Beloved Part 1, Chapter 11 - 18
Beloved begins to manipulate Paul D to move out of the house, and she does it by making him feel restless. He feels as if he is uncontrollably being moved, and it begins with him waking up in a rocking chair one morning without ever recalling falling asleep in it. He begins to sleep in the rocking chair, and then he moves to Baby Suggs’s room. Paul D recognizes that he has had the urge to leave a home before, but he is certain that this is not the case in the present instance since he still loves Sethe and wants to be with her. The restlessness he experiences heightens and he begins to sleep in the cold house despite the chill of autumn. Beloved comes into the cold house one night and asks him to sleep with her, but Paul D refuses at first. Beloved continues to seduce him, and Paul D begins to feel his tobacco tin opening with painful memories when she succeeds in seducing him.
Denver and Beloved grow closer together as Denver loves spending time with her. Sethe attempts to learn about Beloved’s background, but she only recalls crossing a bridge out of the darkness. Sethe takes this to mean that Beloved had been kept by a white man who refused to let her out. She has heard of a similar account from a woman named Ella, who had been treated horribly by a father-son duo. On the other hand, Denver believes that Beloved is related to the white dress that she had seen next to Sethe once before. Denver shares all her memories of her grandmother, and her siblings with Beloved as they grow ever closer. The true depth of their closeness becomes obvious when Denver and Beloved go to the cold house to retrieve some cider. Denver loses track of Beloved in the dark cold house, and she begins to panic because she thinks that Beloved has disappeared. She finally finds Beloved in the darkness, and the woman assures Denver that she isn’t going to leave because she likes being at 124. Beloved then sits down, and she begins to rock back and forth while looking at a mysterious face in the darkness claiming that it's her.
Paul D recalls Mr. Garner as a lenient slave master during his time at Sweet Home, but that had all changed after the plantation was taken over by Schoolteacher. Paul D thinks about the things Schoolteacher had said to him and wonders whether he had been right in saying that Paul D was less than a man. He thinks about these things because he feels guilty about the desire he has for leaving 124, and for the night he spent with Beloved. He decides to come clean about these things to Sethe and goes out to meet her in the restaurant where she works. He readies himself to tell her everything, but cannot do it. Instead, he tells her that he wants them to have a child together, a notion that Sethe dismisses outright. They set out for 124 together, and it begins to snow quite severely. Paul D helps Sethe by lifting her on his back, and they race towards the house. They are accosted on their way by Beloved, who breaks their intimacy.
Sethe worries about Paul D sleeping in the cold house and invites him into the house. This upsets Beloved quite a bit. Paul D is appreciative of Sethe’s kindness, and it also reminds him of the woman in Delaware, who had been extremely generous to him. Sethe reconsiders the notion of having a child with Paul D, but she cannot bring herself to be a mother to another child.
Sethe and Paul D retire upstairs, while Denver and Beloved are left together. Denver believes that Sethe likes having Paul D around, but Beloved is adamant about having him leave. She claims that being away from Sethe is causing her body to fall to pieces as she pulls out one of her teeth without any indication of pain. Denver worriedly asks her why she doesn’t feel the pain of losing her tooth, and Beloved begins to cry. Denver holds and comforts Beloved.
Readers go back to the time before Sethe had arrived at 124, and Baby Suggs had been anxiously waiting for both Sethe and Halle. Sethe arrives safely with her baby, but Baby Suggs is still worried about Halle. She wants to celebrate the reunification of her family, yet she is unwilling to do so until Halle arrives. Stamp Paid visits 124 and finds both Sethe, and the new baby healthy. He goes to the river to collect some berries and brings them back for the inhabitants of 124. Baby Suggs decides to make a pie and put together a meal for her family. Miraculously, the small meal for the family turns into a huge celebration for the whole neighborhood, and the food seems to multiply on its own. The following day, Baby Suggs begins to feel that she has offended her neighbors with her largesse, and she feels like something is going to go wrong soon. She recalls the time she and Halle had arrived at Sweet Home. Baby Suggs had an injured hip that made working difficult, but the Garners were never truly cruel to Baby Suggs. Halle didn’t want his mother working with her injury, so set to make arrangements for her freedom. Baby Suggs realized that the Garners were still slave owners, although they were practicing it rather differently.
