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4. Katheleen Long Bostrom Winning Authors: Profiles of the Newbery Medalists.2003 Libraries Unlimited.USA
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Qafqaz University
18-19 April 2014, Baku, Azerbaijan
BLACK WOMEN’S SUFFERINGS IN TONI MORRISON’S “BELOVED”
Nigar ABBASOVA
Qafqaz University
nigar_abbasova.n@mail.ru
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning African-American writer, editor and professor. Her novels
are famous for their heroic subject, vibrant dialogue and richly elaborated black characters. The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song
of Solomon are her prominent novels. Because of her literary career she has been awarded honorary degree and nearly all
book prizes.
Toni Morrison is known as one of the pioneers of Black Feminism. The writer’s novels suggest various kinds of
feminist theories, especially theory of beauty which implicates rather than externalize black females. Morrison’s main
purpose is to teach black women the ability of finding out their inner and external beauty rather than the acceptance of
devastating images that forced on them because of their slave ethnicity. Her novels encourage black females to adore
themselves, their ethnicity, and their home culture and not to be deceived to white superiority or white beauty standards.
The novel “Beloved” is considered to be Toni Morrison’s masterpiece as it won Nobel Prize and in 1988 Pulitzer
Prize. American press also declared it one of the most valuable works of African-American literature. “Beloved”
investigates enslavement and it describes the life period of the mid-1800s. The novel deals with the story of a black woman
slave, Sethe and it observes the impact of the realistic enslavement on the escaping slaves’ fates with the destiny of Sethe,
Paul D, Baby Suggs and Beloved.
The novel begins with a sophisticated narrator presenting Sethe and her 18 year old daughter Denver. They live alone
in a house - the 124, which is visited frequently by the ghost of a baby. The main protagonist of the novel is Sethe, a black
slave woman who is obliged to work in Sweet Home that is ruled by white people. The blacks are humiliated and tortured
there. So, they always seek various ways of escaping. Beloved is Sethe’s first daughter. She was born in Sweet Home.
When Sethe organized the plan of escaping, Beloved was a little child. But she affords to send her daughter to her mother-
in-law-Baby Suggs with her other children Howard and Buglar. When she escapes from Sweet Home she is pregnant again
for her fourth child Denver. She gives a birth to her daughter near the river and goes to 124 Bluestone Road, to Baby Suggs.
Beloved is Sethe’s older daughter-Ardelia, that she cuts her neck after 28 days of her arrival to her grandmother for
protecting Beloved from slavery. She does it for stopping the schoolteacher from Sweet Home who comes to take them
back. After that accident the 124 becomes the house haunting by the ghost of little dead child. The ghost frightens her
mother and siblings. Everybody in the country begins to isolate them. Sethe’s sons cannot bear this situation and runaway.
After 18 years later a black man with a name Paul D from Sweet Home appears and comes to Sethe. He witnesses the
ghost’s behavior toward them and can afford to expel her from the house. Paul D and Sethe fall in love with each other.
After some period the ghost comes back in the body of a young girl. The girl introduces herself as “Beloved” and begins to
live with them. Sethe accepts the girl as her own daughter. But gradually Denver realizes that she is her dead sister’s ghost.
Beloved has a great affection towards Sethe. The only thing that she wants is to be with Sethe. But she has another side that
expresses her negative behaviors towards the others especially towards her mother. It is a fact that she adores her mother but
at the same time wants to revenge from Sethe, because she killed her. Gradually Sethe begins to suspect from Beloved due
to her clues that she gives to her mother. Beloved has never loved Paul D because Sethe and he have been leaving together
for a certain period. Beloved does not want to share her mother’s love with someone else. Beloved’s only intention is to
make Sethe belong only to her, no one else. Denver asks for help from their neighbor taking the responsibility of her mother
and Beloved. The women who know that Beloved is the ghost of the baby coming back in the body of a young girl, they
come to the 124 with the Bible in their hands and prays in their mouths. Probably because of their religious rituals Sethe,
Denver and the 124 can escape from the devil ghost of Beloved.
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