Introduction
Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved takes two historical standpoints in its fictional exploration of slavery as an institution in nineteenth-century America. Firstly, the story details the experiences of Black Americans slaving in plantations owned by “white people.” On the other hand, post-civil-war America is showcased as it applied, and applies still, to African Americans in the aftermath of the horrors of the former period. Morrison’s approach to her literary works can be characterized by an admission that “though she could not change the future, she knew she could change the past” (Roynon, 13).
Thus, Beloved recontextualizes events in the slavery era and post-slavery era America to exhibit how their impacts on African Americans have been understated and misunderstood. As we understand it, certain aspects of history are challenged and represented afresh in ways that are more judicious than reality. This essay argues that Morrison uses Beloved to showcase that slavery and racism permeated every aspect of the USA, as a matter of national identity, with long-lasting adverse effects for African Americans.
Historical Analysis of Beloved
Slavery as a National Institution
Morrison adequately captures the institution of slavery as an indelible part of American history. In the years leading up to the Civil War, slavery was an institution employed by the privileged white class who exploited African Americans for their labor and imposed a master-servant relationship in all regards. Characters such as the Schoolteacher are the embodiment of the national hatred and subjugation of African Americans at its height. In a particularly disheartening part of the story, the Schoolteacher admonishes one of his equally inhumane, barely adolescent nephews for beating Sethe to the point of insanity (Morrison, 146).
He notes that African Americans are creatures that God has placed under the dominion of White Americans and should therefore not be punished too harshly lest they turn wild and ill of use. Thus, slavery was systemic, well-organized, and enforced with ruthless efficiency in a nearly nationwide state by persons who were entirely convinced that Blacks should be subordinated in perpetuity. Any efforts to turn slavery and racism into adverse character traits of the Southern States are misplaced and out of line with reality.
National Consciousness Supporting Oppression
Further evidence of a national consciousness that was supportive of the subordination of African Americans was the fact that national institutions and machinery were propping it up. For instance, Morrison notes that the Ku Klux Klan: “Desperately thirsty for black blood, without which it could not live, the dragon swam the Ohio at will” (Morrison, 65). This was after the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865, which held so much promise for African Americans all over the USA. It points out that although the USA abolished slavery, the abolition was not enforced by the government, which makes it complicit in allowing the physical and mental torture of African Americans to continue.
Historians argue that slavery quickly morphed into overt racism that continued to implement the long-held social structure in which privileged Whites were at the top of the hierarchy (Armstrong, 37). The segregation measures that took hold of America and eventually morphed into the gruesome Jim Crow era were all an extension of a hostile national attitude towards African Americans (Armstrong, 39). From a historical perspective, Beloved is very accurate in its depiction of what slavery was and became.
White Victims of Servitude
Morrison points out that certain White people fell prey to the overarching national desire to enforce a system of servitude. In particular, not all “white people” were privileged enslavers with a self-assigned superiority over Blacks. A case in point is the victims of the institution of indentured servitude that resulted in White persons toiling under the yoke of fellow Whites to buy their freedom (Armstrong, 36). Years of labor were the price of freedom in this perverse relationship, which was the harsh reality for many Europeans upon landing in America. Morrison uses the character of Amy, a “white girl”, to showcase this part of American history. Amy has arms the size of cane sticks (Morrison, 29).
Amy assists Sethe in giving birth to Denver amid her arduous flight from Sweet Home. At this point, Amy has just left a lifetime of indentured servitude. On the other hand, Sethe is running from Sweet Home, heavily pregnant and desperate. In spite of their racial differences, the two form a bond born out of recognition of mutual suffering in conditions that encourage the powerful to prey on the weak.
The Myth of Northern Moral Superiority
Many historical texts on this period note the significance of the possibility of enslaved people fleeing their slavers in the South for the abolitionist North. From historical accounts, fleeing the slavers in the South took a lot of collaboration, collusion, and clandestine planning on the part of enslaved people and their contacts in the North (Churchill, 16). In Beloved, Morrison shows that runaways from the South were mainly assisted by their fellow Blacks and not the White Northerners, as history suggests.
