1

CHAPTER—3

BELOVED

Morrison’s fifth novel, ​Beloved, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the year 1987.

It took her six years to write this novel. Being a black woman, Toni Morrison is

well aware of the trauma and sufferings which a black woman has to face in her

life. This novel artistically dramatizes a haunting amalgam of the past and presents

experiences of an escaped female slave, Sethe, tracing the heroine’s quest for

meaning and wholeness in life. Morrison’s ​Beloved ​provides the avenue for a

resurrected female slave’s voice. The voice is that of Sethe but it can be considered

voice of all females who revolt against all forms of slavery and struggle for

freedom in their lives. The novel basically presents the theme of protest against the

cycle of female bondage in American Society.

Set in the nineteenth century, primarily in the gruesome pre and post Civil War era,

Beloved is developed through a series of flash backs. These flashbacks offer the

personal accounts of black female slaves. Their sufferings, strengths and the way
they protest against their oppression are fictionalized in ​Beloved. This novel offers

the personal account “of black slaves and ex—slaves of their experiences in

slavery and of their efforts to obtain freedom.”1 The novel describes the

discriminatory and tyrannical black females in their community.

Slavery in America is an historical fact. Different from other novelists who write

about slavery usually as works of historical documents and carefully present their

topics, Morrison breaks with the realism of slave narratives and historical fiction

by making ‘a ghost’ a main character. The suffering of slavery and the ghost make

Sethe become a tortured woman whose feature is living in a painful life because of

some trauma in the past or now.

All the important characters, young and old, look to their past only to recall how

the life of their parents and grandparents was only a tale of pain and sufferings.

Sethe, the most important female character in the novel, can think of her past only

with a great feeling of sorrow and deprivation. Memory of some happy moments

spent under the protective and affectionate care of the mother is just unknown to a

black girl like Sethe.

In the novel, Morrison’s characters are well aware of the vulnerable position in

which the black slave woman has been placed: “That anybody white could take

your whole self for anything that comes to mind. Not just work kill or maim you.
Dirty you so bad you could not like yourself anymore.”2

Like ​The Bluest Eye female characters in ​Beloved also have prominent roles. They

can be studied from two perspectives—their roles as tortured slaves and as tortured

mothers. Beside it the novel also has some of the female characters who have

intimacy and deep sympathy for each other. No doubt most of the female

characters are exploited by their masters but they are not meek. They are strong,

determined and affirmative characters who are not ready to surrender before their

masters and try their best up to the last moment of their life to break the vicious

circle of slavery.

Morrison’s protest against slavery and injustice is clearly visible in the

characterization of Sethe and other female characters. She is a pivotal character in

Beloved. The narrative voice of the novel is most often hers and ‘remomories’ the

awfulness of her life as a slave. She rarely saw her mother, and was brought up by

a one-armed woman named Nan, while her mother worked in the fields as a slave

her mother took her aside one day to show her a mark which was branded on her

ribcage. Later Sethe finds her mother hanged, along with many other women, but

she never discovers the reason why. Sethe is presumably a second generation slave,

since she can remember her mother speaking other language (p.62) and being told

her repeated rapes during the voyage to America. Sethe’s memories of her youth
are vague, but at the age of thirteen she is sold to Sweet Home, a farm in Kentucky.

She is bought to replace Baby Suggs, whose son she later marries and to whose

home she escapes.

Sethe, after her marriage to Halle, became the mother of three children and was

expecting the fourth when her owner, Mr. Garner, died. This set into motion the

chain of events which had always been the fate of the slave mothers. School

Teacher who took charge of Sweet Home Plantation after the death of Mr. Garner,

who to him were no better than “watchdogs without teeth; steer bulls without

horns; gelded workhorses whose neigh and whinny could not be translated into a

language responsible humans spoke”. (p.125)

When Sethe learns about the plans of School Teacher to sell away her children, she

felt brutally shocked and tried her best to protect her children from the pains of

slavery. She succeeded in getting her children aboard of the north bound Caravan.

She, then tried to escape with her husband to Ohio by taking the Underground

Railroad, but the plan failed and they were captured and brought back to Sweet

Home Plantation by the men of their master. Infuriated by their attempts to escape,

they lashed and thrashed Sethe and her husband like savages. The assistants of

School Teacher even violated her motherhood and stole the milk from her breast

she had for her child. When Sethe reported this heinous crime to Mrs. Garner, it
outraged the assistant and the School Teacher beyond all bounds. She was whipped

and mutilated mercilessly for daring to complain against their tyranny to Mrs.

Garner.

These brutalities, however, fail to repress her desire and determination to give a

life of freedom to her children. She can’t even stand the idea that the baby she was

carrying should be treated like a chattel by anybody. She therefore, leaves on the

arduous journey to Ohio. This time she has to go alone as Halle her husband, failed

to keep company with her. Thus, pregnant, barefoot and mutilated Sethe runs to

Ohio, to her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs. Morrison’s description of Sethe’s journey

is so moving and powerful that it is difficult to find passages of description

anywhere illustrating an almost superhuman stamina and spirit of a life of freedom.

The saga of pain and suffering, which was the fate of black woman in America,

reaches the climactic point after Sethe succeeds in reaching Ohio. She is chased by

School Master who comes to Ohio to arrest her and her children, his fugitive

slaves. His obvious intentions were to sell them out as slave in order to make

money. But Sethe is determined not to let it happen: “I could not let all that go

back to where it was and I could not let her nor any of them live under school

teacher. That was out” (p.163). When she sees the School Teacher near her cottage

at Ohio, she instantly acts to protect her children from him at all costs, even if she
has to kill them, “No. No. None. None. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit

of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and beautiful

and carried, pushed, dragged them through veil, out, away, over there where no one

could hurt them” (p.160)

In her desperate bid to save her children from the agony of slavery she slashes the

throat of her only baby girl. She had intended to dispatch all her children to the

country of freedom in death beyond the reach of the slave catchers, but she could

hold of only her daughter whom she kills instantly. She kills her own baby to

secure her freedom from the atrocities which a woman has to suffer under the

system of slavery. Sethe’s own experience had taught her well the supreme value

of freedom even if that be achieved by embracing death

Morrison’s description of the sacrifice of her daughter by Sethe is a heart rending

account of the unspeakable misery which women are subjected to in a racist

society. The murder of the child at the hands of her own mother gives the reader an

idea of how desperate the situation is for black woman in the social order

dominated by the white. It is thus a powerful protest against the oppression of

slaves particularly that of women, even after the slavery had officially been

abolished in America as a result of the Civil War.

Beloved, one of the significant female characters after whom the novel has been

named and whose existence itself is doubtful, is next important character of

discussion. It is she who was slashed by Sethe in the woods to spare her from the

unspeakable miseries which the slaves had to undergo under the vicious circle of

slavery. It is a mystery how did she appear in the later pages of the novel? Several

literary critics have devoted their attention to ask, ‘who is Beloved?’ Is the ghostly

child a supernatural agent, or vampire, or a real person who appears and chooses to

accept the identity that Sethe is determined to foist upon her? The name Beloved is

that on the baby’s grave, but not that of Sethe’s own daughter. It is a word used

both at funerals and weddings, thus signifying both past and future. Beloved can

also be seen embodiment of slavery itself.

If Beloved is Sethe’s executed daughter come back to life, then she is willed into

existence by the women of 124 Bluestone Road. Sethe announces ominously that if

her daughter would only come back she would be able to explain her actions to her.

Denver, the second daughter of Sethe, craves companionship and treasures her

sister’s presence, both ghostly and actual. But Denver is to learn that she is of little

importance to Beloved. After the departure of Paul D, Beloved and Sethe engage in

a tug of love, guilt and retribution. Beloved lacks the ability to forgive her mother

for her crime, echoing Sethe’s own inability to forgive herself. Although Beloved
arrives at 124 Bluestone Road as an adult, we witness her living through the human

life cycle. At first her needs are for oral gratification and her mother’s gaze. She is

unable to bear the weight of her own head and cannot walk or talk properly. At this

point she is developmentally and emotionally an infant. She remains at the stage of

primary identification, refusing to differentiate herself from her mother: ‘her face is

my own’ (p.210). During her stay she becomes a vindictive and unrelenting

teenager, untouched by the usual rules that regulate the parent-child relationship.

Beloved takes emotional advantage of Denver by befriending her, and physical

advantage of Paul D by seducing him. She becomes Sethe’s judge and begins to

take her over. She wears her clothes, imitates her, and laughs ‘her laugh’ (p.241).

Denver begins to have difficulty in telling them apart, as Beloved dominates Sethe,

swelling in size as mother shrinks. A physical embodiment of the spiteful

poltergeist, Beloved is a malignant presence, who would as soon as strangle Sethe

as soother her.

