Rita Mikho

AP Literature

March 25, 2019

Toni Morrison’s book,​ Beloved ​is partially based on a true story. ​Beloved​ is set in 1873 in

Cincinnati, Ohio where Sethe, a slave, lives with Denver, her daughter. In the story Sethe kills

her two year old daughter, whom she had with her husband, Halle. Beloved, Sethe’s daughter,

was murdered by her because she did not want her daughter to experience slavery. In the book,

Beloved is portrayed as a ghost but is later reincarnated and comes back to live with Sethe. In the

end, Beloved disappears because she does not get the attention she craves from her family, and

she is never seen or spoken about again.

Rape was a large part of the trauma in ​Beloved​ since the main characters were raped in

the past. Slave women were forced to have sexual intercourse with their masters on a regular

basis. If they resisted or refused, the consequences were crucial. They would receive physical

beatings and were considered as “concubines,” which is a woman who lives with a man but has a

lower status than his wife or wives. In addition, the wives are able to take out their aggressions

on the concubines rather than the master, who is the guilty one. This was happening because

masters did not want to keep buying slaves. Thus, they would breed them and once their children

were old enough, they would work for the master as well. That is why in ​Beloved​, Sethe wanted

to murder her children along with herself because she did not want them to experience the

horrors of slavery.
 For years, black women experienced violence in their neighborhoods, at their own

homes, in schools, and even at their jobs. Black women face the highest rates of domestic

violence, homicide, and especially rape. Black girls also experience institutionalized racism

because they are disproportionately punished in schools, subjected to racial profiling, and

involved in police brutality. As well as being funneled into the criminal justice system after

surviving any type of physical or sexual abuse. According to the “Violence Against Black

Women” website, approximately 60% of black girls experience sexual abuse by the age of 18

and for every black woman that reports her rape, at least 15 black women do not.

Black women experience significantly higher rates of psychological abuse such as

humiliation, insults, cat-calling, name-calling, etc. Furthermore, sexual violence affects black

women at higher rates and more than 20 percent are raped during their lifetimes, which is the

highest percentage among women overall. In comparison, when Sethe managed to find her sons

and daughter on the fugitive slave train, she stays behind to find Halle but the schoolteacher

finds her and beats her up and lets two other men rape her. Sethe also had her milk taken away

by force and the schoolteacher attempted to take her children away as well.

Toni Morrison’s, ​Beloved,​ was based on Margaret Garner because she was a victim of

rape and slavery. Garner was known as a black woman who was “unrapeable in the eyes of the

law” (Taylor, 2017). Her defendant, Stone, accused Gaines, her master, of sexual abuse. Stone

suggested Gaines’ paternity of Margaret’s children and explained that the “hell” was what

caused her to murder her own children. In addition to the sexual abuse that she experienced

herself. Stone was a woman’s rights advocate and an abolitionist. However, she did side with
Garner’s decision to kill her daughter because she understood that Margaret didn’t want her

children to go through the physical and mental abuse of slavery.

“Black women were prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse,

including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself, she was often

subjected to further beatings by the master or even by the mistress.” In ​Beloved​, Sethe was

whipped so many times and very brutally that it left a tree-shaped scar on her back. She was

raped and whipped by schoolteacher’s nephews and she was treated cruelly to the point where it

drove her to kill her two year old daughter. Many other women were probably driven to do the

same but were anonymous. If anyone was in this situation and had lost all hope, they would

probably have made a similar decision and saved their daughter from the traumatizing

experience of slavery and

rape.
Sources:

“Female Slavery in the United States.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Jan. 2019,

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_slavery_in_the_United_States

Taylor, Nikki. “The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio.” AAIHS,

www.aaihs.org/the-fugitive-slave-margaret-garner-and-tragedy-on-the-ohio/

Morrison, Toni, et al. ​Beloved​. 10-18, 2015

“Violence Against Black Women – Many Types, Far-Reaching Effects.” ​Institute for

Women's Policy Research,​ 7 Aug. 2018

www.iwpr.org/violence-black-women-many-types-far-reaching-effects/