In particular, Ella, Stamp Paid, and Baby Suggs are the most influential persons in the escape of Sethe and her children. They provide her with food and shelter. The Bodwins, who presumably assist enslaved people crossing into the North, are showcased to be as racist as the Southerners when Denver spots a kneeling Black man in their house with the message “At Yo Service” (Morrison, 244). Thus, Morrison refutes any claim that racism was a trait of the South if not the North. It was an American ideal with clear objectives and exploited by unscrupulous Whites keen to exert social dominance.
Challenging White Savior Narratives
In many ways, Beloved challenges widespread beliefs and accounts that portray certain Whites as sympathetic to African Americans. No White character, save for Amy Denver, is kind to a Black American. Even Amy leaves Sethe because Sethe’s back is flayed and scarred, and her feet look horrible (Morrison, 263). Morrison accurately showcases White Americans of the nineteenth century as brute, exploitative human beings with a superiority complex. This depiction certainly causes discomfort in historians who seek to assert that there were few privileged Whites with love for African Americans.
The only Whites who could perhaps ally with African Americans were the ones who had been dealt a bad hand in that they had White masters themselves. Berger observes and lauds this clarification by Morrison and notes that the tendency to generalize the North as abolitionists and the South as racists is misplaced and not in line with actual events (408). In this regard, Beloved distinguishes itself as a text that incorporates historical accuracy instead of merely restating the widely held “facts”.
Morrison portrays Northerners as perhaps only drawing from their sense of superiority over the Southerners, as opposed to drawing from their humanity, in their stance against slavery. For instance, Morrison notes that the Bodwins, who facilitate the escape of runaways from the South, “hated slavery worse than they hated slaves” (Morrison, 133). Similarly, Mr. Garner, a kindly master, only surrenders an elderly and battered Baby Suggs to the Bodwins after her son, Halle, commits to working for her release (Morrison, 139).
The Psychological Toll of Slavery
Thus, the horrors of slavery as portrayed by Morrison in Beloved are so immense that they cut through any pretentious acts of kindness. In this regard, Morrison rewrites history by asserting that nobody was on the African Americans’ side. The North may have postured as an ally, but it had its particular goal of bringing the South in line, which should not be conflated with the issue of nationwide abolition of slavery. This assertion supports the argument of this essay that racism was nationwide, widespread, and accepted as a social reality in the USA and should therefore not be retrospectively assigned to the vilified South.
The Fugitive Slave Act and Sethe’s Despair
In addition, the book captures the horror of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed Southern slave catchers to pursue their human property in the abolitionist states. Otherwise called the “Bloodhound Bill”, it was an attempt by the beneficiaries of slavery to impose their wishes on a nation that was yearning for change (Panteleimon, 53). Upon learning that Southern catchers were imminent, Sethe breaks away from reality and, in a fit of desperate rage, tries to murder all her children but is only successful in the infanticide of Beloved (Morrison, 162).
Morrison brilliantly brings forth the fact that African Americans at this point had served their White masters for long enough and could not possibly take any more of the cruelty. It signifies that the time was ripe for the abolition of slavery all over the United States of America. This assertion was not founded on the mercies of the compassionate “white people”. It was a natural and rightful conclusion of events because the long-suffering enslaved people were at a breaking point. The USA, however, conspired in its bid to perpetuate its national ideal of slavery through Congress, which enacted the Fugitive Slave Act.
The scale of slavery is perhaps best described in terms of its lasting effects on the African American psyche. Beloved haunts Sethe and house 124 in great fits of rage eighteen years after her death (Morrison, 2). This is one of the most imaginative and precise ways to capture the lasting effects of slavery. In particular, Sethe is a representative of African Americans, whereas Beloved is a stand-in for post-traumatic stress and hauntings. Beloved, aptly named, is also a stand-in for the love that African Americans did not receive in the era of slavery.
