Morrison makes it clear that the victimization of former slaves does not stop with their escape from slave states. Law intervenes in Baby Suggs's life all the way to her burial. She enjoys only a four-week acquaintance with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren before schoolteacher, justified by the Fugitive Slave Law, terrifies Sethe into mayhem. Taking to her bed in search of respite from more worries than she can handle, Baby Suggs absorbs herself in the abstract comfort of color until her death. Sethe's order to "Take her to the Clearing," where she wants Baby Suggs buried, also meets opposition from laws that force mourners to bury the popular matriarch in the cemetery.
The classical theme of hubris (exaggerated pride), an essential in Greek tragedy, delineates Sethe as the tragic heroine of this story. Because of her outrageous act of self-sufficiency, her neighbors rescind the sympathy and camaraderie usually extended to ex-slaves, and they exile her in the land of freedom that she risked everything to attain. After Baby Suggs's death, mourners refuse to enter 124 or partake of Sethe's food. As Stamp Paid contemplates the family's fate, he blames himself for acting out of mean-spiritedness and envy. By searching for the "pride [that] goeth before a fall" in Sethe, he discloses that pride in his own heart. Shamed by his uncharitable act, Stamp Paid downgrades his own status from a rescuer of runaway slaves and "Soldier of Christ" to an ignoble meddler.
