As an American writer of African ancestry, Toni Morrison regards slavery as a
theme that has often been neglected by the documented history. For Morrison, many episodes
of the history of slavery remained untold. Many historians were often silent about the harsh
conditions of the forced voyage of the black Africans across the Atlantic usually called the
Middle Passage, and about the life of the slaves in the plantations.
In her 1988 Pulitzer Price winning novel, Beloved, Morrison deconstructs the
official history. She goes beyond the confines of the historical documents and archives to re-enact
a counter history. She unveils the unrecorded past of the slaves through their
recollections. The bitter living conditions of the slaves are depicted to be more important than
the acknowledged history.
In fact, Beloved makes reference to an important period of the American history. The
incidents of the novel take place between 1854 and 1873. That period was characterized by
three major events.
Firstly, the Fugitive Slave Act: it was enacted in 1850 by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States of America. It allowed the slaveholders to recapture slaves
or to pick up Blacks they claimed had run away.
Secondly, the American Civil War: it took place between 1861 and 1865. It was a
major war between the northern states (the Union) and eleven southern slave states that
declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America, led by President
Jefferson Davis. The Union, led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party,
opposed the expansion of slavery and rejected any right of secession.
Finally, the Reconstruction Period: it is the common name given for the era between
1865 and 1877 in the United States. It was mainly characterized by the return of the southern
states that had seceded, and the legal end of slavery.
Nevertheless, such recognizable historical events are given a secondary role in
Beloved. The daily life of the slaves in the plantations and their persecutions by their masters
are more important than those major historical events.
Beloved, therefore, offers a vision of history which sheds light on many issues
treated by post-modern intellectuals such as the constructive nature of history and the
questioning of the official historical discourse. In this respect, the form of history represented
in the novel shares many similarities with the concept of historiographic meta-fiction
developed by Linda Hutcheon in her post-modern theory. Such a theory aims at analyzing the
duality existing between fiction and history in post-modern fictions.
In order to show this duality and the constructive nature of history, Morrison uses
many forms of meta-fictional paratextuality. They are manifested in chapter headings,
epigraphs, footnotes, forewords, and epilogues. According to Linda Hutcheon, the paratextual
materials aim “to remind us of the narrativity (and fictionality) of the primary text and to
assert its factuality and historicity”1.
In Beloved, the paratextuality is manifested in the choice of the epilogue “Sixty
Million and more”. This epilogue claims a historical authenticity for the novel, and makes the
reader think about the numbers of the slaves lost during the Middle Passage. All those people
perished during the Middle Passage had been violently ignored by history. The estimated
number given by Morrison shows that the salves lost during the transatlantic slave trade are
worthy of mentioning:
Millions of people disappeared without trace, and there is not one monument anywhere to pay
homage to them, because they never arrived safely on shore. So it’s like a whole nation that is
under the sea. A nameless, violent extermination2.
The Middle Passage not only uprooted an immense number of the Africans, but also
inflicted tremendous agony on its victims. Many Africans were torn from their homelands,
branded, chained, and forced onto ships where the living conditions were very hard. Once on
board a slave ship, only few captive would see Africa again. Many of them would not even
arrive to the Americas. Many captured slaves died in the crowded filthy slave ships, or threw
themselves to the sea
To deconstruct the historical discourse, Morrison also chooses an extract from the
Bible as a second epilogue to her novel. The reason is that the Bible has often been received
as a fact. In Beloved, the epigraph is derived from Romans 9: 25:
I will call them my people,
which were not my people;
and her beloved,
which was not beloved.
This extract from St Paul is a rewriting of an original passage from the Old
Testament Book of Hosea. By quoting from St Paul rather than the book of Hosea directly,
Morrison follows St Paul’s example to reinterpret and rewrite the original text. In doing so,
“Morrison not only problematizes the nature of the relationship between the past and the
present, but also demonstrates her purpose to re-write the canonical history and reclaim the
lost and the unsaved”3.
To achieve this purpose, Morrison grounds her fictional work in a newspaper report
of a historical event that occurred in 1856. She has expressed in many interviews that she did
not know anything more about Margaret Garner than the articles published in the newspaper
of that time. It was the story of a runaway slave, Margaret Garner, from Kentucky who killed
her children in order to protect them from slavery.
On January28th, 1856, Margaret Garner and her family escaped from slavery and fled
to Cincinnati, Ohio along with other slave families. When they crossed the frozen Ohio River
just west of Covington, Kentucky, the runaway slaves were divided into two groups to avoid
detection. The first group consisted of nine families and was more fortunate. They joined
some friends who took them to safe hiding places where they waited until night. Then, the
Underground Railroad4 organized their escape to Canada.
The other group consisted of an old slave named Simon and his wife Mary, their son
Robert and his wife Margaret together with their four children. The runaway slaves went to
the house of a black free man named Kite in order to arrange their escape. On their way to
Kite’s house, they had been seen by some persons who denounced them to the pursuers. In a
few minutes, Kite’s house was surrounded by the slave catchers and the police. The slave
men were armed and fought bravely, but they were overpowered by the pursuers and dragged
out of the house.
Having seen that her hope freedom was in vain, Margaret Garner took a butcher
knife that lay on the table. With one stroke, she cut the throat of her little daughter, whom she
probably loved the best. She then tried to take the life of the other children and to kill herself,
but she was controlled before she could complete her desperate work. She was arrested and
lodged in jail.
