The first major novel about slavery!

Beloved is, as far as I know, the very first novel (published in 1988) by a major American writer to take on the subject of slavery! This is incredible. Only Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous propaganda novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written before the Civil War, and Alex Haley’s popular historical novelRoots, published in the 1970s (and made into an extremely popular television miniseries), approach this most vital subject head on. Neither book, though, can be classified as a major work of imaginative literature. Only Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn and William Styron in The Confessions of Nat Turner even try to deal with the subject at all. (If there are other major books, please let me know.) Twain’s book is not successful in that regard. (See Toni Morrison’s Light in the Darkness for a brief discussion of Huckleberry Finn’s failure.) Styron’s book, while a serious effort, deals only with the subject of revolt, not with slavery itself. (Important questions have been raised by African American and other critics regarding Styron’s book, but that is the subject for another review.)

Given the fact that this is the first novel to deal adequately with slavery as a subject, and that there is no fictional precedent for it (its real ancestors are the narratives of ex-slaves like Frederick Douglass), this amazing book is even more amazing. I’ll try to forego superlatives for a description.

Beloved is the story of Sethe, an ex-slave living on a farm outside Cincinnati in 1873. Sethe is visited by Paul D, also a former slave, with whom she was in bondage, on a farm called Sweet Home, in Kentucky, with several others, including Sethe’s three children by her slave husband Halle. Sethe’s children were successfully smuggled away by the Underground Railway to the home of her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, where Sethe now lives. (Baby Suggs had been previously “bought” out of slavery by her son, Halle, who had been permitted to work on his own on Sundays for five years to manumit her.) Sethe herself, nine months pregnant, escaped several days later. She had her baby in a leaky rowboat with the help of a White girl who is herself a runaway indentured servant.

28 days after Sethe arrives with her newborn baby on free soil in Ohio, her former master comes to take her and her children back to slavery under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. In desperation, Sethe tries to kill her children. She succeeds with her second youngest, a baby girl. The slave-takers return to Kentucky, and Sethe is exonerated of murder. Her house becomes haunted by the ghost of the child she has killed to save it from being recaptured. Her mother-in-law, a saintly woman, dies in despair. Baby Suggs’ last words are: “Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks. They don’t know when to stop.” Sethe’s two sons eventually leave home to escape the ghost.

Moments after Paul D arrives, he scares away the baby ghost, but, a few days later, a mysterious young woman appears who may be the reincarnation (that term is never used in the book) of the slain child, who after its death was named “Beloved.” The main action of the book describes how Sethe, her remaining daughter Denver (the one born during flight) and Paul D cope with the ghost. Paul D is soon driven from the house, and Sethe and Beloved become involved in an possessive, obsessive, insane love. It falls on Denver to overcome her own fears and go out into the world to “rescue” Sethe. (Denver has not left the vicinity of the house for eight years, primarily, but not exclusively, because of the ghost.) Denver accomplishes this with the help of the community who had scorned Sethe for her pride. First, they help the family with gifts of food. Then, collectively, a group of the women exorcise the ghost. Eventually, Sethe and Paul D come back together.

But this is only the bare-bones story of Beloved. Through flashbacks, narrative stories and streams of consciousness, the full horror of life under slavery is unfolded. Slavery at Sweet Home was “benevolent,” but still slavery. As soon as its “benevolent” master dies, the full horror that his liberal attitudes hid, is revealed. One of the trusted male slaves is sold, and a new taskmaster, the brother-in-law of the old owner, a man called only “schoolteacher,” comes to run the farm. Told that the Underground Railway will operate in their area in a few months, the slaves decide to run en masse. Sethe’s three children do escape. One of the slaves, Sixo, is burned alive, then shot. Paul D is sold into severe slavery further south. (His horrific story after Sweet Home is told in some detail.) Halle, Sethe’s husband, is driven mad and never seen again. Another slave is hanged and mutilated. Sethe is raped, and, in desperation, successfully escapes on her own. Slavery is revealed for what it really is: man’s total inhumanity to man, which no ameliorating attitudes can change.

Little more need be said. I have seen complaints in other reviews of how difficult Beloved is or how hard it is to identify with the characters. Tough! When did a book have to be easy for you? What’s wrong with your heart that you can’t feel this book? All this happened in the history of the United States, and its effects are still being felt today. Let me conclude with a partial quote that says it all. Baby Suggs, who is a preacher, is speaking to her flock in a clearing in the forest.

“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They do not love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver–love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

No American writer, not even Walt Whitman, and few in the history of the world, have ever expressed themselves like that. Read this book.

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ON REVIEWING TONI MORRISON

(An essay composed in March, 2001, after reviewing all her novels)

The Bluest Eye (1970);
Sula (1973);
Song of Solomon (1977);
T*r Baby (This is not a typo. Incredibly, epinions censor will not permit the proper spelling of these words.) (1981);
Beloved (1986);
Jazz (1992);
Paradise (1998);
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness & the Literary Imagination (nonfiction) (1992).

These are the major landmarks of Toni Morrison’s literary career to date. There are some others, but these are the ones I’ve reviewed for epinions. It’s been a labor of love involving six months of hard reading and hard work. I loved every minute of it. I want ten more Toni Morrison novels to read!

What are the characteristics of Morrison’s writing that I found and you can look forward to in reading her?

First of all, there is her development. From The Bluest Eye to Paradise, there is such growth in this writer that it’s astonishing. And considering that The Bluest Eye was already a fully-realized, it’s even more amazing.

Second, there is diversity. Consider the range that Morrison is working in. Sula is virtually a straightforward, old-fashioned novel, while in Jazz, the story is entirely subordinated to the language.

Third, there is story telling. When Morrison wants to tell a story (and this is not always her purpose), she is truly great at it. Her major story-telling books are Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Here, the primary method of conveying what Morrison wants to say is in the story itself.

Fourth, there is language. Morrison is extraordinary in that she can travel from extremely poetic writing, Jazz is the best example of this, to a relatively level-headed prose (Sula).

The major characteristics, though, of Toni Morrison as a writer, and the characteristics that, I believe anger most people against her are two: she is straightforwardly and unabashedly African American, and her writing always has what used to be called “moral purpose.”

This rise of the Right as the cultural arbiters of the last twenty years has produced the paradox that the canon of major Western writers (the famous Dead White Men) has become, publicly, holy writ once again. But, it is forgotten that these Caucasian Corpses were men of high purpose in their writing. Morrison performs the wonderful feat of claiming the canon for her own and for all her readers both as literature and as moral source. This is probably best seen in Beloved and Paradise, which, of her novels, most take on the “big themes.”

Exactly how Morrison accomplishes this is explained by her in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness & the Literary Imagination. In this nonfiction book, she analyzes major American writers, from Poe to Bellow, using tools of metaphor and theme to both analyze as a critic and go beyond them as a writer.

As an African American woman, Toni Morrison occupies a special place in America. She stands in the incredible tradition of (among others), Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, bell hooks, Josephine Baker, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge and Madame C.J. Walker. There is a grandness, an elegance to her as a writer and as a woman that is compelling, undeniable and provocative. She is a great presence on the American scene, unique, irreplaceable and powerful. Her books, like the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King or the Autobiography of Malcom X, are absolutely essential expressions of all that is good and excellent in this country and condemnations of all that is reactionary, racist and backward in this country.

It's been a long journey, with, pardon the intimacy, Toni Morrison as my mentor, guide and traveling companion. I'll be travel over this route again and again throughout my life. I know I'll always find it, like the animated nature that appears in her tales, new, vivid, revelatory and always amazing.


For information about Toni Morrison on the Internet, start with
http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/toni.htm