Crucially from the text is any explanation by the author of why Beloved appears,

where she goes after her disappearance or whether she really disappears. Ella is

‘not so sure’ that she will not return (p.263). The novel presents the reaction of

others to her presence; by the epilogue she is forgotten. Not one of the characters

can remember anything that she said, and it is posited that perhaps she only said
and thought what they themselves were thinking (p.274). This allows a

psychoanalytical reading of Beloved’s presence: as the incarnation of Sethe’s sense

of guilt and her unforgiving memory, with which she has to come to terms before

she can accept the future that Paul D offers. Beloved can also be seen as America’s

past of slavery, with her memories of Middle Passage, haunting the reader in the

same way as it haunted Toni Morrison herself before she embarked on the novel

that took her six years to write. Although Beloved’s presence is a negative one, it

purges the guilt ridden Sethe, who needs punishment in order to gain redemption.

Denver recounts the way in which her mother seems to provoke Beloved’s

outrages (p.252), with a masochistic desire for penance.

Though Denver the second daughter of Sethe is a minor female character yet she is

important to discuss to properly understand the nexus of the novel. It is Denver

who was born when Sethe was on her way home after escaping from South Home

Plantation and was helped by Amy, a white woman, in the safe delivery of the

child. Her birth is something that happened to Sethe and, although Denver loves

the story, when she tells it she switches from the third person narrative to

experiencing it as Sethe. Her narrative is overpowered by the past and her voice is

drowned. So much of the novel depends on the life of Sweet Home, its dissolution

and consequences that Denver is set aside. She herself is aware of the bond that
unites Paul D and her mother.

Denver is the character most sensitive to Beloved and her true identity. She drank

her sister’s blood along with Sethe’s milk (p.152), much to Baby Sugg’s horror. As

a child, as ‘lonely and rebuked’ as she claimed that the ghost is (p.13), she plays

with Beloved, and her deafness is broken by the sound of the baby girl trying to

crawl up the steps. She needs Beloved in the same way that Beloved needs Sethe,

and we witness her desolation when Beloved disappears in the cold house

(pp.122-3). She feels that she has lost her self, and it is only when she takes

responsibility for her own life at the instigation of Nelson Lord that she realizes she

has a self of her own ‘to look out for and preserve’ (p.252).

In many ways, the advent of Beloved is a catalyst for a development in Denver’s

character and way of living. Nursing their sick guest makes her become patient,

while her desire to capture Beloved’s attention and divert her makes her become

dutiful in the house, inventing chores to do together to pass the time. In the

deadlock of love in which Beloved and Sethe finally become involved, Denver

realizes that she is of no importance. Originally prepared to protect Beloved from

the saw wielding mother, she now realizes that she must save her mother from

Beloved. She reacts, not with the sullen resentment she feels when Paul d arrives,

but as an adult. She is forced to leave the yard and find work. When Paul D meets
her in the penultimate section of the novel she is composed and mature. She is

searching for a second job, and treats, and is treated by, Paul D as a fellow adult.

Finally she is successful in breaking out of the narrowly defined, self- destructive

circle of family relationships in 124 Bluestone Road.

Sethe’s mother is also a tortured figure. Her story comes to mind immediately as

an example of how the women were humiliated in the system of slavery in

America. Her mother was captured in Africa, by slave catchers and was shopped to

America by their traders. These white traders had no sense of respect for the sexual

life of the slave women and Sethe’s mother was callously raped by her traders and

then by her master, a number of times. It even forced on her, her unwanted

pregnancies, the result of abominable sexual exploitation which she, as a self

respecting woman, could never accept. She, therefore, aborted all of these

pregnancies in order to get rid of the reminders of the violation of the sanctity of

her body and mind; “she threw them all away but you. The one from the crew she

threw away on the island. The others from more whites she also threw away.

Without names, she threw them. You she gave the name of the black man. She put

her arms around him. The others she did not put her arms around. Never, Never”

(p.62).

This story of Sethe’s mother, though very brief, is an example of how black
women have a long history of putting up a strong resistance to slavery. Sethe learns

from her surrogate mother, no, that her mother could never resign herself to the

abject and miserable lot of slave women who were treated as lesser than even a

beast of burden by their owners. She therefore stood up and demanded freedom for

which she was ordered to be hanged till death.

