As we discussed over the course of the first half of the book, Sethe has an extremely strong character, able to rule her life with a seemingly iron grip. She is not fazed by her children running away or living in a house with a ghost, not paying attention to things that should hit deeply on an emotional level. As we later learn, she unquestioningly and without remorse commits infanticide, not regretting the terrible consequences it had not only on her, but her remaining children, family, and standing in the African-American community in Cincinnati. Out of everyone in the story, I feel that Baby Suggs is the one that drew the shortest stick. While many of Sethe’s issues in the most recent timeline were consequences of her own actions, Baby Suggs did not have much influence over the course of her last ten years.
Thanks to the relatively more lax slaving practices of Mr. Garner, Halle was able to buy freedom for his mother, but was unable to earn the money needed to buy himself out before Mr. Garner died and a crackdown on the slaves of Sweethome was initiated. I apologize, but I just want to do a little math here. If Halle was able to earn enough money to buy his mother her freedom from just five years of working Sundays, he wasted most of his time while a slave. If he had instead bought himself freedom first, after that he would be able to earn money working all seven days of the week and buy out Baby Suggs in under a year. It is natural that he wanted to free his mother first, particularly since there was no sign that Halle would be stopped from working at any point, but purely logistically speaking it would have made more sense to buy his own freedom first.
That entire point proves that the main characters we meet just have too much love, more than is safe for slaves. Halle’s emotions get in the way of doing the right thing in the long run for his family and for himself. The absurd amount of emotional trauma that the characters undergo leaves them clinging to whatever they have left, leaving us the scene of Halle with butter smeared over his face. Sethe is left an iron will and eighteen years suppressing memories, Paul D instead grows a wandering mind and some hope for the future. Because of her love, Baby Suggs does nothing but stand idly by as her generosity to the community and Sethe’s terrible actions make the oldest member of the family lose out on the things she held most dear. Although free, the moment that her community turns on her, she becomes imprisoned in her own house, bound to inaction until her death.
Thanks to the relatively more lax slaving practices of Mr. Garner, Halle was able to buy freedom for his mother, but was unable to earn the money needed to buy himself out before Mr. Garner died and a crackdown on the slaves of Sweethome was initiated. I apologize, but I just want to do a little math here. If Halle was able to earn enough money to buy his mother her freedom from just five years of working Sundays, he wasted most of his time while a slave. If he had instead bought himself freedom first, after that he would be able to earn money working all seven days of the week and buy out Baby Suggs in under a year. It is natural that he wanted to free his mother first, particularly since there was no sign that Halle would be stopped from working at any point, but purely logistically speaking it would have made more sense to buy his own freedom first.
That entire point proves that the main characters we meet just have too much love, more than is safe for slaves. Halle’s emotions get in the way of doing the right thing in the long run for his family and for himself. The absurd amount of emotional trauma that the characters undergo leaves them clinging to whatever they have left, leaving us the scene of Halle with butter smeared over his face. Sethe is left an iron will and eighteen years suppressing memories, Paul D instead grows a wandering mind and some hope for the future. Because of her love, Baby Suggs does nothing but stand idly by as her generosity to the community and Sethe’s terrible actions make the oldest member of the family lose out on the things she held most dear. Although free, the moment that her community turns on her, she becomes imprisoned in her own house, bound to inaction until her death.
I didn't really think about how Halle could have bought his own freedom to help Baby Suggs faster, but this is really interesting. It probably would have been quicker to buy his own freedom. On the other hand, he could have cost more because he was an able bodied man and Baby Suggs was older and had a bad hip. He also might have wanted to buy his mother's freedom because she needed help the quickest. I do think Halle could be an example of having too much love.
ReplyDeleteSide note: you might want to change your text to white so people can read it against the black background of the post.
It would have made more sense logistically for Halle to buy his own freedom first, but from what we see of Halle there's no way he would have freed himself while leaving the rest of his family behind at Sweethome. I definitely agree with your analysis that he is an example of a character who loves more than is safe, and that that's part of why he is driven crazy by being in the loft and yet unable to help Sethe.
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ReplyDeleteI suppose this is true--although the act of love, buying his mother's freedom, is a defining feature of Halle's character (as Sophia notes, above), and makes a strong impression on Sethe right away. Another point to consider--and this forces us into the discomfiting economics of slavery, as Morrison compels us to do throughout the Sweet Home sections--is that Baby Suggs would have cost considerably less, as an older woman with a bad hip, past her "breeding" years, than a young man like Halle. His mother's freedom would have been a more immediately achievable goal, and that took him *five years of Sundays*.
ReplyDeleteThat is definitely an important point, I just felt that Halle's freedom was just out of reach. For whatever reason, and I don't remember where it was in the book, I thought that Halle was something like $148 away from buying his own freedom when Mr. Garner died and he was stopped from selling his own work on Sundays. Admittedly, Baby Suggs had already been free for some time by that point, but Halle's inability to safely bring his family to freedom and his deep love created such a reluctance to do the better thing that it ended up causing many years of pain and trouble for all involved.
DeleteI think this view of emotion in Beloved is really interesting. In retrospect, it does seem that emotion really dictates so much of all of the characters' questionable acts. Then again, there would be no story without emotion! An interesting take though.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of "too much love" is hard to understand, but in this novel it makes the emotions much more interesting. The novel creates a scene where emotion causes so much pain to others and you managed to talk about the effect on the novel. Great post!
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