A richly told story of a formerly enslaved woman haunted by her past and an indictment of the horrors of slavery, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved has been a favorite of readers ever since its 1987 publication. Its themes of motherhood, freedom, history’s power to control the present, and communal healing continue to resonate today.
Morrison’s novel won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and regularly appears on lists of the greatest novels ever written: however, it is also one of the most frequently challenged books in schools and libraries and often appears on American Library Association’s list of most challenged books.
Why is Beloved both a well-loved literary classic and a regularly challenged and banned novel? Let’s explore this fascinating novel!
What is Toni Morrison’s Beloved About?
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Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873, Toni Morrison‘s Beloved centers on Sethe, a Black woman whose memories and home are haunted by the ghost of her infant daughter Beloved. Years before, after she unsuccessfully tried to escape with her children from the Kentucky plantation where they were enslaved, Sethe decided in an unusual act of mercy to kill her children rather than let them be returned to slavery. Only Beloved was killed before slaveholders recaptured the family.
Though the ghost has driven away every member of Sethe’s family except for Sethe and her other daughter Denver, Sethe believes she could quell its sadness and anger if only she could explain her actions to the ghost. When a mysterious young woman appears one day and introduces herself as Beloved, Sethe welcomes her in and tries to explain that her actions were done out of love, not cruelty; however, Beloved only has a child’s understanding of the world and does not accept Sethe’s reasoning.
Soon, Beloved consumes all of Sethe’s time, attention, and energy, and Sethe is in danger of being completely absorbed by her past trauma and guilt. Denver takes it upon herself to gather the other women in their community to exorcise Beloved’s ghost and save them all from being destroyed by their pasts.
Why Has Beloved Been Challenged or Banned?
In her many novels, from The Bluest Eye to Song of Solomon to Paradise, Toni Morrison tackled racism, physical and sexual violence, the legacy of slavery, and other controversial issues. Beloved has frequently been challenged or banned for its depictions of violence, sexual assault, and racism:
- Morrison describes how White slaveowners inflicted violence on Black slaves. For example, Sethe has been whipped so often that the scars form a treelike shape on her back, and she also performs a violent act to try to spare her children from the horrors of enslaved life.
- Morrison writes about how slaveowners violated Black slaves’ bodily autonomy. At one point in the novel, Sethe is sexually assaulted and beaten by white boys while she is pregnant; the boys squeeze her breasts and drink the milk from them, preventing her from being able to provide milk to her children.
- Morrison depicts how slaveowners dehumanized Black slaves. Sethe recalls how a schoolteacher wrote a summary of her characteristics on a sheet of paper with two columns: one for human traits and one for animal traits. This experience makes Sethe vow that she’ll never allow her children to be dehumanized the way she was.
The novel became the flashpoint of a cultural battle in Virginia over book bans and parents’ roles in influencing school curriculums. After a mother in Fairfax County started a campaign to remove the novel from the AP English curriculum, the state legislature passed a bill that would have allowed parents to prevent their children from reading books with sexually explicit content in classrooms. Though then-Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed the bill, Glenn Youngkin later used the backlash against Beloved and McAuliffe’s veto to win the 2021 gubernatorial election. After his election, Youngkin signed legislation that made it easier for parents to challenge books they found controversial in Virginia’s education curriculums.
Final Thoughts
In Beloved, Toni Morrison movingly portrays a mother and her daughters deeply haunted by physical and emotional violence of slavery and celebrates their resilience in trying to rebuild their lives years after the United States abolished slavery in 1865.
Beloved reminds us of how the past haunts and shapes us. Despite all attempts to ban it or limit its audience, the novel remains a valuable part of American and world literature, and its story and themes can speak to and impassion any reader.
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