Spiteful, Loud, and Quiet: Beloved's Transitional Cues

In beginning each part of Beloved with a similar quote (“124 was ______ ”), Toni Morrison is reflecting upon the reader the way we’re supposed to treat the novel’s protagonist, Beloved, all within the same setting. And while that setting doesn’t change, what are far more fluid are the characters, specifically Beloved. These beginnings sufficiently match Beloved’s placement in the narration— her actions and her behavior, and provides a marked transition of the character from child, to solidified presence, to finally a deadened, silent memory.

In the first section, Morrison begins the novel with “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom” (Morrison 9). The presence of Beloved isn’t in any way solid, however what is made clear is the childlike, rageful behavior of her spirit in the house. The spitefulness, mostly due to the fact that the spirit is only just a spirit, is physical—mostly appearing as images/visions, and what can only be described as “the house itself was pitching” with “the floorboards were [shaking] and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it” (Morrison 27). This physical violence toward the house and its occupants on the part of Beloved’s spirit is a strong indicator of her childlike or infantile behavior. Children are more likely to hit, smack, hurt and cry than use words, and that’s exactly the vision that we’re given here; Beloved only knows how to cause physical harm. By the second section, however, we learn that Beloved as manifested in human form, has matured and is capable of far worse damage.

The second section begins with “124 was loud”. What’s different here for us is that Beloved is a central character in the text— one that disrupts the setting and the others in a less physical and more emotional way than in the first section. It makes sense, however, because in this section Beloved is not spiteful, and not acting as much in a way that screams malice, but more in an emotionally manipulative and damaging way. She does this by, figuratively this time, turning the house upside-down and, while appearing innocent and valuable in the home, ends up making everyone’s lives more dramatic, troublesome and, in short—loud. An ever-growing anger is the key theme of this section, and Beloved grows angrier and angrier, louder and louder, until chapter nineteen she is described as a general “black and angry dead” (Morrison 229). From our perspective, Beloved’s presence and rage is an increasingly dangerous presence until the next section, where the situation seems to simmer.

The third section starts “124 was quiet”, and signifies the closure felt not only in Sethe’s house, but within the entire community within which they’ve finally gotten involved.  In the very beginning, though, Beloved is still alive and has, in a very parasitic way left both Denver and Sethe starving and weak and was “getting bigger, plumper by the day” (Morrison 275). Her greed had grown to such a large proportion that a group of women decided it was a job for exorcism in order to free Denver and Sethe and provide some quiet in their lives, finally. Once Beloved is removed from the home, it’s as if she has not only been physically removed, but emotionally and mentally as well. Sethe and Denver “forgot her like a bad dream” and the quiet as implied by the beginning of the section is a truly clear mindset for the town and 124’s occupants.

Morrison’s mirroring of Beloved’s status with the adjective used to describe 124 is a subtle way of foreshadowing what’s to come, and provides readers with the sense that for Denver and Sethe, their suffering is not permanent, rather, it’s so fleeting that it’s almost a dream. 

The setting is Beloved

“Beloved” by Toni Morrison is based in the reconstruction era, in Cincinnati, Ohio of 1873. It’s the story of Seethe a former slave who lives with her eighteen year old daughter Denver, in a house that they believe to be haunted with the spirit of her dead sister. The story however flows through two time periods, in two different houses, one in house number 124 where they live in present time and one in a rather benevolent slave farm, Sweet Home in Kentucky approximately twenty years ago. The story unfolds through the recollection of the different character’s times in these two places, their journey between the two houses and how it breaks and builds them up again.

Acclaimed novelist Robert Louis Stevenson hit the nail on the head when he said that, “we are creatures of our environment”. This especially holds true for a novel like "Beloved" where the setting is so powerful that it serves to mold the characters living within it. 124 in Ohio and Sweet Home in Kentucky— that is our setting, and whatever happened, happened in these two places. They were both simultaneously separate and hopelessly entwined with the tragedy that found its host within them.

Separate, in the beauty of these places- “…and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that made her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty…it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too” (6) – where things had once been good. 124 where Baby Snuggs had once been a preacher, had a community that loved her and Sweet Home where Seethe met Halle and made a family for herself.

However, they were also hopelessly entwined with the characters because of the strong hold that they had on them. This strong hold was because of the quality in them that kept the characters isolated from the rest of the world. The fact that they were never allowed to leave Sweet Home made it their whole world. Benevolent owners like the Garners showed the Sweet Home Boys and Seethe that they could be more than just slaves. That Halle could buy out his mother, that they could be free, own themselves. This awareness was the cause of Seethe’s outrage at the fact that the School Teacher (the new owner of the farm) was comparing them to animals—it was also what made Seethe love her children in a manner so fierce that she would rather kill them herself than let them become animals on the farm. Shunned by the community, 124 is also isolated. So it too becomes a world of its own, especially for Seethe’s daughter, Denver, who only steps out of her front yard thrice in her eighteen years of life. This isolation produces in her a feeling of loneliness so intense that she becomes dependent on the ghost of her dead sister and develops an obsessive relationship with Beloved.

"Beloved" is a prime example of how the setting of a place can give the writer an opportunity to add depth to their characters. It shows us how the writer can manipulate the setting and use it to make their characters behave in a certain way. And as a writer this is a valuable lesson to learn.  

