A “Beloved” Literary Genre: Toni Morrison’s Ethnic Fiction of Historicism and Extremism

“So...he kept on through the voices...although he couldn’t cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spoke them. The people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons,” writes Toni Morrison–the African American author of countless successful pieces of literature–in her 1987 novel Beloved (213). In the harsh realm of literary criticism, she has seen (essentially) wholehearted support for her necessarily disturbing stories regarding the brutal world of slavery. As an intense and wildly intelligent black woman in the 1970’s, Morrison brought public attention to a literature based in the countless philosophies involving “blackness” and “whiteness” during the post-slavery period in the United States, and continuing through the contemporary period in literature. Morrison’s biographical encounters with racism as a young black female in America during the civil rights movement (her personalism), combined with her intellectual ability to write emotional and extreme prose that dealt with painfully raw and intensely human themes (her extremism), were key elements in allowing her to become an important figure in developing the growing literary foundation of ethnic fiction during the 1970’s and 1980’s. In order to examine this proposal, it is necessary to look at Toni Morrison’s life from an analytical standpoint, and closely study her novels Beloved and Sula, among others.

Toni Morrison was born in February of 1931, in Lorain, Ohio. She was extremely smart and was very active in school from a young age, demonstrating her intelligence and dedication by continuing on to attend Howard University and Cornell University. Her career as a writer began in 1970 with the publishing of her novel The Bluest Eye (Wagner-Martin). During her college years, Morrison experienced the inevitable indignation of an African American during the 1940’s and 50’s: she was “suddenly all too aware that she was an African American woman, and on some occasions, that the most important fact about her was her skin color,” in the “visibly segregated” city of Washington, D.C. (Wagner-Martin 6). In an interview with Christopher Bigsby, Morrison reflects:

“I can remember I hated New Orleans because they used to have these beautifully made wooden signs saying ‘coloreds only’... I remember stealing one of those, at great pains and with a great deal of plotting with the other actors in the troupe, to take it home…” (Bigsby 271 as cited in Wagner-Martin 7).

From her years as a young person, Morrison was (rightfully) angry about her social status in a segregated United States, and harbored intense emotional pain and anger. These strong emotions and her passion for writing and social justice clearly fueled her as a writer, providing themselves as principal inspiration for the disturbing lyricism and cold matter-of-fact tone of both Beloved and Sula.

Lovalerie King describes in the introduction to her scholarly essay “The Disruption of Formulaic Discourse: Writing Resistance and Truth in Beloved” the various forms of resistance to slavery and segregation by the African American population, outlining the “alternative discourse” of Toni Morrison’s novels:

For blacks victimized by the Atlantic Slave Trade, resistance was constant, and it took many forms, such as killing, taking over slave ships, escaping from plantations, and engaging in alternative discourses. This last, more subtle, type of response has been passed on in various written forms, including autobiographical narratives and fiction. (King 1)

In introducing the context of Morrison’s works as this “alternative discourse” of slavery and segregation, this quotation demonstrates the understanding that the revolution of African Americans is often quiet, subdued, and intellectual: ironically existing as an absolute opposite of the white caricature of black people during the 20th century (the caricature often involved African Americans portrayed as animals: wild, uncontrolled, and violent). The universal experience of black girls and women (and men, of course: Toni Morrison’s literature; however, primarily addresses the experiences of black women, specifically black mother and daughter pairs) during the civil rights movement and the post-slavery period in America was outstandingly negative, African American families suffered both implicit and explicit forms of racism and cruelty from individuals as well as from the institutions of the United States. These experiences that made Morrison’s disturbing narratives necessary during the second half of the 20th century were widespread, and after the labels of “wild,” “animalistic,” and “violent” had been used to dehumanize former slaves and their families, the African American population continued their rebellion through works of ethnic fiction and lyric.