In Beloved, Morrison delineates the character of Beloved according to the
circumstances surrounding the murder of Margaret Garner’s daughter. She “just imagined her
[Garner’s daughter] remembering what happened to her, being someplace else and returning,
knowing what happened to her”5. The resurrected daughter prompts her mother to explain the
circumstances surrounding that murder and trigger off the dreadful memories of the past.
As we said before, despite the insertion of many historical events and documents in
Beloved, Morrison seldom makes reference to the major historical events of that period. They
are only introduced through the personal memories of the characters. For example, The
Fugitive Slave Act is introduced in the following way:
He had stepped foot in this house only once after the Misery (which is what he called
Sethe’s rough response to the Fugitive Bill) and that was to carry Baby Suggs, holy, out of it 6.
In this passage, Paul D’s memories of Baby Suggs and her arrival to the plantation of Sweet
Home are more important than the Fugitive Slave Act. This latter is represented as a minor
event, introduced between parentheses.
Similarly, the American Civil War is given a secondary role in the life of the
characters. For Denver, the only time when she mentions the Civil War, she remembers the
present she and the members of her family received from an Abolitionist women, Miss
Bodwin:
One of the War years when Miss Bodwin, the white women, bought Christmas cologne for her
mother and herself, oranges for the boys and another good wool shawl for Baby Suggs7.
In this citation, the word “War” which is in a capital letter makes obliquely a reference to the
American Civil War. As in the other parts of the novel, the narrator mentions neither the
period nor the reasons of that war.
Likewise, Paul D remembers only some incidents of the American Civil War, despite
her active participation in it. Paul D’s haunting memories in Alfred Georgia outweighs the
significance of his participation in the war. The private realties and the daily persecutions of
the slaves in the plantation, and during the flight from bondage are more important than the
war. Paul D remembers the horrible scene of that war:
During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft
it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, had hidden in caves and fought
owls for food; who, like him, stole from pigs; who, like him, slept in trees in the day and
walked by night; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in the wells to
avoid regulators, raiders, paterollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers8.
We can say that Morrison’s treatment of history in Beloved shares some affinities
with Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic meta-fiction. Morrison recognizes that
history is always reconstructed, and is a form of representing the past. However, her
relationship to the canons of postmodernism is affected by her aim to write a “black-topic”
text. Morrison is engaged to write about the black experience to reconcile the black
community with their past which is often considered as a taboo.
In Beloved, the choice to write a “black topic” text is manifested in the choice of the
title of the novel. The word “beloved” has a particular significance in the Afro-American
culture. It symbolises the black struggle for their freedom and, subsequently, for their civil
rights in the United States. The first employment of this term was done by the Afro-American
writer David Walker in his pamphlet Appeal published in 1829. In the same way, Martin
Luther King used the expression “beloved community” while addressing the Afro-Americans
in his political discourses.
In the novel, the word “beloved” refers to the baby girls that Sethe killed eighteen
years ago. The choice of the representation of the character of Beloved in the form of a ghost
is very crucial. The ghosts can guide the reader and take him/her beyond the limits of the
knowable historical reality. Thus, the unrecorded history and the repressed personal memories
can be unveiled. Lois Parkinson Zamora explains:
Ghosts are liminal, metamorphic, and intermediary: they exist in/between/on modernity’s
boundaries of physical and spiritual, magical and real, and challenge the lines of demarcation9.
The ghost of Beloved is ambivalent. On the one hand, it creates a feeling of fear and
guilt among the members of the black community. The spectre leads the member of the black
community to trigger off their dreadful past. The repressed memories are unveiled. On the
other hand, Beloved represents a sign of hope and change. It will regenerate the life of the
members of community: they will be able to face and accept their past as part of their
collective memory.
The ghost of Beloved represents not only the past of the community of 124, but also
that of the whole black community. Beloved “retains a psychic racial memory of capture and
transport, of slave ships and the Middle Passage” 10.
Beloved creates a link between the new continent and Africa. She represents the
nameless and the traceless Africans thrown into the sea and perished during the crossing. She
also symbolizes the missing voices of many black Africans, especially the voice of the black
women which has often remained marginalized. In these words, Beloved describes the
Middle passage:
I am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine
his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked”11.
This incarnation of the black collective memory is confirmed at the end of the novel.
In the final page of the novel, the narrator explains: “it was not a story to pass on”12. This
sentence is repeated twice by the substitution of “it” by “this” and the change from the simple
past to the simple present: “this is not a story to pass on”13. The first refrain reveals that the
story of Beloved should not be repeated, and should not occur again. Meanwhile, it cannot be
rejected or be bypassed due to its strong historical message. The second refrain corroborates
this idea. The story of Beloved should be transmitted from one generation to another to
become a part of the Afro-American collective memory.
Morrison’s method of writing history in Beloved is a way of showing the limits of the
historical documents and archives. For Morrison, our access to the past is filtered through
textual representation. This latter is often impacted by many ideological factors. Thus, many
past events can be omitted, ignored, or even manipulated to fulfil ideological purposes.
Morrison’s technique of representing the past is also a way of illustrating the importance of
the Afro-American past for the present generation. For Morrison, a better understanding of
the current situation of the black community in the United States cannot be achieved without
an awareness of the past. Toni Morrison explains:
The black man is motivated by the need to establish an identity which he will find
nowhere, but in history as a frame of reference of his identity and aspiration 14.


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