Beloved: In Context

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Beloved In Context

• 28 April 2005
• ENGL 250 / WMST 255

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Context of Storytelling

• Toni Morrisons Good Ghosts NPR
  http//www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story
  Id3912464 (Part I, end of second section)

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Context Story 124 tells. . . .

• Part One 124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of babys
  venom. . . .It aint my job to know whats
  worse. Its my job to know what is and to keep
  them away from what I know is terrible. I did
  that. . . .So long, she murmured from the far
  side of the trees.

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Context Story 124 tells. . . .

• Part Two 124 WAS LOUD. Stamp Paid could hear it
  even from the road. . . .How did information that
  had been in the newspaper become a secret that
  needed to be whispered in a pig yard? . . .Tell
  me something, Stamp. Paul Ds eyes were rheumy.
  Tell me this one thing. How much is a nigger
  supposed to take? Tell me. How much?
• All he can, said Stamp Paid. All he can.
• Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
• THE Question.

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Context Story 124 tells. . . .

• Part Three 124 WAS QUIET. Denver, who thought
  she knew all about silence, was surprised to
  learn hunger could do that quiet you down and
  wear you out. . . .But once Sethe had seen the
  scar, the tip of which Denver had been looking at
  whenever Beloved undressed--the little curved
  shadow of a smile in the kootchy-kootchy-coo
  place under her chin--once Sethe saw it, fingered
  it, and closed her eyes for a long time, the two
  of them cut Denver out of the games. The cooking
  games, the sewing games, the hair and dressing-up
  games. . . .

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Context Story 124 tells. . . .

• She left me.
• Aw, girl. Dont cry.
• She was my best thing.
• Paul D. sits down in the rocking chair and
  examines the quilt patched in carnival colors.
  His hands are limp between his knees. There are
  too many things to feel about this woman. His
  head hurts. . . .She is a friend of my mind. She
  gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them
  and them back to me in all the right order. Its
  good, you know, when you got a woman who is a
  friend of your mind.

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Context Story 124 tells. . . .

• He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking
  about her wrought-iron back. . . .Only this woman
  Sethe could have left him his manhood like that.
  He wants to put his story next to hers.
• Sethe. . .me and you, we got more yesterday
  than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.
• He leans over and takes her hand. With the
  other he touches her face. You your best thing,
  Sethe. You are. His holding fingers are holding
  hers.
• Me? Me?

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Legal ContextThe Fugitive Slave Law (1850)

• Empowered the federal government (as opposed to
  state governments) to get involved in returning
  fugitive slaves to their owners, even if they had
  escaped to free states that had passed personal
  liberty laws, which prohibited the use of state
  facilities in the recapture of fugitives.
• Put the burden of proof on captured slaves but
  gave them no power to prove their freedom, as the
  odds in the process were stacked against them.

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Fugitive Slave Law (cont.)

• Federal marshals and deputies were required to
  help slave owners recapture their property and
  were fined 1000 if they refused,
• During the decade of the 1850s, 322 slaves were
  returned and only 11 were declared free. The
  situation led blacks to flee to Canada instead of
  to non-slave states.
• See Stamp Paids allusion to the Fugitive Bill
  on 171.

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Margaret Garners Home in Boone County, KY
(1833-56)Cookhouse, exterior interior
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Brick Smokehouse at Maplewood
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Contemporary ReactionsCincinnati Enquirer, Jan.
29, 1856
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Margaret Garner by Thomas Satterwhite Noble
(1867)
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Modern MedeaMargaret Garner Ancient Myth

• Medea was the subject of a play by Euripides, 431
  B.C.
• Great sorceress of the ancient world
• Helped Jason to get the Golden Fleece in exchange
  for his promise to marry her
• Murdered her two children by Jason after he
  abandoned her for another woman

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Literary ContextsThe Slave Narrative

• Narratives of slavery recounted the personal
  experiences of ante-bellum African Americans who
  had escaped from slavery and found their way to
  safety in the North. An essential part of the
  anti-slavery movement, these narratives drew on
  Biblical allusion and imagery, the rhetoric of
  abolitionism, the traditions of the captivity
  narrative, and the spiritual autobiography in
  appealing to their (often white) audiences. Some
  of these narratives bore a "frame" or preface
  attesting to their authenticity and to the
  sufferings described within.
• From 1760-1947, more than 200 book-length slave
  narratives were published in the United States
  and England