The novel opens with the line, "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom" (3). Over the next paragraph, we learn that 124 is a house number on Bluestone Road and that there is a baby's ghost in the house. The baby moves and breaks furniture, leaves hand prints, and creeps out neighbors. It does not bring harm to anyone, but it doesn't make life harder for Sethe and her family, especially because no one is willing to linger around the house or even spend time with the inhabitants. At this point in the novel, we have no idea why the baby has spite for Sethe, but it does.
When the baby comes back to the real world in the form of a girl named Beloved, she still has spite. Beloved does not express it for a long time because she is trying to hide who she is. However, when Sethe reveals that she knows who Beloved is, Beloved slowly becomes spiteful again. This is expressed in verbal and emotional abuse to Sethe, when she continuously accuses Sethe of not loving her and she constantly desires all of Sethe's food and energy and time. Sethe goes along with it because she feels the need to prove her love for Beloved. Beloved's spite slowly drains Sethe physically and emotionally.
I would argue that the other community members in Cincinnati also feel some spite toward Sethe. Ella, who seems to be one of the more influential women in Cincinnati, is not upset with Sethe for what she did to Beloved, for Ella herself did a similar thing, Ella is upset with Sethe for carrying herself proudly afterwards. Sethe has never shown any guilt, or even self-consciousness over what she has done. This irritates the other women in the community. They don't want to hurt or her like Beloved does, but they no longer spend time with her, and they speed up their carriages as they pass 124 Bluestone Road.
The spite towards Sethe seen in many of the characters in an important theme in the book. We do not see the spite as necessarily justifed all the time, because we are led to sympathize with Sethe throughout the novel.
Works Cited
"spite, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press,
December 2016. Web. 17 December 2016.
This is a really interesting analysis using the first sentence of the novel in comparison to the rest of the book. The word "spiteful" really fits your points.
ReplyDeleteI agree that part of the reason the reader sympathizes with Sethe so much is because she receives nothing but spite for an action that was, in her mind, done out of love. However, it doesn't effect Sethe much until she tries to explain to Paul D and Beloved, and the two people who Sethe thought would understand also give her nothing but spite.
ReplyDeleteI think Ella and the other women in town despises Sethe because they think she hasn't gotten the repercussion of her actions, she doesn't get enough spite to counterbalance what she did, until the ghost shows up as Beloved to physically cause her misery. That's when Ella tells herself that Sethe has had enough, that she deserves help now.
ReplyDeleteThere was definitely a lot of spite in Beloved; I think spite is one of those 'lingering' negative emotions that hangs around for much longer than it probably healthily should, which plays into this idea of a ghost haunting a place.
ReplyDeleteIn general, this very poor community has a very oddly spiteful vibe going on, which I think feeds from their horrible life circumstances, among other things. I think I remember the part where Baby's neighbors don't warn her about the slave catchers approaching because they're spiteful she was so generous with her feast best, because it never made sense to me.