Psychological Suffrage Exposed in Morrisons Beloved :: Toni Morrison Beloved Essays

Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987) was her fifth novel, andthe most controversial work she had ever written. Morrisonwas working as a senior editor at the produce firm Random House when shewas editing a nineteenth century article which was in a historical book andfound the basis for this story. A direct connection between Morrison andthis novel is best demonstrated by Morrisons statement of I deal withfive years of terror in a pathological society, living in a bedlam wherenothing makes sense. This novel is set during the mid-nineteenth centuryand reveals the pain and suffrage of being a slave before and afteremancipation through deeply symbolic delineations of continued emotionaland psychological suffrage. Stanley Crouch stated For Beloved, above all else, is a blackfacefinal solution novel (38-43). He believed that by including sadistic guards,murder, separation of family members, a big war, failed and successfulescapes, and losses of loved ones to the violence of the mad order,Morr ison was attempting to enter American thrall into the martyr ranks ofthe Nazis abuse of the Jews (Crouch 38-43). Also, Crouch stated, shelacks a true sense of the tragic (38-43). He supported this by stating it shows no sense of the timeless and unpredictable manifestations of offensethat preceded and followed American slavery (Crouch 38-43). However, Crouch realizes that Morrison has real talent, in that hebelieves she has the ability to organize her novel in a musical structureby apply images as motifs. He also felt that the characters in the novelserved no purpose other than to deliver a message. Crouch believed thatMorrison did not want her readers to run into the horrors of slavery thatothers did, but rather just to tally up the sins that were committedagainst the darker people and feel sorry for them. Furthermore, hepresumed that this novel was designed to make reliable that the view of theblack woman being the most scorned and rebuked of the victims of society,doesnt w eaken. According to Ann Snitow, she harps so on the presence of Beloved,sometimes neglecting the mental life of her other characters (pp. 25-26).She believed that by sacrificing the other characters vitality until thevery end, the novel is left hollow in the middle. However, Snitow didstate If Beloved fails in its ambitions, it is equable a novel by ToniMorrison, still therefore full of beautiful prose, dialogue as rhythmicallysatisfying as musicand scenes so clearly etched theyre likehallucinations (25-26). Snitow compares Morrisons writing elan toDickens, in that she believes that each of them are great, serious writers.