Beloved, which is classified as historical fiction, gothic horror story, and bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel), demonstrates Toni Morrison's skill in penetrating the unconstrained, unapologetic psyches of numerous characters who shoulder the horrific burden of slavery's hidden sins. Because the crimes at the heart of the novel repulse some readers, a small vocal coterie of critics has lambasted Morrison's work as soap opera, a "blackface holocaust novel," and a revamped Heart of Darkness. In rebuttal, she has insisted, "It's not my job to make black peoples' values acceptable to society as a whole." Rather, Morrison chooses to marvel that slaves who were brutalized beyond endurance were able to function as well as they did, especially after emancipation, when their expectations were high but their social station reflected little change from plantation days.
Morrison drew on a Cincinnati murder case arising from a woman's sacrifice of her children to keep them out of the grasp of slave catchers. As Morrison saw it, slavery denied black mothers the right to feel maternal love and eventually made them ambivalent toward their own offspring, particularly those sired by slave ship crews, overseers, and masters. In her words, "[These women] were not mothers but breeders." In Beloved, Morrison explores the psychology of motherhood when a slave mother and her children experience freedom. No longer a "breeder," the mother is free to love her children absolutely and, therefore, becomes capable of making unthinkable sacrifices to protect them.
The power of Beloved lies in Morrison's ability to create a compelling curiosity about the nature of Sethe's crime. Less a suspense novel than a treatise on acceptance and endurance, the work has struck an appreciative chord with a varied audience, including many noted authors who value the painful process of creating a guilt-ridden, near-crazed survivor. By identifying with the piercing eye and halting voice of a child-killer, Morrison performs what critic Claudia Tate calls "reclamation of slavery" through empathy with Sethe's will to endure and to love on her own terms.
