
                                  Overview

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Synopsis

Mr. and Mrs. Garner own Sweet Home Farm in Kentucky. They own six slaves.
Five male slaves, Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs,
and Sixo, work in the fields. Halle's mother, Baby Suggs, works in the
house. Mr. Garner prides himself on being different from other slave
owners. He considers his Negroes men and encourages them to think for
themselves, make decisions, choose wives, handle guns, and even learn to
read. He allows Halle to hire himself out every Sunday for five years to
earn money to buy his mother's freedom. When Baby Suggs is emancipated, Mr.
Garner drives her to the Ohio River and once in free country pays her
resettlement fee and arranges for her to live in a two-story house with a
well at 124 Bluestone Road near Cincinnati, Ohio. The house is owned by the
Bodwins, a brother and sister committed to abolition and helping ex-slaves.

The Garners purchase thirteen-year-old Sethe to replace Baby Suggs as the
household slave. Sethe's arrival causes great excitement among the male
slaves, known as the Sweet Home men. Each of them lusts for her, but she
waits a year before choosing one of them to marry. Sethe marries Halle
because of his kindness toward his mother. In the next six years, Sethe and
Halle have three children, two boys and a girl. Sethe is still nursing the
third child, and she is pregnant with the fourth when Mr. Garner dies and
Sweet Home changes drastically.

Mrs. Garner is forced to sell Paul F to pay off the farm's debts. Ill and
needing a man to manage the farm, she enlists the help of her
sister-in-law's husband who is a schoolteacher. Schoolteacher, as the
slaves call him, comes to Sweet Home with his two nephews. Schoolteacher is
not a bit like Mr. Garner. He delights in observing the Negroes and taking
notes on their appearance and behavior. One day Sethe overhears him
instructing his pupils to keep track of her human characteristics and her
animal characteristics.

Sethe, Halle, and their children, as well as Paul A, Paul D, and Sixo plan
to run away. On the appointed day, Sethe is working in the house and Halle
is unable to signal her. Paul D and Sixo meet at the appointed place, but
Schoolteacher, his pupils, and four other white men capture them. Sixo
resists and they kill him. Paul D is shackled and taken back to Sweet Home.
Sethe talks with him there and learns that Halle is missing. She tells him
she has just taken her children to be picked up by the wagon bound for the
underground railway. She will wait no longer for Halle, but will leave that
evening to meet them at Baby Suggs's in Cincinnati.

Before she has a chance to leave, Schoolteacher's nephews hold Sethe down
and drink the milk from her breasts while Schoolteacher watches and takes
notes. Sethe is outraged and tells Mrs. Garner the white boys stole her
milk. Schoolteacher learns she told and orders one of the white boys to
whip Sethe. He whips her until her back is filled with open wounds. The
wounds eventually scar into the shape of a tree and Sethe loses all feeling
in her back. Unknown to Sethe, Halle is hiding in the loft and witnesses
the stealing of her milk. His mind snaps, and he is least seen sitting by
the butter churn smearing butter and buttermilk all over his face.

Paul D sees Halle with the butter clabber, but he is unable to help or
comfort him because he has an iron bit in his mouth, having been sold by
Schoolteacher to a man named Brandywine who was on his way south. Paul D
tries to kill Brandywine, and is Spilt to Alfred, Georgia, where he is
imprisoned in a 5' x 5' box and works on a chain gang. After eighty-six
days of inhuman treatment, a furious rainstorm undermines the embankment
holding the convicts' boxes and Paul D and the other forty-five prisoners
to which he is chained, escape. They encounter a band of fugitive Cherokees
who free them from the chain. Paul D stays with the Cherokees for a month
and then decides to go north. Following the Cherokees' directions, he
follows the tree flowers and slowly makes his way north. He lives in hiding
with a weaver woman in Delaware for eighteen months, soon leaves out of
restlessness, and ends up working for the Northpoint Bank and Railroad
Company. He runs away from Northpoint Bank to join the War, but Northpoint
Bank catches him, brings him back to Delaware, and then sells his services
to the Confederate Army in Alabama. After the War, Paul D wanders for seven
years until he ends up in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sethe eventually escapes from Sweet Home. Her intense desire to get her
breast milk to her child in Cincinnati drives her on despite physical pain
and exhaustion. When she collapses in some bushes, a white girl, Amy
Denver, finds her, takes her to a lean-to, rubs her swollen feet back to
life, and dresses her infected back with spider webs. The next day she
helps Sethe to the river where they find a rowboat in which Sethe delivers
her baby. Sethe names the child Denver. Amy leaves, and Sethe returns to
she riverside. She walks until she meets a Negro man and two boys. That
night, they ferry her across the Ohio River. The man's name, he tells her,
is Stamp Paid. Ella, a blackwoman in a wagon, picks up Sethe and Denver and
delivers them to Baby Suggs in Cincinnati. Baby Suggs has become a holy
figure to the Negroes in the area. Her home, 124, is the place where they
come to be "loved, cautioned, fed, chastised and soothed" (p. 106 Signet/p.
87 Plume). She hides fugitive slaves, heals the sick, and preaches in
churches and in the woods. The message they gratefully receive from the
big-hearted Baby Suggs, holy, is that they must love themselves, for the
whitepeople do not love them. This, she tells them, is the saving grace of
the colored people.