Linda Wagner-Martin states in her biography of Toni Morrison, “...Morrison knew that she wanted to write books that African American readers would want to know and study,” although during this period, there were not very many models for such literature (8). There is no doubt that her writing expressed ideas that were both political and personal, and this element reveals itself clearly in her stories. Morrison was not interested in catering to the patriarchy either; the author frequently and passionately expressed her identity as not only black, but also as a woman : “Her aim was to write about the reality of African American family lives, focusing where possible upon the mothers and daughters of those families,” (Wagner-Martin 9). The mother daughter pair, an archetype that was personally significant to her, is seen in Sethe and Beloved, Sethe and Denver, Sula and Hannah, Nel and Helene, and countless other character combinations in all of her novels: demonstrating the use of personalization and personal experience in her writing. Morrison also uses the settings of her life in her works, drawing from early memories of her hometown to create personalized narratives that set themselves apart in their nostalgia and intricacy. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison is inspired by her childhood experiences in Ohio to express setting and theme: “I was very, very conscious of that mood and atmosphere of my hometown in the first book, The Bluest Eye. I used literal descriptions of neighborhoods… the description of the house… of the streets… is very much the way I remember Lorain,” (Con I 171 as cited in Wagner-Martin 9). As a marginalized black woman speaking to an audience of her peers, her own community, Morrison achieves her ultimate end of relation and emotion through the personalization and expression of identity in her work: the novels Beloved and Sula of the present study incorporate her own experiences and thoughts, serving as a mirror to understand both the intelligence and the profound indignation of the author.

The essay “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib” by Toni Morrison exemplifies her firm belief in the strength of character and mind of African American females. Written and published in August 1971 for The New York Times, the article discusses the important relationship between gender and race (male/female, white/black) and how the nature of these dynamics affects the movement for women’s liberation during the 20th century. In her novels, Morrison constantly reinforces an almost superhuman strength in her characters, one example is the protagonist of Beloved, Sethe, attempting to murder her children in order to keep them from being sold into slavery and experiencing the same pain from which she herself had suffered: “Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand...she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time…” (Beloved 175). The emotional and physical strength of the character is emphasized here, with Sethe representing the typical, profoundly strong (and profoundly disturbed) woman of Morrison’s ethnic fiction. Toni Morrison used her sway as a talented writer to further an imperative conversation regarding the relationship between civil rights and the feminist movement in the late 20th century, and had relative success– as a result of her alarming narratives that described, among other things, a woman slitting her baby’s throat and a mother setting her son on fire. While many a modern reader would view these scenes as moments of weakness or insanity, Morrison presents this violence as strength: Sethe is protecting her children from a lifetime of rape and abuse in captivity, and Eva sets an infirm Plum on fire to save him from a slow and painful withering as a result of drug abuse. In her essay, she states:

Black women have been able to envy white women… but black women have found it impossible to respect white women… have no abiding admiration of white women as competent, complete people… White women were ignorant of the facts of life – perhaps by choice, perhaps with the assistance of men, but ignorant anyway. They were totally dependent on marriage or male support (emotionally or economically).

(“What the Black Woman…”)

Toni Morrison implies here that the (perceived) ignorance, weakness, and dependency of white women gave black females a sense of superiority that made it difficult for the titular “Black Woman” to embrace a movement for women’s liberation and also triggered the need for the strong African American female characters we see in the two pertinent texts. A close interpretation of these characters reveals the undeniable fact of Morrison’s profoundly personal and violent writing – created after years of disdain for her social standing in the United States and resentment of the unfair and over-generalized grouping of women’s and African Americans civil rights.

