Toni Morrison: Beloved
124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old–as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny band prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill.
We all live somewhere. Our living space may communicate far more of our personality and emotional landscape than we realise. This relationship between inner and outer worlds is frequently explored and exploited by writers and this opening to Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a very fine example of such a relationship. The story begins with emphatic conflict and this prompts considerable interest and disturbance on the part of the reader. This not a passive, complacent read!
We are confronted by a world where houses are spiteful and babies are blamed for such negative emotion. How can this be we wonder? How can such juxtapositions exist?
The lack of disbelief about such a psychically disruptive situation is also striking. The inhabitants of the house ‘knew it’ and this conviction prevents us doubting the veracity of such an extreme situation. Thus we are the outsiders to this world with it strange vocabulary and sensibility. We feel a sense of awkwardness in the face of such detail.
We are also aware of the setting having its own distinctive rhythm. We can hear the ‘voice’ of this opening as it speaks to us in ways which thwart easy translation. This ‘beat’ or ‘pulse’ is significant as the house itself has its own voice; indeed the trouble that haunts the house seems to centre around the reality of a disruptive psychical presence. So the voice of the text demands to be heard; it demands listeners, and this perhaps is what we presume, the text will supply.
All the detail in this opening speaks of loss and abandonment. The characters have reached( and respected) their limits in terms of suffering. Morrison’s intensely explores the thresholds of endurance reached by each charcter in sensory detail.
For we have crossed a threshold in entering into this violent world of 124 and such a crossing privileges different ways of knowing and behaving. Morrison once talked of the use of ‘discredited knowledge’ in her fiction and Beloved’s opening makes not attempt to undermine or undervalue such ‘discredited’ ways of reading the world.
We wonder at the date.1873, the time of the Abolitionists in USA. A precarious and dangerously uncertain time and one whose volatility and provides the horrorific background then for this mesmerising novel. All the ‘signs’ in the opening combine to produce a dramatic and uneasy setting which make demands upon the readers’ assumptions and emotions.
Genius!