Twenty days after Sethe's arrival, Stamp Paid brings them two huge buckets
of delicious blackberries. Baby Suggs and Sethe decide to share the pies
they will make from the berries with Ella and her husband John, and their
generosity escalates into a full-fledged feast for all the colorced people
in the area. The area folks accept the generosity, but resent the bounty of
Baby Suggs and her kin. They disapprove of the uncalled-for pride displayed
at 124. They are offended by Baby Suggs's excess. They fail to warn Baby
Suggs and Sethe that four whitemen on horses are approaching.

Twenty-eight days after Sethe and Denver arrive, Schoolteacher tracks them
to 124. He brings the law to get Sethe, and they come right into Baby
Suggs's yard. Sethe sees them coming, recognizes Schoolteacher's hat,
gathers up her children, and runs to the woodshed. Horrified that they will
have to return to slavery, Sethe goes wild and tries to kill the children
and herself. She succeeds in slitting the throat of her third child with a
handsaw. Schoolteacher. his nephew, a slave catcher, and the sheriff
discover her before she can kill herself and the other three children.

Instead of going back to Sweet Home, Sethe goes to jail for three months,
and the infant Denver goes with her. A petition drawn-up by Mr. Bodwin and
some whitewomen prevents her from being hanged. When she is released, Sethe
provides a tombstone for her daughter's grave by allowing the stone mason
to have sex with her. The word "Beloved" is all she can afford to have
engraved on the stone. The Bodwins get Sethe a cooking job at a restaurant
so she can support herself and her children. Baby Suggs is disillusioned
and despairs about the grace of she coloredpeople, and shuts the door of
124. She no longer preaches, even though Stamp Paid begs her to do so.

Sethe's child returns as a ghost to haunt 124. It makes its presence known
by sighing and causing accidents to occur. Sethe, Denver, and Baby Suggs
remain isolated from the rest of the community inside the haunted house.
Denver takes particular pleasure in the secret company of her ghost sister.
Denver is outwardly loving because she is afraid that Sethe will kill her
too. Together, she and her ghostly sister wait for their daddy to come for
them.

Denver attends school at Lady Jones' house each morning for two years, but
one day, one of the children asks her if it's true her mother was sent to
jail for murder and that Denver was sent with her. Denver does not return
to school, and when she finally musters the courage to ask Sethe and Baby
Suggs about it, her hearing is "cut off by an answer she could not bear to
hear" (p. 127/p. 103). She is deaf for the next two years. Her hearing
suddenly returns when the baby ghost changes its behavior and starts to
crawl upstairs. Now the ghost's presence becomes spiteful and abusive.

Nine years after the ghost enters 124, Buglar and Howard, Sethe's sons,
leave and are never heard of again. Baby Suggs dies within two weeks of the
boys' leaving. Her final conclusion about life is that there is no bad luck
except whitepeople because "they don't know when to stop" (p. 127/p. 104).
Stamp Paid enters the house for the first time since the killing and takes
Baby Suggs's body to she church. Sethe refuses to attend the service, and
although she attends the burial, she refuses to sing the hymns. The Negroes
take this as another sign of her pride. Thus Sethe remains isolated from
the Negro community, and Denver becomes further withdrawn. They continue
this way for nine more years. Eighteen years after leaving Sweet Home, Paul
D anrives at 124. The past he and Sethe share unites them, and Paul D
drives the ghost from the house. He and Sethe make love and consider making
a life together.

The ghost of Sethe's child, however, returns in the body of a young woman
who tells them her name is Beloved. Supposing she is one of the many
displaced coloredpeople looking for a home following the end of the War,
Sethe and Denver take her in. Denver devotes herself to nursing Beloved,
whom she begins to regard as a sister. Beloved, however, devotes herself to
Sethe. Beloved craves stories of Sethe's past, and Sethe finds herself
telling her stories she never told Denver.

Paul D becomes annoyed by Beloved's presence, particularly when it is clear
she wants to seduce him. Denver eventually figures out who Beloved really
is, begs her not to leave her, and caters to her every whim. Beloved
succeeds in driving Paul D first from Sethe's room, then from 124, and
finally from the storehouse into the cold house. There she manages to
seduce him. Helpless under Beloved's spell, Paul D feels the deep shame of
it and even questions the manhood Mr. Garner so unconventionally upheld. He
tries to confess this to Sethe, but is unable to. Instead, he asks her to
bear his child.

