead sister. On the day the story begins,
Paul D, an ex-slave at Mr. Garner‟s
Sweet Home plantation arrives at 124
Bluestone Road. His arrival unfolds a
series of events in Sethe‟s life, apart
from stirring old memories.
On the day of his arrival, Paul D chases
the house‟s resident ghost away, which
makes the already lonely Denver resent
9
Toni Morrison
him from the start. Sethe and Paul D look forward to a promising future together, until
one day, on their way home from a carnival they encounter a strange young woman
sleeping near the steps of 124. This woman calls herself Beloved, but seems to have no
memory of from where and how she arrived at 124. Denver develops an obsessive
attachment to Beloved, and Beloved‟s attachment to Sethe is equally if not more
intense. Paul D and Beloved however resent each other, and Beloved manages to drive
Paul D further and further away from Sethe by seducing him against his will. Paul D
leaves and Sethe and Beloved‟s relationship becomes more intense and exclusive.
Beloved, who is supposed to be an embodiment of the spirit of Sethe‟s dead daughter,
grows increasingly abusive, manipulative, and parasitic, and Sethe is obsessed with
satisfying Beloved‟s demands and making her understand why she murdered her. Sethe
and Beloved‟s obsessive attachment forces Denver out of the house for the first time in
twelve years, seeking help from her neighbours. The community that had shunned 124
and its inmates earlier come together to free 124 of Beloved.
Significance of Beloved
Beloved is derived from the name of the young woman, Beloved, who arrives at 124 one
day. Sethe and Denver believes that Beloved is their long dead daughter and sister
respectively. However, the character of Beloved can also be viewed as an embodiment of
three generations of slavery (Baby Suggs, Sethe and her children) and is a symbol of the
ghost of the more general historical past of slavery. Just as the history of slavery
continue to haunt the lives and memories of those who lived in it and escaped it, she
haunts the lives of her mother, Denver, and anyone else who comes in contact with the
family in 124, Bluestone Road. She forces the characters in the novel, most notably her
mother, to first recognize the pain from her past before she can begin to work through it
and her presence causes all of the characters to come to terms with themselves before
she leaves. Beloved, as a symbolic character, offers a chance to unearth and make
peace with the past before looking to the future as well as the supernatural possibility of
rebirth into a new and better world but on the other side. From the moment she arrives
she is already a symbol as she is newly reborn and childlike, she forces the characters to
understand their history and through this, we may see how Beloved represents three
generations of slavery and the horrible historical impact of slavery; from Baby Suggs and
her grandmother, whom Sethe barely remembers, to her own mother, to herself and her
siblings.
Despite the dangers of what Sethe calls „rememory‟, or remembering the past, Morrison
has based a large part of her fictional work on remembering.
Themes
History and Memory: In an interview with Susanna Rustin for The Guardian, in
November 2008, Toni Morrison points out how growing up in the Midwest meant being
involved with the African American culture which invariably was a legacy of the system
of slavery. She says, "Yet the pressure was not to remember it, but to get over it. So
when I was writing Beloved, part of the architecture was the act of forgetting." For
Morrison, writing and publishing Beloved was a conscious act towards healing the painful
wound of slavery, which is very much a part of the history of America, and yet not talked
about. In accepting the Frederic G. Melcher Book Award on October 12, 1988, for
Beloved Morrison observed that “there is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or
wall or park or skyscraper lobby” honouring the memory of the human beings forced into
10
Toni Morrison
slavery and brought to the United States. “There‟s no small bench by the road,” she
continued. “And because such a place doesn‟t exist (that I know of), the book had to.”
Inspired by her remarks, the Toni Morrison Society has now begun to install benches at
significant sites in the history of slavery in America.
She is aware of the conspicuous absence of a reminder to the history of slavery in
literature, in conversations and memorials. As it explores the lived experience of a black
woman in and after slavery, Beloved manifestly is about filling up gaps in the history of
America. The novel attempts to memorialize her numerous ancestors who had suffered
under the system of slavery. Despite its uncanny storyline, the presence of the gothic
conventions and magic realism in its narrative, Beloved nevertheless is a historical novel
that recounts the story Margaret Garner. At the same time, through the retelling of
Margaret Garner‟s story, Morrison is providing her readers the story of many Margaret
Garners.
In one instance in the novel, Stamp Paid, an ex-slave who helps fugitive slaves to
escape to freedom muses that the consequences of slavery is seen not only in the
slaves, but also in the white masters. In slavery, everyone suffers a loss of humanity
and compassion. For this reason, Morrison suggests that the nation‟s identity, like the
novel‟s characters, must be healed. America‟s future depends on its understanding of the
past, and not in covering up the past: just as Sethe must come to terms with her past
before she can secure a future with Denver and Paul D. Beloved then, may be looked
upon as Morrison's desire to raise a memorial to that history which America would rather
forget. Beloved, in this light serves as that place where people go to recollect their past
and recognise their history.
