Beloved (novel)

The book describes the story of Sety and her daughter Denver after they escaped from slavery. In their home in Cincinnati, a ghost settles, which they consider to be Sety's daughter. Due to a ghost, whose presence in the house is evidence of random scattering of objects around the room, the youngest daughter Sety Denver grew up as a shy and lonely recluse, and her sons Howard and Bagler fled the house at the age of 13. Shortly afterwards, Baby Sags, the mother of Satie's husband, whose name was Halle, dies in his bed.

Paul Dee, one of the slaves of the Sweet Home - the plantation where Baby Sags, Sety, Halle and some other slaves once worked - moves into Sety's house and tries to bring a sense of reality into him. Trying to make this family forget the past, he expels the spirit from home. At first, it seems that the exile was successful: even for the first time in many years, he was taking the Hermit Denver out of the house. But on the way back they meet a young woman sitting opposite their house and introducing herself as Beloved. Paul Dee is suspicious of her and advises Sety to be careful, but she is fascinated by the young woman and does not listen to him. Gradually, Paul Di expelled by some supernatural force from Sety's house into a neighboring barn.

Beloved drives Paul Dee into the corner of the barn, in which he is forced to spend the night. While they have sex, his mind is filled with terrifying memories from the past. Overwhelmed with guilt, Paul Dee tries to tell Sety about this, but hesitates and instead says that he wants her to have a child with her. Sety is inspired, and Paul Dee confronts the Beloved and her influence on him. But when he tells his friends at work about his plans to start a new family, they express their concern. The Stamp Paid reveals to him the reason for Saty's rejection of the population.

When Paul Dee asks Sety about this, she tells him what happened: after escaping from the Sweet Home and meeting Sety with the children who were waiting for her in the mother-in-law's house, she was found by the owner who tried to bring her back with the children. Satie grabbed her children, ran with them to the tool shed and wanted to kill them all. She managed to do this only with her eldest daughter, on whose neck she held a saw. Satie claims that she wanted to send her children "to where they would be completely safe." This revelation frightened Paul Dee, and he leaves their home. Together with him, a sense of reality and the movement of time leave the house.

Seti believes that the Beloved is her two-year-old daughter, whom she killed and on the tombstone of which only the word "Beloved" is written. Satie begins to live aimlessly and pamper the Beloved out of guilt. The beloved is constantly dissatisfied and demands more and more, he loses his temper when something is not according to her. The presence of the Beloved consumes the life of Sety, she is exhausted and sacrifices her needs for food, while the belly of the Beloved is becoming more and more.

At the culmination of the novel, the youngest daughter of Denver goes outside, seeks help from a black population, and some village women come to their house to expel evil spirits from the Beloved. At the same time, a white man arrives at the house, which once helped Halle's mother, Baby Sugs, transferring this house to her after Halle bought it from their owner. White came for Denver, who was looking for a job with him, but Denver did not tell Satie about it. Not understanding why white is coming to the house, Satie attacks him with an hatchet to cut ice, but the village women intercept her. While confused by Seth “reliving” the arrival of his master, the Beloved disappears. The novel ends with Denver getting to work, and Paul Dee returns to Sety and assures her of his love.

Mother-Daughter Relationships

Sety's maternal obligations to her children suppress her own personality and impede her own development. Seth develops a dangerous maternal passion that leads to the murder of one daughter, her “flesh and blood”, and the alienation of the surviving daughter from the black population, which occurs in an attempt to save her “thoughts about the future”, her children from life in slavery. However, Sety fails to recognize her daughter Denver's need for community engagement in order to gain feminine qualities. As a result, Denver at the end of the novel affirms his "I" and gains individuality with the help of the Beloved. Unlike Denver, her mother acquires an individuality only after she is expelled from the Beloved's evil spirits, when Satie can fully accept the first relationship, which is completely “for her” - her relationship with Paul Dee. This relationship frees Sety from subsequent self-destruction in connection with the maternal obligations that governed her life. Both Beloved and Satie are severely emotionally damaged as a result of Satie's previous slavery. Slavery creates a situation in which a mother is separated from her child, which has devastating consequences for both of them. In addition, the child’s very first need in life is connected with the mother: the infant needs her milk from the mother. Seti is traumatized by the impressions when her milk was taken from her, because this means that she cannot form this symbolic obligation to her daughter.

The Impact of Slavery on Psychology

Because of the impressions of slavery, many slaves suppressed these memories, trying to forget the past. Such suppression and dissociation with the past leads to self-fragmentation and loss of true identity. Seti, Paul Dee and Denver are experiencing this self-loss, which can only be cured by accepting the past and the memory of their original identity. Beloved serves as a reminder to these characters of their depressed past, which ultimately leads to the reintegration of their personalities.

Slavery breaks the personality into a fragmented figure. Identity, consisting of painful memories and unpronounceable, denied, stored in a corner of the past, becomes "without itself." In order to recover and become human, a person must express it through his tongue, reassemble painful moments and retell painful memories. As a result of suffering, the “I” undergoes repeated creation and destruction, when recognized by the audience becomes real. Seti, Paul Dee and Baby Sugs do not realize this and therefore are unable to recreate their "I", trying to keep their past in the corner. “I” is in a word defined by others. The strength lies in the audience, or rather, in the word - as soon as the word changes, identity also changes. All characters in the Beloved encounter a self-destruction test consisting in their “reliving experience” and a certain perception and language. The obstacle that restrains them from rebuilding themselves is their desire for an “easy past” and the fear that the memory will lead to “where there is no return”.