The portrayal of Baby Suggs (the mother-in-law of Sethe and mother of Halle)

reveals another chapter in the history of black woman’s sufferings, struggles and

survival in a racist system. She, like other slave women, was valued by her masters

as a breeding machine to increase his capital of slaves. That’s why she knew no

sacred pleasures associated with marital life. She was matted to a number of men

without bothering about her choices or feelings in this matter. She had eight

children and all of them by different men. She, like her other black sisters, had to

suffer the agony of parting from all of her children except one as they were all

taken away by her owner and sold as slaves. “Halle, of course, was the nicest,

Baby Sugg’s eighth and last child, who rented himself out all over the country to

buy her away from there” (p.23).

The only other thing for which the black women were valued in the racist society

was the endless physical labour, they were made to do, in plantation, for the benefit

of their owners. They were very poorly fed and cruelly treated even after long and
tiring days of the work. This often drained strength out of them, making them look

old and haggard even before they could experience some kind of youth in their

lives. Baby Suggs is a constant reminder of the damage done to the health of these

women by their exploiting masters. She has a broken hip and jerks like a three

legged dog while walking. Her battered body and health are a moving protest

against what the racists have been doing to black women for generations in

America.

Through her female characters, Morrison’s concern in the novel is, however, not

confined to a mere disruption of the miseries of black women. She also celebrated

the affirmative qualities ingrained in the basic character of these women. Centuries

of oppression, Morrison suggests, have made them stronger at the broken places.

They, in spite of, and in fact because of sufferings, have developed an inner

strength of mind and well to presence themselves and their culture even in an

inhospitable environment of racist society. Their oppression has only strengthened

their will to survive and to ensure the continuance of their race. Sufferings, which

are the common lot of these female characters, have tended to forge a strong bond

of kinship among them. They feel related to each other; they confide their secrets

in each other and help each other out wherever they can. This bonding of women

against bondage is, as the writer suggests, their own source of strength and hope in
their life.

Examples of this intimate sympathetic and human bond among her female

characters have been woven by Morrison very artistically into the very texture and

structure of the plot of the ​Beloved. Incidents depicting this unique feature of the

life of female serve to underline the writer’s intentions of showing that it is in these

female characters that the essential human values of love, sympathy, solidarity,

loyalty, and courage exist in spite of their oppression by male characters. This

unique bond among females is not restricted to the life of the black female

characters alone it characterizes the personalities and conduct of some of the white

female characters as well. This only indicates that Morrison’s sympathy with her

female characters is free from racial prejudices and she brings out the predicament

of all female characters as well as their essential womanist virtues, regardless of

colour and race. ​Beloved i​s an excellent example of Morrison’s ability and artistic

skills to dramatize the humane qualities of her sex without seeming to contrive,

idealize or falsify any of the incidents or characters.

Mrs. Garner, one of the prominent female characters, though a white woman, has

been treated by the novelist without any bias against her race and has been depicted

as a good and kind lady. It is mainly because of her influence that her plantation is

a real Sweet Home for her slaves like Sethe. Although she is a barren woman and
is unable to guide Sethe as she grows into a woman, she exhibits a womanly

interest in Sethe’s well being. Sethe is allowed unlike most of the other slave

women, to choose her mate from amongst the male slaves on Sweet Home

Plantation. Mrs. Garner shows, indeed, a sort of internal interest in Sethe which is

evidenced by the way she throws a small feast to celebrate Sethe’s marriage with

Halle. She even gives to Sethe a wedding present of crystal earrings.

Sethe, too, feels at home with Mrs. Garner. She sees in her a kind of maternal

figure to whom she can turn for protection and help. When Sethe becomes the

sport of the assistants of the School Teacher, who steal her milk, it is to Mrs.

Garner she turns for comfort. Her character has been portrayed by Morrison to

indicate that the maternal instinct is basic to all women and their role is therefore

more creative and humane than that of males.

The portrayal of Amy further brings out the strong ties of mutual understanding,

sympathy and solidarity of women, irrespective of their race and colour. When

fugitive Sethe is on her way to Cincinnati she meets another fugitive, Amy, in the

forest. Amy is the daughter of a farmer, indentured servant who, like Sethe’s

mother, had died leaving her offspring, Amy, to a life of bondage and oppression:

Sethe’s and Amy’s plights are similar in their ways, also, although Sethe of

nineteen, is the mother of four children while Amy has never had a child though
she is eighteen years old. In spite of these similarities there is difference of degrees

in the intensity and range of their misery. Amy, white as she is, has been spared

from the tragedy of being considered as a human reproduction machine, the

producer of labour force by the white males. She can think of a house at Boston,

and a life of some material comforts. Sethe, being a black woman and mother,

cannot afford such luxuries. For her it is her freedom for oppression and survival of

her children which is of the supreme importance as she cannot return to her cultural

roots of Africa, freedom must become her “errand into wilderness” (p.32). Amy

helps Sethe when Sethe, due to fear, exertion, mental tension and running with the

possible speed to achieve freedom from slavery, starts getting labour pain in the

forest. Amy helps Sethe into latter’s safe delivery of baby girl. The growth of

Amy’s ties with Sethe from that of a stranger to nurse, midwife and finally a friend

reveals the bond which exists between women. It is with the assistance of Amy that