Slavery: The story of Beloved, as is mentioned above, derived from the true story of a
slave woman called Margaret Garner who killed her daughter in order to save her from
slavery. The novel is Toni Morrison‟s attempt at exploring the nature of slavery not from
an intellectual or slave narrative perspective, but from within the day-to-day lived
experience of a slave woman.
It is often considered that a child born to a woman is hers and none can take it away
from her. However, in the antebellum America, the slave woman had no such rights. A
child born to her became her master‟s property and had to become a slave like herself.
Especially after the United States outlawed the importation of new slaves in 1808, slave
women were not only required to work but also to bear children and thus propagate the
slave population. The physical and psychological trauma, the sexual abuse and the
destruction of the natural concept of family had many negative consequences on the
slave women.
In Beloved, Toni Morrison looks at the consequence of slavery on black motherhood. The
constant anxiety of not knowing how long one would be able to hold on to one‟s children
resulted in even a mother‟s natural love seeming dangerous. This is reflected in the
murder that Sethe commits in an attempt to safeguard her children‟s freedom. This is
also poignantly reflected in Baby Suggs‟ memory about her first born – “My first-born. All
I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that?
Eight children and that‟s all I remember” (Beloved, pp-6).
Beloved also explores the devastating effects that continue to haunt even ex-slaves in
their freedom. A significant negative impact on former slaves is on their sense of selves
11
Toni Morrison
which is a result of constant humiliation in all forms. Much of Beloved is about the
restless and tortured internal lives of the characters, who were all former slaves. Slavery
took away from Baby Suggs almost all her eight children and one grandchild, thus
making her spiritually tired. Sethe is tormented by the ghost of her dead daughter, a
memory she would rather „disremember‟. Paul D, for instance, is so alienated from
himself that at one point he cannot tell whether the screaming he hears is his own or
someone else‟s. Slavery has made him doubt whether he is a „real‟ man. He is so
devastated by his own history of slavery that he cannot bring himself up to think about
settling down with Sethe and daring to have what looks like a perfect family. It is
significant that Beloved arrives and later drives Paul D away from 124 just when he and
Sethe were beginning to hope for a future together. For, Beloved is symbolic of the
horrible impact of slavery on people like Paul D and Sethe. Both of them have to deal
with Beloved in their own ways before beginning a future.
Motherhood: Toni Morrison‟s fiction is remarkable for the portrayal of African-American
women with tremendous strength to face life. The dynamics of family and family life,
especially the woman of the house as a mother takes centre stage in her work.
Motherhood is a central theme in Morrison‟s fiction and she returns to this topic again
and again in many of her works.
Beloved is more than anything, about the slave woman as mother. It is about
motherhood and mothering. Toni Morrison explores one poignant fact about the system
of slavery and its effect on motherhood. She explores the fact that slave mothers were
often not allowed to nurse or raise their own children, thus destroying the mother-child
relationship. Three episodes in the novel highlight this fact: 1) Sethe‟s relationship with
her own mother, which is reflected in her own relationship with her children; 2) Baby
Suggs‟ relationship with her children; and 3) the milk stealing incident.
Sethe, suffered the lack of a mother in her own childhood, having only fragmentary
memories of her "Ma'am." As an adult, she suffers the theft of her milk by her white
oppressors. Most importantly, she is a runaway slave who kills her next-to-youngest
child, a daughter, to protect her from slave catchers. The ghost of this child returns to be
with Sethe, demanding the love and nurture that she should have got as a child. Sethe‟s
motherhood thus is motivated by her desire to compensate for the love and nurture she
12
Toni Morrison
could not give her daughter, and to make her understand that it was her love which
compelled her to kill her daughter.
Slavery fractured and destroyed the very condition of motherhood for African American
women. It not only defeminized black women, but also reduced black motherhood to
commodification of their reproductive capabilities. African American literature is suffused
with images of many tragic incidents where mothers have to witness their children being
killed, raped or sent to the slave market. As black women writers attempt to validate
their femininity in their works, they also recapture and reframe their experience of
motherhood free of white constructs. Morrison‟s portrayal of motherhood is based on this
larger political and philosophical stance on black womanhood. She builds upon black
women‟s experiences and perspectives of motherhood in order to define maternal
identity as a site of power for black women. According to her, from this site of power
black women engages in a kind of motherhood whose sole goal is to empower the
children. Looked at from this point of view, Sethe‟s act of killing her daughter and her
attempt to kill the other children is an assertion of power. By trying to kill her children,
Sethe attempts to usurp the schoolteacher‟s right over them.
