A novel following Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman haunted, in both a figurative and a literal, ghost-driven sense, by the infant daughter she killed rather than see returned to slavery. Loosely inspired by the real historical case of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who killed her own child in 1856 rather than allow her recapture, the novel refuses a linear telling of its central trauma, circling and withholding it across a fragmented, nonlinear structure that formally enacts the difficulty of speaking the unspeakable. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.
Facts
Classification
Original Language AwardPulitzer Prize for Fiction 2 Composed, From (Year) FAQs
Is Beloved based on a true story?
Yes. Toni Morrison drew on the story of Margaret Garner.
Beloved was inspired by a real case. While preparing an anthology in 1974, Toni Morrison came across the story of Margaret Garner, a runaway slave who attempted to murder her children rather than allow them to be captured and sent back into slavery. For Morrison, Garner's story epitomized one of the chief horrors of slavery, the deliberate separation of families. The novel went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Connections
Associated With
Widely discussed as a landmark of postmodern historiographic metafiction.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Authored By
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
In Genre
Gothic Fiction, Genres Scholarship reads Beloved through Gothic convention (the haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road, the returned dead) applied to the history of American slavery, a Feminine or Southern Gothic rather than the novel's primary classification.
Source Toni Morrison and the Gothic (The Gothic Library)
In the Other Atlases
Original Language
Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.
Originated In
Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannicatier 1
Sources
1. Beloved (novel) (Wikipedia)
LeadQuote, Lead
Beloved is a 1987 novel by American novelist Toni Morrison.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company
Toni Morrison and the Gothic (The Gothic Library)
The Gothic LibraryIn Genre: Gothic Fiction, Toni Morrison and the Gothic
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