Sethe is able to give birth to her premature baby girl in the forest. Thus a white

woman helps a Negress. Amy helps Sethe, a Negress, not only in preserving her

own life but also in bearing and preserving her children. They become so intimate

with each other that the baby who is born to Sethe with the help of Amy is given

the name of Denver, Amy’s second name. This relation between two women is a

fine illustration of the fact; women have a common culture which is based on the
qualities of women as creators and preservers. The values of human sympathy and

an ability to respond to each others sufferings in a humane manner are native to

women, irrespective of colour and race. But, as Morrison has shown in ​The Bluest

Eye the bond between black women is even stronger, more intimated and firmly

rooted in their cultural heritage than the one between the white and the black

women. In ​Beloved also, we come across a number of characters and incidents

which emphasizes this salient feature of the behaviour of black females.

Morrison’s fiction focuses very frequently on this unique bond among her female

characters particularly the black ones, which indicates clearly her celebration of the

affirmative attitude of black women and their ability to preserve human values of

love, sympathy, mutual help and solidarity. This she displays in order to bring out

how even the centuries of atrocities have failed to destroy in black women their

faith and rootedness in these fine human values. Thus black women were put in

one another’s company for most of the day. This meant that those, with whom they

ate meals, sang work songs, and commiserated during the work day were people

with the same kind of responsibilities and problems. If anything, “slave women

developed their own female culture, that is, a way of doing things and a way of

assigning value that flowed from the perspective that they had on Southern

Plantation Life. Rather than being diminished their sense of womanhood was
probably enhanced and their bonds to one another made stronger.”3 Their

sufferings have not been able to turn them into embittered cynics and they still

approach life in a spirit of affirmation. Morrison through her female characters also

suggests that black women have evidenced a greater stamina and resilience in their

struggle to survive and to preserve their humanity than even the males of their race.

Although male figured in her fiction appear, sometimes, with some element of

courage and dignity, they very often tend to appear insignificant in comparison to

their courageous and heroic female counterparts.

Like ​The Bluest Eye​, admirable male characters are conspicuous by their absence

in ​Beloved ​as well. Though the characters of Halle, Paul D and Stamp Paid are

better developed than any of the male figured in ​The Bluest Eye​, none of them

compares well with the character of Sethe, Beloved, Denver and even Baby Suggs.

The novel is basically a story of the struggle of women, and men appear only as

minor and secondary figures. They are there only to shed light on the struggle of

their women and they often set off the strength of their female counterparts by

offering a contrast by their own limitations and failures: Halle is a young black

slave, who works hard and succeeds in buying freedom for his mother. He loves

Sethe, marries her and fathers four children and has a dream of buying freedom for

them all. The way he works hard to achieve freedom certainly shows that he is a
better than most of other black slaves who don’t even struggle to buy their own

freedom. But Halle displays these qualities of confidence and of working for

freedom only so long as his kind master, Mr. Garner the owner of the Sweet Home

Plantation treats his slaves as paid labourers. The real test to his qualities as a man

comes mainly when the Sweet Home Plantation is taken over by School Teacher, a

cruel and hard task master. When School Teacher treats his slaves no better than

animals and even disallows them any right of even buying their freedom, they plan

to escape from the Sweet Home Plantation. Sethe is firm in her resolution; Halle,

too, attempts to run away with her. It is mainly because of Sethe’s efforts that their

children are sent to Ohio by northbound caravan. When they are recaptured, while

escaping, they are subjected to brutal beating and thrashing by the assistants of

School Teacher. Sethe is even sexually assaulted and mercilessly lashed at her

back even in the presence of Halle. He watches all this helplessly and internalizes

the trauma of seeing his own pregnant wife being brutalized and violated by the

School Teacher’s assistants. But Sethe is so firm in her resolution and committed

to her survival of her children that she ultimately succeeds in running away to the

forest but the experience paralysis Halle, destroys his self confidence and demeans

him in his own estimates so much that he even fails to follow Sethe. If the incident

serves to highlight the invincible spirit of a female character like Sethe, it also
exposes the failures of male character to prove an equal and worthy partner to his

woman in their common struggle for survival and freedom.