Narrative Structure in Beloved
Beloved, by telling the story of Sethe and her escape from slavery takes on the form of a
slave narrative. However, Toni Morrison revises the traditional slave narrative structure
by exploring the ex-slave‟s life after her escape. While traditional slave narratives
explore the slave‟s physical escape and journey to freedom, Morrison depicts the exslave‟s escape not only from physical, but also psychological trauma.
What we have in Beloved is not a linear tale, told from beginning to end. It is a story
encompassing levels of past, from the slave ship to Sweet home, as well as the present.
Sometimes the past is told in flashbacks, sometimes in stories, and sometimes it is
plainly told, as if it were happening in the present. The narrative structure in Beloved
has often been described as complex. This is due to the multiple and fragmented plot
lines and shifting points of view. While for some, this kind of a narrative structure may
create difficulty in a better reading of the text, some others may enjoy it, as the
fragments and various plot lines help the readers to fill up the gaps, put the pieces
together and have a coherent story.
13
Toni Morrison
As she weaves specific literary techniques such as stream of consciousness and magic
realism with African American folk tradition, Morrison brings a beautiful complexity to the
novel. For example, one notices the use of parallel structure and repetition almost
immediately; the first sentence of each of the three parts of the novel are "124 was
spiteful," "124 was loud," and "124 was quiet." The character of Baby Suggs exemplifies
the oral traditions of African Americans. In her freedom, "she became an unchurched
preacher...uncalled, unrobed, unanointed" bringing peace to her neighbours by her
practice of traditional African American Christianity. When Sethe deeply longs for Baby
Suggs‟ motherly support, she hears the latter‟s voice saying, “Lay em down, Sethe.
Sword and shield. Down. Down. Both of em down. Down by the riverside. Sword and
shield. Don't study war no more. Lay all that mess down. Sword and shield." This kind of
repetition of words which is almost musical and soothing not only to the ears of the
characters in the novel, but also to the readers is typical of literature by many African
American women writers.
Magic realism, is chiefly a LatinAmerican narrative strategy that is
characterized by the matter-of-fact
inclusion of fantastic or mythical
elements
into
seemingly
realistic fiction.
This strategy is
characterized by two conflicting
perspectives, one based on a so-called
rational view of reality and the other on
the acceptance of the supernatural as
prosaic reality. Magical realism differs
from pure fantasy primarily because it
is set in a normal, modern world with
authentic descriptions of humans and
society.
Although this strategy is known in
the literature of many cultures in
many ages, the term magic realism is
a relatively recent designation, first
applied in the 1940s by Cuban
novelist Alejo
Carpentier,
who
recognized this characteristic in much
Latin-American literature. Prominent
among the Latin-American magic
realists are the Colombian Gabriel
García Márquez, the Brazilian Jorge
Amado, the Argentines Jorge Luis
Borges and Julio Cortazar, and the
Chilean Isabel Allende.
The very second line of the novel tells us that
this is no ordinary slave narrative we are
about to read. The opening statements: “124
was spiteful. Full of a baby‟s venom” opens
the realm of the supernatural to the readers.
As we read on, we however realise that, this
is no common ghost story, but Morrison‟s
depiction of one cultural truth of the African
American community. That the African
American community trust in supernatural
occurrences is reflected in the matter-of-fact
manner in which Sethe and Denver accept
the presence of the ghost in the house. Just
as Sethe and Denver do not react in an
extraordinary way in the presence of the
baby ghost, similarly Morrison sees no need
for a special introduction the ghost. She has
embedded the supernatural from the very
first sentence and makes it a common, if
complicated, part of the characters' lives. By
doing so, Morrison clearly shows the influence
of the Latin American technique of magic
realism in the novel.
14
Toni Morrison
Stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes in words the flow of thoughts in the
minds of the characters.
The term was coined by a psychologist called William James in his research “The Principles of
Psychology”, where he used the metaphor of a ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ to describe the thought processes of
man.
The Stream of Consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and lack of
punctuations. The use of this narration mode is generally associated with the modern novelist and short
story writers of the 20th Century.
Another literary technique that Morrison appoints apart from magic realism is the stream
of consciousness technique. While there are a number of examples of it throughout the
text, Chapters 20-23 are the most significant. Towards the end of Chapter 19, when
Stamp Paid visits 124, he is confronted and held back by several voices emanating from
the house. "Mixed in with the voices surrounding the house, recognizable but
undecipherable to Stamp Paid, were the thoughts of the women of 124, unspeakable
thoughts, unspoken": thus ends the nineteenth chapter as it prepares us for what is to
follow. In the following four chapters, the voice of the omniscient narrator is silenced as
the “unspoken” and “unspeakable” thoughts of the inhabitants of 124 grow louder and
louder. In Chapter 20, Sethe begins, “Beloved, she my daughter. She mine.” Sethe
wants to explain everything to Beloved so that her daughter will understand why her
own mother killed her. The next Chapter depicts Denver‟s thoughts and begins similarly
with, “Beloved is my sister.” Chapter 22 in turn opens with Beloved‟s thoughts, “I am
Beloved and she is mine.” Her patchy memories are of a time when she crouched among
dead bodies. She speaks of thirst and hunger, of death and sickness, and of “men
without skin.” She says all the people are trying to leave their bodies behind. In Chapter
23, the three women‟s voices come together and mingle, although not in a typical
dialogic style.
