Exorcism and Gothic Supernaturalism in Beloved
“124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children” —
Beloved (1987) is widely considered to be a modern take on the traditional Gothic literature. The novel, being a Gothic piece of work, is also a social document on the practice of trans-Atlantic slave trade. This literary work is about an African-American slave woman, Sethe, whose murdered daughter’s ghost haunts the 124 house on the Bluestone Road, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Supernaturalism is an important feature of Gothic literature. Beloved follows the convention of supernaturalism with its fear and horror to drive the plot. The baby’s ghost becomes significant in invoking the fear and terror throughout the novel.
Gothic Fiction and the Supernatural Tradition
The allure of Gothic fiction comes from the suggestion of supernatural like ghosts, vampires, spirits and inanimate objects coming to life. One such important work in this tradition is Dracula (1897). In Beloved, the baby’s venom penetrated into every aspects of 124 on Bluestone Road along with its members.
“The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did… For a baby she wasn’t even two years old when she died… For a baby she throws a powerful spell”
The members in the house tolerated the rage and actions of the spirit because of the injustice that was taken place in its case. She was strangled to death by Sethe, in order to escape the slavery of the white schoolteacher.
Jerrold E. Hogle in the “Introduction” of the book The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction states:
“… a Gothic tale usually takes place (at least some of the time) in an antiquated or seemingly antiquated space—be it a castle, a foreign palace, an abbey, a vast prison, a subterranean crypt, a graveyard, a primeval frontier or island, a large old house or theatre, an aging city or urban underworld, a decaying storehouse, factory, laboratory, public building, or some new recreation of an older venue, such as an office with old filing cabinets, an over-worked spaceship, or a computer memory. Within this space, or a combination of such
Haunting Spaces and Psychological Trauma in Beloved
spaces, are hidden some secrets from the past (sometimes the recent past) that haunts the characters psychologically, physically, or otherwise at the main time of the story.”
Beloved’s setting is not an antiquated place but a house on the edge of Cincinnati, Sethe lived in the house for eighteen years with its ghost. Sethe, being a victim of slavery, she also tolerated the torture of the baby’s spite. Beloved begins with supernatural disturbance. Hogle shares his perspective on haunt supernatural disturbance that “these haunting can take many forms, but they frequently assume the features of ghosts, specters, or monster… to manifest unresolved crimes or conflicts.”
The murder of the eldest daughter of Sethe that took place when the schoolteacher encroached on the freedom of Sweet Home slaves, was the crime. As Jerrold Hogle state that some secret past is haunt the character psychologically and physically, so is the case with Sethe. Sethe killed her daughter to protect her from a gruesome life but the killing used to haunt her psychologically.
124 was haunted and Sethe’s two sons Howard and Buglar could not withstand the terror. They succumbed to its paranormal activities and ran away without bothering about their family.
Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered
Fear, Absence, and Collapse of Family Structure
it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard).”
The two boys became dreadful of the paranormal happenings and it seemed that the furious spite was taking its revenge from Sethe. The plight of Sethe is pathetic and gloomy—she becomes helpless in the face of circumstances. They treat The members treated the supernatural intrusion with either indifference and disdain. The atmosphere of the house always used to remain gloomy, disdainful and hopeless. When Paul D enters the house, he rebukes Sethe, saying:
“What kind of evil you got in here?”
Sethe, Denver and Baby Suggs were familiar with the invisible intruder but Paul D was a newcomer to the situation. As it is stated in the novel:
“Now he was trembling again but in the legs this time. It took him a while to realize that his legs were not shaking because of worry, but because the floorboards floorboards were and the grinding, showing floor was only part of it. The house itself was pitching.”
The incarnation of the ghost later makes things more complicated. The incarnation opens up a space, beyond chronological time convention, of moving back and forth between past and present, between facts and ideas. Beloved forces Paul D to get out of the house. Even as Paul D
Madness, Possession, and Gothic Horror
finds himself falling in love with Sethe, he feels inexplicably compelled to distance himself from her. Without knowing why, he stops sleeping in Sethe’s bed—moving first to a rocking chair for a few nights, then to Baby Suggs’s double bed, and then to the storeroom. Finally, he stops sleeping in the house completely and creates a meager nest for himself in the cold house behind the main house.
Madness is a common theme in the Gothic narratives, which creates suspense for the readers. It also explores aspects of human nature that cannot be easily understood. Beloved, in seeming madness, presents herself a dramatic figure of the devil. She carries insatiable desire for revenge on her mother. Beloved becomes a witch, a ghost, a devil, with her domination of things around her. Trudier Harris in his work “Beloved: Woman, Thy Name is Demon” explains Beloved and Sethe’s corporal relation this way, “Like a vampire feeding vicariously, she becomes plump in direct proportion to Sethe’s increasing gauntness. Vengeance is not the Lord’s; it is Beloved’s. Her very body becomes a manifestation of her desire for vengeance and of Sethe’s guilt.” Beloved creates difficulties for her mother Sethe. The possession of Sethe’s life by her daughter not only unveils one’s illogical emotion and desire but also reverses the mother-daughter relations.
Conclusion: Beloved as a Modern Gothic Novel
Beloved is a modern gothic novel where supernatural and paranormal activities, gloomy atmosphere, modern setting, fear and terror, madness and suffering are saturated in the work. There are no haunted castle, damsel in distress, an
anti-hero and a villain. However, the background of slavery and racism along with some of the gothic features make it a novel widely read as social document of slavery with gothic tinctures.