"Beloved" received a prize to them. Frederick D. Melcher, editor of Publishers Weekly . When receiving the prize on October 12, 1988, Morrison said that "there is not a single suitable monument, plaque, gravestone, wall, park, foyer of a skyscraper" that would perpetuate the memory of people who were enslaved and brought to the United States. “There is not even a tiny bench by the road,” she added. “And since such a place does not exist (as I know), the book will play this role.” Inspired by her speech, the Tony Morrison Society began to establish such benches in important historical places associated with slavery in the United States. The New York Times reported that the first "bench by the road" was opened on Sullivans Island (South Carolina) , through which about 40 percent of African slavery fell into US territory.

In 1988, the book received the seventh annual book prize of the Center for Justice and Human Rights. Robert F. Kennedy for “the most reliable and strong reflection of the goals of Robert Kennedy - his concern for the poor and powerless, his struggle for honest and impartial justice, his conviction that a decent society should provide young people with a good chance of success in life, and his faith in the fact that free democracy can serve as a means of eliminating the inequality of abilities and opportunities. ”

Criticism

The publication of Beloved in 1987 was Morrison's first major success. The book was even nominated for a National Book Award, but it did not receive it, after which forty-eight African-American writers signed a written protest published in The New York Times. In 1988, "Beloved" still receives the Pulitzer Prize for an art book, a book prize of the Center for Justice and Human Rights. Robert F. Kennedy Prize Frederick D. Melcher, Lindhurst Foundation Award and Elmer Holmes Bobst Award. Despite its popularity and the status of one of Morrison’s most perfect novels, Beloved never received widespread recognition. Some observers have sharply criticized the novel for its excessive sentimentality and sensational portrayal of the horrors of slavery, including equating the slave trade with genocide like the Holocaust. Others, agreeing that the Beloved was at times verbose, praised the novel for a deep and unusual imagination. Noting the fabulous aspects of the work and its political focus, they viewed the novel as an exploration of the family, injuries and suppression of memory, as well as an attempt to restore the history of memory and express the collective memory of African Americans. Critics and Morrison herself have indeed pointed out that the controversial “epitaph” of the Beloved, “over sixty million,” is based on many studies of the African slave trade, which estimated that approximately half of every “load” brought to America consisted of the dead. Scientists, in addition, argued about the nature of the character of the Beloved: whether she was really a ghost or still a real person. Many observers, assuming that the Beloved is a supernatural embodiment of Sety's daughter, subsequently found fault with her as an unconvincing and confused ghost story. Elizabeth E. House, however, argued that Beloved was not a ghost, but a novel, in fact - the story of two possible cases of mistaken identification. The beloved is concerned about the loss of her African parents and therefore begins to believe that Satie is her mother. Satie feels the need for her dead daughter, and it is quite easy to convince her that the Beloved is the child she has lost. This interpretation, says House, clarifies many of the confusing moments of the novel and underscores Morrison’s concern for family ties.

Since the late 1970s Morrison's work was interesting in presenting African American history and life. The idea that writing can be cured or restored can be seen in all of her works. Timothy Powell, for example, states that Morrison’s return to black speech reaffirms the black race as “affirmation, mystic power and goodness,” while Theodore O. Mason Jr. suggests that Morrison stories bring communities together. Many critics examine the topic of memory, or what Sety of the Beloved calls "experiencing again." Susan Bowers puts Morrison among the followers of the “long tradition of African-American apocalyptic literature,” “exposing” the horrors of the past to “recycle” them. Some critics have interpreted Morrison's view of trauma and memory through the prism of psychoanalysis. Ashraf H.A. Rushdi studies how “primary sins” in Morrison’s novels are “an opportunity and an emotional means of self-discovery through memory” and “experiencing again.” Jill Matas, however, believes that Morrison’s “never heals” the idea of ​​injury: by tedding the ghosts of the past to expel or materialize them, the texts potentially “provoke the reader to experience someone else’s experience of injury and act as a means of transmission.” Anne Snitow's commentary clearly illustrates how she began to develop and move toward new ways of interpreting the critic Morrison. In a 1987 review of The Beloved, Snitow argues that the Beloved — the ghost and the center of the story — is “too light” and “empty,” making the whole novel “airless.” Snitow changed her position after critical articles appeared that otherwise interpreted the Beloved and saw in her something more complex and difficult than just a ghost, something requiring other forms of creative expression and critical perception. Conflicts here are both ideological and critical: they relate to the definition and evaluation of American and African American literature, the relationship of art and politics, and the tension between approval and appropriation.

In defining Morrison's texts as African American literature, critics began to pay more attention to their historical and social context and to the way Morrison touches on particular places and times. As Jennings noted, many of Morrison’s novels take place in isolated black communities, where African rites and religious systems are not marginalized by the prevailing white culture, but remain active, if not subconscious, forces shaping the community. Matas believes that Morrison’s later novels “were even more clearly focused on specific historical moments”: “through their involvement in the history of slavery and Harlem at the beginning of the 20th century, [they] portrayed and captured aspects of the history of blacks that were forgotten or remembered with distortions” .

• Podcast Tony Morrison commenting on Beloved on the BBC.