Conclusion
Beloved became a critical success, bringing to her the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988,
as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, the Melcher Book Award, the
Lyndhurst Foundation Award, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award and the American Book
Award. While her earlier works, especially Song of Solomon, were not short of national
level recognition and awards, nothing was as successful as Beloved. When the novel
failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award,
forty-eight black critics and writers protested the omission.
Though Beloved has been considered Morrison‟s most accomplished novels, it has also
often met with severe criticism. Some reviewers have attacked the novel for what they
consider its excessive sentimentality and sensationalistic depiction of the horrors of
slavery. Others, while finding that Beloved to be at times overwritten, have lauded the
novel as a profound and extraordinary act of imagination. In May 21, 2006, a New York
Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked Beloved the best work of American
fiction from 1981 to 2006. Today, many believe that a study of American literature is
incomplete without Beloved, just as American history is not complete without its history
of slavery. It was adapted during 1998 into a movie of the same name starring Oprah
Winfrey and directed by Jonatham Demme.
15
Toni Morrison
Bibliography
Andrews, William L. and Nellie Y. McKay. Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Casebook. Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Bloom, Harold. ( revised ed) Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Infobase Publishing, 2009.
Ghasemi, Parvin and Rasool Hajizadeh. “Demystifying the Myth of Motherhood: Toni
Morrison‟s Revision of African-American Mother Stereotypes” in International Journal of
Social Science and Humanity. 2.6. November, 2012.
Green, Lindsay. “Foregrounding Motherhood in Toni Morrison‟s Sula and Beloved” in
The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism
in the Discipline of English. 3.1. January, 2001.
Hirsch, Marianne. Maternity and Rememory: Toni Morrison‟s Beloved.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/HirschMarianne_onBeloved.pdf
23.06.2014.
(accessed)
Littlefield, Marci Bounds. “Black Women, Mothering, and Protest in the 19 th Century
American Society” in The Journal of Pan African Studies. 2.1. November, 2007.
Mayfield, Sandra. “Motherhood in Toni Morrison‟s Beloved: A Psychological Reading” in
Journal of Scientific Psychology. January, 2012.
http://www.psyencelab.com/images/Motherhood_in_Toni_Morrison%27s_Beloved.pdf
(accessed) 23.06.2014.
Demme, Jonathan. (Directed) Beloved by Touchstone Pictures Harpo Films. October,
1998. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zehVZ9iPtSY
16
Toni Morrison
Images:
1.
Toni
Morrison.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://www.voxmagazine.com/blog/2013/10/and-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-goes-to/
2.
Phillis
Wheatley.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Phillis_Wheatley_frontispie
ce.jpg/472px-Phillis_Wheatley_frontispiece.jpg
3.
Olaudah
Equiano.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Olaudah_Equiano__Project_Gutenberg_eText_15399.png/372px-Olaudah_Equiano__Project_Gutenberg_eText_15399.png
4.
Frederick
Douglass.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Frederick_Douglass_portra
it.jpg/417px-Frederick_Douglass_portrait.jpg
5.
Harriet
Ann
Jacobs.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Harriet_Ann_Jacobs1894.png
6.
Sojourner
Truth.
Photo:
Wikimedia
Commons.
Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Sojourner_truth_c1870.jp
g/429px-Sojourner_truth_c1870.jpg
7.
Cover of the first publication of Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black.
Source: < http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a5/Ournig.jpg>
8.
African-American Civil Rights Movement. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/1963_march_on_washington.jpg
9.
Image: “Unification is a key cornerstone of Womanist ideology”. Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/%22Unity%22_-_NARA__558865.jpg/472px-%22Unity%22_-_NARA_-_558865.jpg
10.
Image: Cover of the first publication of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/TheirEyesWereWatchingGod.JPG
11.
Image: Toni Morrison in a cover of her novel Beloved.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Beloved_by_Toni_Morrison.jpg
Source:
12.
Image: A slave mother and her daughter being separated in the slave market.
Source: https://answersinhistory.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/slavery2.jpg?w=500
13.
Image of a scene from the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. Source:
http://img2-2.timeinc.net/ew/img/review/981023/beloved.jpg
17