Written by Katie W., Pacifica Libraries
The haunted house is a staple of gothic media, from the macabre mansions of the novels The Turn of the Screw (1898) and The Haunting of Hill House (1959) to the dreadful domiciles of the films House (1977) and The Others (2001).
Then there's Toni Morrison's piercing, intimate masterpiece, Beloved. The novel summons the ghosts of American slavery so that, to borrow from Morrison's foreword, a family and nation's "herculean effort to forget [is] threatened by memory desperate to stay alive."
Beloved (1987)
"124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims."
Morrison's first lines yank us into her haunted house, address number 124, occupied by Sethe, a woman who ran away from slavery and now wakes to "the day's serious work of beating back the past."
Her daughter, Denver, was born free, only to live alongside ghosts of the past, particularly the spirit of her sister, murdered and buried just outside, under a headstone that reads "Beloved."
Is the ghost evil, a visitor asks.
"Not evil, just sad," says Sethe.
"Not evil. But not sad either," counters Denver. "Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked."
Soon, the ghost seems to leave the house. But then, who is the strange woman with "new skin, lineless and smooth" who emerges from the creek by 124? Who wears a broken hat and a black dress and calls herself Beloved? Who drinks cups and cups of water and craves endless sugar, endless attention.
What can satisfy the hungry past?
The Black Southern Gothic
Morrison based Beloved on the true story of Margaret Garner, "a young mother who, having escaped slavery, was arrested for killing one of her children rather than let them be returned to the owner's plantation. She became a cause célèbres in the fight against the Fugitive Slave laws, which mandated the return of escapees to their owner."
Morrison learned of Garner's story while working as a publisher. First, she surfaced this horrific, important piece of the past as the editor of The Black Book, which included a newspaper clipping about Garner. Then, years later, she brought the past viscerally back to life through the art of fiction.
According to African American professor emeritus Dr. Amen Rahh, opens a new window, "African American Southern Gothic isn’t just about ghosts and graveyards. It’s about memory, trauma, resistance—and the unburied past that refuses to stay silent."
Below, you'll find a list of other works of African American Southern Gothic, opens a new window, as well as more Toni Morrison available through San Mateo County Libraries.
Add a comment to: Get Curious About the Gothic Classics: Beloved