Historical Essay on Beloved
Baynar 1
A Web Case Book on BELOVED by Toni Morrison © 2007 English Department, Millikin University, Decatur, IL http://www.millikin.edu/english/beloved/Baynar-historical-essay1.html
Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Institutionalized Trauma, Selfhood, and Familial and Communal Structure by Klay Baynar
Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is, in fact, a historical novel. It is based on a documented event involving fugitive slave, Margaret Garner, who was arrested for killing one of her children rather than returning her daughter to the dismal life of a slave. Readers might ask themselves why an African American woman would choose to focus her writing on a devastating act of violence within an African American family as opposed to focusing on the white aggression that ran rampant throughout the time period of the novel. However, by focusing Beloved on the infanticide committed by a newly freed black mother, Morrison is able to communicate a strong message, the importance of which spans from the Reconstruction era in the antebellum South to racially charged issues in modern America. Morrison implicitly shows throughout the novel that the psychological effects of slavery on the individual, as well as the whole slave community, were far more damaging than even the worst physical sufferings. In Beloved, Morrison uses symbolism to depict the atrocities of white oppression that caused the loss of African American humanity while also focusing on how the African American community came together to deal with the traumas of the past, thus reclaiming their selfhood. The African American “veil” acts as a strong symbol of a white dominant society throughout the novel. During the Reconstruction era, black Americans were forced behind this “veil” that allowed them to only see themselves from the white man’s point of view. Hofstra University’s James Berger cites W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, writing “…the American Negro, ‘born with a veil…’ can achieve
A Web Case Book on BELOVED by Toni Morrison © 2007 English Department, Millikin University, Decatur, IL http://www.millikin.edu/english/beloved/Baynar-historical-essay1.html
Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Institutionalized Trauma, Selfhood, and Familial and Communal Structure by Klay Baynar
Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved is, in fact, a historical novel. It is based on a documented event involving fugitive slave, Margaret Garner, who was arrested for killing one of her children rather than returning her daughter to the dismal life of a slave. Readers might ask themselves why an African American woman would choose to focus her writing on a devastating act of violence within an African American family as opposed to focusing on the white aggression that ran rampant throughout the time period of the novel. However, by focusing Beloved on the infanticide committed by a newly freed black mother, Morrison is able to communicate a strong message, the importance of which spans from the Reconstruction era in the antebellum South to racially charged issues in modern America. Morrison implicitly shows throughout the novel that the psychological effects of slavery on the individual, as well as the whole slave community, were far more damaging than even the worst physical sufferings. In Beloved, Morrison uses symbolism to depict the atrocities of white oppression that caused the loss of African American humanity while also focusing on how the African American community came together to deal with the traumas of the past, thus reclaiming their selfhood. The African American “veil” acts as a strong symbol of a white dominant society throughout the novel. During the Reconstruction era, black Americans were forced behind this “veil” that allowed them to only see themselves from the white man’s point of view. Hofstra University’s James Berger cites W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, writing “…the American Negro, ‘born with a veil…’ can achieve
Cited: Berger, James. “Ghosts of Liberalism: Morrison’s Beloved and the Moynihan Report.” PMLA 111.3 (1996): 408-420. Boudreau, Kristin. “Pain and the Unmaking of Self in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” Contemporary Baynar 5 Literature 36.3 (1995): 447-465. Elliot, Mary Jane. “Postcolonial Experience in a Domestic Context: Commodified Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” MELUS 20.3/4 (2000): 181-202. hooks, bell. “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life” Picturing Texts. Ed. Lester Faigley, Diana George, Anna Palchik, Cynthia Selfe. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. 175183. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987. New York: Vintage International, 2004. Moynihan, Daniel. “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action.” March 1965. 20 Nov. 2007 . Rody, Caroline. “Toni Morrison’s Beloved: History, ‘Rememory,’ and a ‘Clamour for a Kiss.’” American Literary History 7.1 (1995): 92-119.