Familial Structure And Personhood In Toni Morrison's Beloved Analysis

“She Would Have Died”: Familial Structure and Personhood in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, a symptomatic reading of the structural relationship between family and institutionalized slavery reveals the overwhelming factors leading to protagonist Sethe’s murder of her own daughter: it is necessary for her to kill Beloved in order to create a family in the wake of slavery. While being enslaved reduces a human being to an object, Sethe’s murder of her daughter allows Beloved to retain a deep, complex personhood—through this multiplicity of personhood, Beloved is able to obtain a place in the family structure created by Sethe, a place otherwise unavailable under the active presence of slavery. By killing her daughter, Sethe

Sethe’s murder of Beloved preserves their familial relationships in a way that is impossible under slavery. Sethe says, “If I hadn 't killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her.” She creates a complex relationship between this “killing” and this “dying”. Sethe’s “killing” allows Beloved to adopt various modes of personhood; she is a living child, a vengeful ghost “baby”, and ultimately the arisen “Beloved”. Her multifaceted personhood is directly mutually exclusive with the objectifying structures of slavery. Sethe’s murder of her daughter allows for this complicated personhood, extending past death—all facets of Beloved occupy a place within Sethe’s family. Ultimately, Beloved’s death gives her access to personhood and family, rather than removing and objectifying her as a return to slavery would. Sethe says that Beloved “had to be safe and I put her where she would be.” Sethe’s murder of Beloved is framed as a transplanting, a movement from a dangerous world to a safer one. That safer world is also a world from which family is clearly accessible. Baby Suggs, a deeply important familial figure both in life and in death, is present: “I bet you Baby Suggs, on the other side, helped.” The presence of Baby Suggs, herself inhabiting various familial roles, demonstrates that Beloved’s life and death operate in a separate paradigm from a potential life and death while enslaved; after being murdered by Sethe, Beloved maintains a deep and complex personhood, and is capable of filling multiple potential roles in Sethe’s new