About this time Stamp Paid decides Paul D should know about Sethe murdering
her child. He shows Paul D the newspaper clipping and reads its contents to
him, but Paul D refuses to believe it, repeating that the picture is not of
Sethe because the mouth is not hers. Thinking Sethe can clear up the
question raised by Stamp Paid, Paul D shows her the clipping. She tells him
the story and, to his horror, tells him she feels she did the right thing;
she saved them from Schoolteacher and the terrors of a return to Sweet
Home. As far as she was concerned, her children were safe, either in this
world or on the other side. Paul D feels Sethe has done wrong and moves out
of 124. Beloved overhears the conversation that drives a wedge between
Sethe and Paul D. Stamp Paid tries to visit Sethe and offer help, but
cannot bring himself to knock on the door when all other coloredpeople's
doors are open to him without this formality that signals him a stranger.
It is this and not the fact that the house is again inhabited by haunts,
that prevents him from helping Sethe and Denver for Baby Suggs' sake.

But Sethe, self-sufficient as ever, decides to show the town, and Paul D,
she is doing fine. She and the girls go ice-skating. They have a delightful
time, and nobody sees them falling. After the skating, while they are
sipping hot sweetened milk before the dancing fire, Sethe realizes that
Beloved is her daughter. Sethe, Denver, and Beloved cut themselves off from
the outside world and bask in each other's company. When Stamp Paid finally
musters the courage to knock on the door of 124, they do not even hear him.
Looking in the window, he sees a young woman he does not recognize. He
leaves Sethe and the girls to their own devices. Sethe takes the
opportunity to give Beloved all the mothering she did not give her before.
She focuses all her attention on Beloved. She dotes on Beloved so much that
she loses her job and does not try to find another. Their playing goes on
for a month, and Denver loves it too. Although she eventually resents being
left out completely, Denver continues to protect Beloved against Sethe,
lest she hurt her again. Beloved is insatiable and becomes increasingly
demanding. Sethe denies her nothing, but tries to explain how she suffered
for Beloved's sake. Beloved tells Sethe she abandoned her, and Sethe begs
her forgiveness When Sethe tries to take the upper hand as mother in the
relationship, Beloved throws fits. Sethe becomes Beloved's servant, and
Denver begins to fear for Sethe's life.

The three of them run out of food, and with great difficulty, Denver leaves
the yard of 124. She goes to Mrs. Jones who gives her food for her family.
Lady Jones alerts the church committee to their plight, and the Negroes in
the community respond with food and kindness. Sethe and Beloved continue
their unhealthy relationship. As Beloved continues to take and Sethe
continues to give, Beloved grows larger and Sethe is diminished. Beloved
becomes the disapproving parent, Sethe the chastised child. Sethe lives in
fear that Beloved will leave before she can make her understand why she did
what she did--that the inhumanity from which she saved her was worth the
price--and that she did it out of true love. Uneasy about the charity,
Denver goes to the Bodwins to ask about work. After learning about Sethe's
state, Janey, a Negro woman who works for the Bodwins, gets Denver a job.
Mr. Bodwin will pick her up for work in his wagon. Although Denver tells
Janey their visitor is a cousin, Janey recognizes her for Sethe's murdered
daughter and spreads the word among the other coloredwomen that Sethe's
dead daughter is abusing her. They decide to come to Sethe's rescue, and
thirty coloredwomen assemble in front of 124 just as Mr. Bodwin approaches
in the wagon to pick up Denver. Sethe and Beloved hear them singing and go
stand in the doorway, holding hands. Beloved is naked, pregnant and
beautiful; Sethe looks like a little girl beside her. Sethe sees Mr. Bodwin
approach with his horsedrawn wagon. Mistaking him for the other whitemen
who rode into her yard eighteen years earlier, she rushes at him with an
icepick, intent on defending Beloved. Denver intercepts her and the
neighborhood women succeed in subduing Sethe. Left alone again, Beloved
disappears. Some say she exploded right before their eyes, but a boy near
the stream says he saw her running through the woods. Paul D returns and
helps Sethe drive the ghost from her rememory by aligning his story with
hers and restoring her self-esteem. Beloved is forgotten.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Penguin USA books, audio cassettes, and multimedia products are
        available at your local bookseller, or call 1-800-253-6476.

                               [ What's New ]
            [ Reading Room | Academic Resources | Multimedia ]
       [ Graphical Home Page | Text-Only Home Page | About Penguin ]
                           [ Book-Related sites ]

         Web construction by HuskyLabs, Thursday, February 01 1996.
