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Then—a sudden sickness, a reverse nausea, the sickness of something good and necessary going out.
Beloved, however, is a full-on ghost story from top to bottom. Morrison centers the story on the title character, the ghost of a deceased girl called Beloved, in order to explore the effects of trauma. It is a fictionalized reimagining of the life of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who, in 1856, attempted to escape her northern Kentucky slaveholder, along with her children, husband, and in-laws. The family crossed the frozen Ohio River into Cincinnati, where they were ambushed and recaptured. Because Garner believed that death was preferable to slavery, she tried to kill her children, and succeeded in slaying one of them.
Monster, She Wrote
Lisa Kröger, Melanie R. Anderson
Morrison is also no stranger to the supernatural. Several of her novels, including Song of Solomon (1977), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997), Love (2003), and Home (2012), feature ghosts of the past. Her play Desdemona (Oberon Books, 2011) focuses on the ghost of Shakespeare’s character, giving her a voice (finally!) to explore what went wrong in her relationship with Othello; in letting this character speak, Morrison calls attention to the issues of race and class that Shakespeare glossed over in his play.
Monster, She Wrote
Lisa Kröger, Melanie R. Anderson
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