Beloved

Guide Note

Beloved by American Nobel laureate in literature Toni Morrison is a historical novel set in mid-nineteenth century in the United States, during and immediately after the abolition of slavery. The novel tells the story of Sethe, the slave who escaped from a Kentucky plantation to Ohio. At one point, when it seemed that she would be re-captured, Sethe killed her baby in order to save the child from slavery.

At the time the novel opens, Sethe is living on the outskirts of Cincinnati with her daughter, Denver, and her lover, Paul D. Sethe believes that her unnamed baby girl, whose grave was inscribed with the word "beloved" eighteen years previously, is haunting her house. The house is exorcised, but one day, upon returning from a carnival, Sethe, Denver, and Paul D find a young woman in front of the house. The young woman goes by the name Beloved. Sethe is convinced that the young woman is the incarnation of baby she, Sethe, murdered. Sethe is then forced to confront the past filled with pain and horror, which she has been trying to repress for so long.

Beloved enjoys critical acclaim and is widely popular with the public, although many readers consider the subject matter of the novel to be grim and difficult. Of special interest is Morrison's style and language: forceful, fragmented, suggestive, often communicating directly to the reader's subconscious.

Fast Facts

1. Based on a true story of a fugitive slave, Margaret Garner
2. Published in 1987
3. Won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1987
4. Named the best American fiction in 25 years by a The New York Times poll in 2006
5. Made into a film in 1998
6. In 2005 Morrison wrote the opera Margaret Garner

"Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing".