{"id":809,"date":"2021-10-06T22:55:44","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T02:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=809"},"modified":"2021-10-06T22:55:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T02:55:44","slug":"supernatural-haunting-healing-in-beloved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2021\/10\/06\/supernatural-haunting-healing-in-beloved\/","title":{"rendered":"Supernatural Haunting & Healing in Beloved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i>, Toni Morrison uses the supernatural to trigger moments of Sethe\u2019s past that simultaneously haunt and heal her. Specifically, she does this by fashioning Beloved as a ghost, who haunts Sethe and her home at 124 until she is resurrected into a physical, embodied representation of her dead child at the age she would have been in the present time. Denver hypothesizes that \u201cBeloved was the white dress that had knelt with her mother in the keeping room, the true-to-life presence of the baby…\u201d (140-1). However, it is unclear whether Beloved is necessarily \u201creal,\u201d as she is described several times as frankly creepy and bizarre in mannerisms. For example, there are repeated sounds of a baby crawling even though there isn\u2019t one in the house, and Sethe notices that when Beloved walks, \u201cthey ought to heard her tread, but they didn\u2019t\u201d (118). There is an ominous and almost \u201cwitchy\u201d presence associated with her, especially when considering her resurrection. Beloved is also violent at times, as she possesses Paul and attempts to choke Sethe in the clearing scene. Morrison writes that Beloved feels frustration that \u201cshe had been so close, then closer,\u201d in murdering Sethe, implying that she is there with some kind of malicious intent (118).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, upon Beloved\u2019s mystical entrance, Sethe immediately sympathizes and feels a connection to the girl, providing her care and shelter while she regains her health. Beloved is able to gain Sethe\u2019s trust, and is able to somehow unlock memories that have been repressed by Sethe for so long as a means of coping. It is clear that Beloved has some means of manipulating the emotions of others in ways that can be toxic and forced, like in the case of Paul, which makes me wonder if this immediate trust Sethe has for Beloved is forced and for some ulterior motive or authentic. Regardless, because of this sense of trust, Beloved is able to get the story behind Sethe\u2019s diamond earrings out of her, even though she had never been able to tell Denver about the earrings before. After Beloved chokes Sethe, Beloved is also the one that soothes her; \u201c… she was feeling so fine letting Beloved massage away the pain, the fingers she was loving and the ones that had soothed her before they strangled her had reminded her of something that now slipped her mind\u201d (115). She triggers memories through questions and instances such as this one often for Sethe, similarly to how Paul begins to trigger memories of Sethe\u2019s past at Sweet Home. Overall, Beloved simultaneously serves as a violent and ominous ghost of Sethe\u2019s past, but also allows her to reckon with the past in a way that is (hopefully) healing by forcing her to literally face and vocalize memories that have been blocked away.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the supernatural to trigger moments of Sethe\u2019s past that simultaneously haunt and heal her. Specifically, she does this by fashioning Beloved as a ghost, who haunts Sethe and her home at 124 until she is resurrected into a physical, embodied representation of her dead child at the age she would … Continue reading Supernatural Haunting & Healing in Beloved<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}