The positive images of male characters are almost absent in Morrison’s ​The Bluest

​ ale characters appear better developed and are sometimes

Eye but in ​Beloved m

invested with some elements of courage and will to pursue the goal of fulfilling

some of their hopes and ambitions.

Paul D is one such character who helps us to understand better Morrison’s female

characters. His story of life is another illustration of the oppression of the black

man by the white owners. He, as a young man, is at “the peak of his strength, taller

than tall man and stronger than most.”(p.220). But he has never known his parents:

“Mother. Father. Didn’t remember one. Never saw the other” (p.49). Only the

black slaves who work on the plantation with him constituted a kind of family for

him. After the School Teacher took over the management of Sweet Home

Plantation, Paul D, too, was subjected to debasing cruelties and he became

conscious of his value only as a chattel for his master. When he, like other slaves,

tried to run away from the plantation, he was captured by the riffle holding lamp

men and was brutally whipped. This degrading experience makes him realize that

he is not more than a salable commodity for his owner” “his feet are shackled, a

three spoke collar laced around her neck, and a bit placed in his mouth before he is
tethered to buckboard and taken to sold away from Sweet Home Plantation” (p.62).

When he ultimately succeeds in escaping from degrading imprisonment in the

underground Wooden Prison his search for Sethe, the girl whom he loved but

couldn’t marry, begins, and it culminates in his arrival at Cincinnati where he

meets Sethe, a changed and better woman. His relationship with Sethe, here, has

been treated by Morrison in a very interesting and critical manner, investing it with

a lot of complexity. On the one hand, he loves Sethe and wants to have a family

with her, and on the other hand, his male ego doesn’t let him accept Sethe’s

strength and her ability to live without the support and protection of a man. This

male chauvinism in his behavoiur is another pointer to writer’s attitude in exposing

the heavily disguised weakness of man. Male ego, his feeling that he is superior to

a woman and a woman must depend upon man for the satisfaction of all her needs,

has been exposed subtly by the writer in her delineation of Paul D’s behaviour with

Sethe. Moreover, he symbolizes male possessiveness for females. Paul D is uneasy

with Sethe’s obsessive interest in Beloved. His love for Sethe is also an expression

more of a man’s sexual needs than of his genuine love for her. It is clear from the

way writer describes how in their first meeting he sees a kind of romantic beauty in

Sethe before he consummates his sexual urges for her but as soon as the act is over,

all beauty, all interest in her body, fades away. All of this has been handled by
Morrison so skillfully that it makes the reading of Paul D—Sethe relationship very

absorbing and, at the same time, an alert reader cannot miss the dig Morrison has

on male chauvinism and his tendency to use woman only as a means of satisfying

his sexual appetite.

Thus, the whole discussion is the testimony of the fact that in ​Beloved,​ like ​The

Bluest Eye Morrison has been successful in delineating female characters in bright

colours. This novel is a strong voice against the inhuman and degrading oppression

of the black by the white in American Society. The way she brings out the

suffering and pain in the lives of her characters, further makes the novel a powerful

voice of protest against racist exploitation and oppression. Her main focus in the

novel is on the sufferings and struggles of black and female slaves like Sethe and

Baby Suggs. The novel is a celebration of their unbroken spirit, their dogged

determination to win freedom and their brave efforts to achieve the goal. This

presentation of female characters as heroic makes the novel a representative piece

of feminist literature. Morrison has specially focused our attentions on the qualities

of her female characters as creators and preservers. She has depicted them as

imbued with human qualities of love, sympathy, human understanding and

solidarity, and these equalities distinguish her female characters from their counter

parts in ​Beloved. Her male characters in this novel, too, fail to achieve the heroic
stature. They remain, by and large, marginalized and their role is mainly to set off

the heroic qualities of women by offering to them a contrast by their own failures

and limitations. All these aspects of her theme, characterization and her attitude

towards the female characters white and black firmly place this novel in the

category of feminist fiction.

NOTES

1. Francis Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery (Westport, Connecticut:

Greenwood Press, 1979), p.3.

2. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1978, rpt. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1988),
p.251. Subsequent citations to the text of the novel are also from the
same edition and page numbers in all such cases have been given in
parentheses, immediately after the quotations.

3. Deborah Gray White, Ar’nt I a Woman? Female Slaves in the

Plantation South (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1985), p.121.