--Smriti Bansal

Beloved - The Setting

 “Beloved” is a novel written by Toni Morrison set after the Civil War. It is about an ex-slave, who runs away from her owner, slitting her first daughter’s throat and is haunted by the spirit of the daughter in the novel. This book explores the relationship between and mother and daughter in an interesting way but I shall focus on the setting of the book in this essay.

The time period Beloved is set in shapes this book. It is set in 1873, with Sethe living together only with her daughter and only child by that time, Denver. 1873 is a significant time in American history because a few decades previous, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by Congress. At this point in time, there was a division in slavery. In some states, such as the one Sethe was residing in at 124, slavery was outlawed. Though in others, where “Sweet Home” was located, it still was acceptable to own slaves. So what this act did was that it gave slave owners the power to cross over into Free states and forcibly reclaim their property, the slaves, which ran away from them. Seethe had escaped her owner and was crossing over into Ohio. But her owner had come to reclaim her and her children. Not wanting her children to go through what she did, Sethe slit the throat of her daughter but escaped with her two sons. It is the spirit of this daughter that first haunts the house, and returns as the girl, Beloved, in the book.

124 was the house the Sethe lived in. In the beginning of the book, the very first lines were, “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.” (9). From the very beginning, the setting, the house, is given a personality that interacts with the characters very much like a baby seeking attention. In the kitchen scene, the house begins to shake violently, as if it did not want Sethe, enjoying life. In the book, it is said that the ghost is a baby, when Paul D enters the house and asks if Baby Suggs had indeed passed peacefully. But the ghost is actually the baby, Beloved, that Sethe killed.

Because of the spirit that haunted the house, “a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124.” (11). This gave the feeling of isolation. There was no interaction between the residents of 124 and the outside world. It seemed as if they were all alone and left to deal with the demons in their hearts. Even Paul D. seemed very reluctant to enter the house (“Paul D…followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.” (15)).

The setting in this part of Seethe’s life is quite a contrast to when she was at Sweet Home, where she was on a farm surrounded by corn stalks and five other men. Back at Sweet Home, Sethe felt love from her owners, and was respected by the men, even though the craved for her, but satisfied their desires with the calves. It is indeed such a huge contrast to 124, that one can feel from the setting alone the mood the characters feel.

The setting, in this book, is quite related to the characters, their moods, thoughts and actions. The setting does not decide for them, but heavily influences what a character would do. For example, as stated earlier, what kind of mother, a loving mother, would murder her own child? Sethe’s decision was heavily influenced by her own experiences and the setting in that the slave owner can come and reclaim her and her children. So Sethe decided death would be a much better way to live. When I am writing a story, I need to take into consideration the setting, and how it will influence my characters because even though they are the ones making the decisions, their personalities alone will not decide them. They will however, choose, based on how the setting interacts with them.

Setting in Beloved

Toni Morrison’s Beloved, published in 1987,  is an interesting tribute to Black History month this February. Set almost a century before the Civil Rights era in the United States, the novel is rampant with the darkness and anguish of slavery for the African Americans. In Morrison’s book, the main character, named Sethe, is troubled and haunted by the ghost of her traumatic past memories. Though she has undergone several horrid events, the most gruesome by far would be that of her own attempt to kill her own four children, and worse, her success in murdering her eldest daughter. But this was not done in cold blood; in Sethe’s mind, she was protecting them from the acute suffering and emotional turmoil a life of slavery brings –she had merely been helping them escape from the claws of a former slave-owner who had cornered Sethe in a free state after she had escaped from Sweet Home, a plantation in Kentucky. While we can tack on labels such as murderer, runaway slave, victim of physical and sexual abuse, and squanderer among others, Morrison’s portrayal of Sethe as a strong black woman whose love for her children eclipses much else sets her apart from many of her contemporary peers, allowing the audience to connect intimately with the protagonist, even through the third person point of view that the story unfolds in.

Setting is a crucial aspect of Morrison’s work in Beloved. Not only does the specific time frame in American history elicit the indignant emotional spark in her readers, but the temporal alternation between Sethe’s past and future allows her reader to put together the puzzle of Sethe’s identity as the story develops. Flashbacks of Sethe’s past are full of the despair too frequently felt in the lives of blacks back then. When Paul D tells Sethe that “[She] is [her] best thing,” the theme of personal identity is not only understood through Sethe’s haunted relationship with her killed daughter, and daughter’s ghost, but is punctuated by the fact that millions of slaves at the time can also be analyzed in terms of personal identity (Morrison 160).

Morrison’s novel inspires me to use the powerful impact of setting not only allure my readers, but to reinforce the message of my story. In my few fictional writings, I often make use of a realistic, modern setting, letting the characters and their life events take over the plot. In the fantasy pieces I put together, I do make better use of setting by trying to show my readers a shimmering, imaginary world, where the focus is most often on the members of said world rather than the physical features of this world, or even on the psychological effect said world has on my characters. Morrison’s incorporation of the American slavery period in the lives of her characters (meaning, Sethe, Paul D, Denver, and other characters, especially those that are African American, lead lives dominated by the historical context of the story, which is only to be expected, but is remarkable nonetheless) helps develop the themes of hope, entrapment, and personal identity in the novel. I will try to use setting in my future work, whether fictional or not, to spin the atmospheric web of my story, and use it like Morrison did to allow my readers to better understand my characters.

-- Nakita Mortimer