Halle bought Baby Suggs her freedom, and she remembers how different she had felt. She had suddenly become aware of her heartbeat. The Garners had introduced her to a family called the Bodwins to help her set up her life as a free woman. Mr. Garner had tried to call her Jenny, as that had been her name on the sale ticket, but she didn’t want the new name even though Mr. Garner said Baby Suggs wasn’t a good name for a free woman. She remembered that her husband had been named Suggs, and he used to call her Baby, so she resolves to remain Baby Suggs. She tries to track down her children but fails to understand how to go about it. She eventually grows complacent with Halle’s children and Sethe. However, she is eager to have Halle with her as well. At that moment, she is convinced that something bad is coming.
Four horsemen come to 124 soon after Sethe’s arrival, and they include the Schoolteacher, one of his nephews, a slave catcher, and the Sheriff. They find Sethe in a shed behind the house and she is accompanied by all her children. They enter the shed to find her next to a saw, with a bloody child held in her arm, and an infant Denver being held by her foot. A nearby black man takes Denver from Sethe, and Schoolteacher thinks that she has gone wild because his nephews had mistreated her. He believes that there is nothing left for him to take back to Sweet Home, and he returns. The Sheriff decides to take Sethe to prison, but Baby Suggs has a hard time making Sethe give up her dead child. She finally manages to exchange the dead baby with the infant Denver, and Sethe immediately begins to breastfeed her while she is still covered in the blood of her dead baby. Sethe is taken to prison with Denver still in her arms.
The readers return to the present time as Paul D meets Stamp Paid who works in the same slaughterhouse as Paul D. Stamp Paid shows Paul D a news clipping about Sethe killing her child, but Paul D is convinced that it hadn’t been her. Stamp Paid wants to tell him about the whole ordeal, but Paul D refuses to entertain the notion that Sethe could do something like that.
At 124, Paul D confronts Sethe with what he had learned from Stamp Paid, but Sethe doesn’t give him a straight answer. She tells him that it had been a challenge being a mother to her children at Sweet Home since there had been no other slaves with children there. She had wanted to be free and had organized her children’s escape along with her own without Halle’s help. She tells him about the time when she truly felt freedom, but Schoolteacher’s arrival had threatened the safety of her children. She had wanted to put them in a place where no one could ever harm them, and she had done just that. She admits to killing her child, and Paul D is left in disbelief. He tells her that her love had been ‘too thick’ and that she was a person who walked on two feet rather than four. He then leaves 124.
Analysis
In this section of the book, readers learn the details of the central act of the book, which is Sethe’s murder of her daughter to shield the child from being taken into slavery. This act represents the conflict between the two most important themes of the book, Slavery, and Motherhood. Sethe constantly defines herself through her children and considers them to be the center of her existence. This explains why Sethe feels so incomplete being separated from all her children, except Denver, and it also explains why she doesn’t move away from the haunted house. Sethe wants to be with her dead baby, even if that connection entails being the mother of a ghost. The novel strongly hints that Beloved is a manifestation of the dead child, which is evidenced through her strong attachment with Sethe, her inability to recall her past, as well as the descriptions she provides of where she had lived before coming to 124.
Sethe chooses to kill her child because she believes that death is better for her child than leading life as a slave. Paul D is unable to understand her love, and he also says that her emotion was too thick. He had been looking forward to starting a future with her, but he finds himself unable to come to terms with her past. His last comment to her about the number of legs she has, essentially brings back the things that Schoolteacher had told him. He believes that Sethe has shown herself to be an animal by killing the object of her love. On the other hand, the Schoolteacher doesn’t see any love in Sethe’s actions. He believes that she has gone wild because of his nephews, and does not understand Sethe’s love for her children. This love is reiterated in the scene following Schoolteacher’s departure. Baby Suggs recovers the body of the child as Sethe continues to cling onto it tightly, until it is replaced with her other baby, Denver. Sethe’s first action upon having Denver is to breastfeed her baby.