Morrison’s fifth novel, Beloved, was written in 1987 and tells the story of a family that has escaped from slavery and now lives in a state of relative poverty and restlessness, haunted by their past mistakes and experiences. As a black woman, the topics examined through Beloved clearly arise from the biographies of Morrison, her family, and their experiences of passive and aggressive racism. Retrospectively, the author explains, “I wanted it to be truly felt. I wanted to translate the historical into the personal. I spent a long time trying to figure out what it was about slavery that made it so repugnant, so personal, so indifferent, so intimate, and yet so public.” (Con II 76 as cited in Wagner-Martin 61). This direct quotation from the author reveals the inspiration and basis for the relatively confusing narrative strategy of Beloved: her underlying goal to “translate the historical into the personal,” is a motive that explains the complex textual structure of the piece. The novel jumps from the present at 124 with Denver, to Sweet Home before Denver was born, to a past 124 with the arrival of the “four horsemen” (Beloved 174). The historicism of her novels, then, directly relates to the element of personalism: Morrison facilitates the movement of something generally grotesque (slavery, rape, murder) to something deeply personal and private through her lyrical writing. A clear moment in which this is demonstrated is in the irrevocably strong character of Sethe, as she walks through crowds of people after murdering her child to save her from slavery:

She climbed into the cart, her profile knife-clean against a cheery blue sky. A profile that shocked them with its clarity. Was her head a little bit too high? Her back a little too straight? Probably. Otherwise the singing would have begun at once, the moment she appeared in the doorway of the house on Bluestone Road. Some cape of sound would have quickly been wrapped around her, like arms to hold and steady her on the way… And then no words. Humming. No words at all. (Beloved 179)

The narration of the story is so often omniscient in regards to Sethe as a protagonist that any reader can identify themselves in her, whether this identification is intentional or not. As an audience, horrified, collectively sees themselves in this proud woman that just committed murder, Morrison is able to drive home the main idea of the treatment of slavery in her novel: a mother (especially a strong black one) can and will do whatever is necessary to save her child from the horrors and indignities of life as a slave. Her questions “Was her head a little bit high? Her back a little too straight?” and the answer, “Probably.” are pieces of undeniably alarming and hauntingly beautiful dialogue, used as expressions of historical awakening and awareness.

This aspect of the present discussion is further developed in Sula, Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel about a black community and their relationships and philosophies. Sula as a black and female protagonist is constantly trying to subvert and surpass the social order and inherent relationships and dynamics of her town. She is unable to succeed, as described by Keith Byerman: “The effort to escape this dialectic, as Sula does, is doomed, as she is. She cannot avoid being part of the social order, since even rebellion is named and used in the community,” (Byerman 106). The personalized historicism expressed through these young female characters is seen in the struggle to find an identity of conformity that is lost by Nel and Sula, a way to become part of the collective, something that black Americans battled with for years after slavery and during the civil rights movement. While carrying around a history of tragedy, oppression, and fear, the search for identity (as exemplified in Sula) can be nearly impossible to complete. Byerman goes on to further discuss this topic:

Nel’s private experience is a metaphor for the community’s treatment of alien behavior. Sula’s refusal of positive identity cannot be tolerated, so she is explained as a demon. A folklore is created that includes both tales of her evil actions and interpretations of “signs” associated with her. But unlike Hannah, her behavior is seen as arrogant rather than complimentary. (111)

Here, Morrison’s personalization in terms of identity regards the treatment of Sula as objectively other: she is perceived –“explained as a demon” – as the devil, or a witch by her (entirely African American) community. Again, she crafts a character that is as flawed and relatable as Sethe, and projects her own historical identity and sociopolitical oppression onto a vessel that exudes gross likeability and societal pity. The reflective nature of Sula’s character furthers this idea: “Sula never competed; she simply helped others define themselves. Other people seemed to turn their volume on and up with Sula was in the room,” (Sula 95). Sula is stated to literally “help others define themselves,” she plays a metaphorical and literal role in the search for a collective and individual “black identity” and critically defines Morrison’s (literary) personal historicism. The equation is simple: her fantastic ability to tell her personal story of childhood longing and misery in being an African American woman during segregation, seen through the lens of these dynamic and strong female characters equals (allows for) the creation of this wildly successful literature of pure emotional history.