The fact that Beloved is an infant captures the reality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade that resulted in abducted Africans setting foot on American shores. They were innocent and barely sentient as a people in the grander scheme of geopolitics when they were ruthlessly murdered, tortured, mutilated, raped, and exploited. In the ensuing years, they remain haunted by their past and cannot assert themselves as a people of promise in the USA. Thus, slavery and racism were a national identity that, in the long run, birthed the flawed demographic of African Americans.
Racism Beyond Slavery
Another way Morrison paints slavery as a national “ideal” in the USA is by portraying how its character was maintained after it was abolished. Terms such as “colored Thursday” hint at the ensuing segregation that would define America for the century after the abolition of slavery in 1865 (Morrison, 47). Additionally, the Klan ravages Ohio after slavery is abolished, meaning that the Blacks would never really be safe from the threat of death, physical harm, and exploitation.
Doing away with slavery, according to Morrison, is not merely an act of putting pen to paper and signing off an amendment. It required an entire process of social transformation on the part of the Whites as well as healing on the part of the Blacks so that they would come to terms with their past and use it as a base moving into the future. Without these comprehensive processes, America would struggle to integrate its past, which would often come up in “rememory” at the worst possible times to upset whatever progress was being made at a surface level.
Contemporary Resonance and the Legacy of Slavery
Notably, the book was written in 1987 and was significantly impacted by the national landscape. Historians have adequately documented African Americans’ struggles in the USA over the years to date. There is an overwhelming feeling that African Americans remain a subdued and rudderless group. Recent studies on African Americans highlight the increased focus on matters of social justice for wrongs committed against them, going as far back as the slavery era. This includes a more recent push for reparations due to Black families who have been afflicted by slavery and other forms of atrocity (Fadem, 34).
Morrison puts these contemporary calls for justice into perspective by providing them context. Many African Americans are like Beloved in that they drift around, asking for the love they feel they deserve. Crucially, Morrison imaginatively and accurately captures the quagmire that African Americans find themselves in without offering a way out. Thus, the novel correctly depicts past events without much-needed guidance on the way forward.
In the context of other literary works based on African American experiences in the mid-nineteenth century, Beloved shines primarily due to its focus on individual struggles as a microcosm of a larger whole. Unlike other books that focus on the experiences of enslaved people, Beloved homes on the feelings, desires, and aspirations of its characters, and particularly Sethe, in light of the unimaginable horrors that have, and continue to shape them. This is a departure from books such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which are out-and-out social justice books (Bracher, 364). Additionally, its historical placement as the premier fictional text in African American history in the slavery era is partly due to its strict fidelity to historical realities that some conspire to erase.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is no doubt that Beloved achieves its goal of showcasing slavery as an American ideal with excellent results. The entire institution of slavery was very well thought out. It was used significantly by persons with social goals of establishing themselves at the top of the pyramid.
Morrison showcases how mindless individuals and institutions propped up this entire structure to ensure that it held as long as possible. Slavery was so deeply ingrained in the American model that it persisted as segregation and ritualistic killings of Blacks by the Klan, among other forms of discrimination, long after the ink had dried on the Thirteenth Amendment. Toni Morrison imaginatively captures all these historical facts in a novel that is the gold standard in its niche.
Works Cited
Armstrong, Catherine. “Concepts of Slavery in the United States 1865–1914.” The Palgrave International Handbook of Human Trafficking, 2019, pp. 1–16. Web.
Berger, James. “Ghosts of Liberalism: Morrison’s Beloved and the Moynihan Report.” PMLA, vol. 111, no. 3, 1996, p. 408. Web.
Bracher, Mark. “How to Teach for Social Justice: Lessons Form “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Cognitive Science.” College English, vol. 71, no. 4, 2009, pp. 363–388. Web.
Churchill, Robert H. The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America. Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Fadem, Maureen E. Ruprecht. Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Case for Reparations. Routledge, 2020.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. New York, Vintage International.
Panteleimon, Tsiokos. “Palimpsestuous Manifestations of Slavery-Inflicted Somatic and Psychological Trauma in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987).” Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, vol. 9, no. 1. 2022. Web.
Roynon, Tessa. The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison. Cambridge ; New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013.