To Love

Through her novel Beloved, author Toni Morrison highlights the often-overlooked dimensions of slave life including the notion of love. For characters like Paul D, love means restraint as a way of coping through the hardships seen before him. For others like Baby Suggs it is used as a measure of freedom and individuality amidst slavery and being claimed as another’s property. By using these tactics of loving in a slave state, both Paul D and Baby Suggs, depict a spectrum in order to create the cautionary tale of Sethe’s love in which love to the point of being unrestrained can lead to destruction. It is through these boundaries and varying love that Morrison presents an overlooked element of American slave history with the complex emotion of love and how it was used or misused through her analysis of these characters.

            Through Paul D and another character Ella, a help for runaway slaves, they believe in a lack of love in order to protect themselves from a constant broken heart due to the sorrow and destruction brought on by slavery. Paul D initially tells Sethe to not love her children as much as she does since it is “risky” and tells her his solution: “to love just a little bit; everything just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one” (Morrison 54). Paul D wants to feel as numb as he can to any sort of connection to a loved one. As for Ella, when speaking to Sethe as they are escaping slavery, she too notes the dangers of loving more than a small amount, offering a similar solution like Paul D, “If anybody was to ask me I’d say, ‘Don’t love nothing’” (108). For both Ella and Paul D, to love is to risk one’s emotions, since most emotions such a love will be pushed far down leaving one to only feel pain and sorrow from the act of slavery they lived through. The white plantation owner’s had no sympathy for harsh treatment slaves had to endure known only as property and subordinate to whites. Morrison makes known to the reader that though looked back on in history as some of the darker days of America’s history, slavery had more underneath the surface besides the basic act itself. She gives notice to the emotions and tactics that slaves had to protect themselves from an internal pain of watching other slaves or loved ones fall victim to consequences of slavery from their owners.

            On the other end of the love spectrum, Baby Suggs acts as a counter to Paul D and Ella’s idea of how to deal with love. She urges for the freedom of individuality through love instead of slavery that claims ownership over another. When speaking to a crowd Baby Suggs preaches: “Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh”(103). She begins her speech with loving the most simplistic element of the body, the flesh; the element that visually is the skin or what is seen as color. From being pushed down by whites, she urges the African Americans to embrace themselves for the color they were born into. She furthers the speech to more than just the outward appearance of skin: “hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize”(104). Morrison uses Baby Suggs belief in love in an individualist sense to base it on the individual regardless of color or race. Love is made up through the eyes of one person alone, and to love others is to love oneself. She uses this sense of love in a free sense unlike the shackles she was contained in during slavery. For Baby Suggs, individualist love becomes her coping mechanism to use the emotion rather than restrain it like Paul D. She urges others to use it in an open way to give peace of mind and freedom though still in society they are technically not considered equals or as people for that matter.  

            Morrison establishes both Paul D and Baby Suggs love early in the novel to set up for the destructive love of Sethe. Paul D again tells Sethe that her love is too much, this time he does not call it “ risky” but tells her, “your love is too thick” (193). Paul D acts as a warning for Sethe so she can deal with love. Not taught to love or be a mother, Sethe is forced to learn on her own, a seemingly instinctive element as love and motherhood, she consumes her children with her entire self. Unlike Baby Suggs, who pushes others to love their individuality, Sethe only seems to love her children to unimaginable amounts, without restraint.  Sethe combats his claim by arguing: “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (194). For her, she believes there is only one kind of love: consuming love. But for each of the characters, it is also interesting to note that they all seem to have their measurements and ways of love, in terms of their experiences and without thinking of future consequences.