In addition to her historicism, Morrison expresses her profound indignation and disgust with the social order and dynamic in her novels, often through the use of jarring elements and alarming narrative elements. There is no doubt surrounding Toni Morrison’s extreme scenes: she unabashedly describes torture, rape, murder, slavery, possession, childbirth, extreme illness, and sexual deviance (there are infinitely many themes such as these – a list could go on forever). Main examples – painfully memorable narrative moments – are when Sula slices off the tip of her own finger in front of her bullies (“Holding the knife in her right hand, she pulled the slate toward her...Her aim was determined but inaccurate. She slashed off only the tip of her finger. The four boys stared open-mouthed at the wound and the scrap of flesh, like a button mushroom, curling in the cherry blood that ran into the corners of the slate,” (Sula 54)), when Paul D. is tortured in jail (“In the boxes the men heard the water rise in the trench and looked out for cottonmouths. They squatted in muddy water, slept above it, peed in it. Paul D. thought he was screaming...Then he thought he was crying...He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime,” (Beloved 129)), and when Eva murders her son, Plum, to save him from a life of drug addiction (“She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the kerosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight,” (Sula 47)). Morrison’s extremism is used to emphasize the cruelty and unfairness experienced by a black person living in a marginalized society during and after the time of legal slavery and to highlight the pain and suffering of black people that is so often overlooked in the literary world by critics and writers alike. Keith Byerman provides another insight to this intense realism and extremism in Morrison’s writing:

The rational telling of extreme events forces a radical reconsideration of commonly held assumptions about black life and black-white relationships. Through its extremism, it defamiliarizes the reader by pointing to the violent effects of such ordinary phenomena as popular culture, bourgeois ideas about property, love, sexual initiation and sex roles, family, and the past. (100)

The mentioned defamiliarization is Morrison’s goal, and it is this confusion and alarm that makes her literature especially successful. Byerman’s “radical reconsideration” refers to the ability of startling images and horrifying scenes to stimulate the minds of an ignorant audience to think and accommodate new information regarding the dynamics between “black” and “white” – often readers come to a sudden understanding that the situation of slavery, of segregation, or of modern-day racism was more severe and violent than what they learned in school or from their parents.

Toni Morrison is easily one of the most accomplished writers in post-modern literary canon, her fiction appears in over 30 separate languages and she has received countless awards and accolades from various well-known societies and associations. Morrison “identifies herself consistently and emphatically as an African American woman writer. She prides herself on being a part of this forceful, intelligent, adaptive population…” and has an undeniable sense of “proud heritage.” She has won awards from the Academy of Culture, the NAACP, and the American Library Association (the Coretta Scott King Award) and was invited to join the African and Helsinki Watch Committee on Human Rights (Wagner-Martin 178-179). Her various accolades and the enormous positive response to her literature from communities of all races provide extensive evidence of her explosive success in the world of ethnic fiction and lyric writing. While there is almost infinite room for further discussion of the themes seen in her literature and biographies, the fact remains that her personal historicism and elegant lyricism have been principal factors in propelling Toni Morrison to her rightful and well-earned spot of international literary success. As the author continues her work in the literary realm, she will undoubtedly ensure that slavery and the civil rights movement that so gracefully inspired her novels Beloved and Sula will not only be remembered, but studied, analyzed, and memorialized for years to come.

Works Cited

Byerman, Keith E. “Beyond Realism.” Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah. Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.

Christian, Barbara. “The Contemporary Fables of Toni Morrison.” Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah. Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.

King, Lovalerie. “The Disruption of Formulaic Discourse: Writing Resistance and Truth in Beloved.” Edited by Barbara H. Solomon. Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. G. K. Hall & Co., 1998.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Random House, Inc., 1987.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. Random House, Inc., 1973.

Rigney, Barbara Hill. “‘Breaking the Back of Words’: Language, Silence, and the Politics of Identity in Beloved.” Edited by Barbara H. Solomon. Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. G. K. Hall & Co., 1998.

Rubenstein, Roberta. “Pariah and Community.” Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah. Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. Toni Morrison: A Literary Life. Linda Wagner-Martin, 2015.