Baby Suggs and the Clearing Critical Lens

“Cry, she told them. For the living and the dead. Just cry. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried, children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath…Here, she said, in this here place, we flesh; that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard”(103).

In this passage, Sethe is thinking about the times when Baby Suggs would gather people in the clearing and join as a community. She would shout and sing inspirational words, and as Sethe is reminiscing about this she thinks about Baby Suggs’s words, when she feels more alone then ever.

This passage has great significance because as a community these former slaves and their children are owning their pain, and in a way celebrating it, and celebrating the fact that they are not just free physically, but they can now start to grieve their pain and let it out. A reoccuring theme throughout the book is suppressing past experiences and trauma won’t undo any of the horrific actions that happened, which is something that Sethe and Paul D struggle with throughout the book. This passage illustrates as a community, African Americans owning their issues and not letting it haunt them anymore.

When they are in the clearing and Morrison describes, “men sat down and cried, children, danced, women laughed.” This is a very powerful statement in many ways. The ways blacks were treated were so dehumanizing, and this signifies one of the most human things possible, emotion. After being “owned” by someone and finally being free, this illustrates such an empowering moment. Baby Suggs is saying that they should own their own emotions and not what happened to them control them, and let their emotion be free. Being held as a slave is so demeaning, and this reminds everyone as a community that they are human, they are free, and they should celebrate the overcoming adversity. For the most part, Beloved is a very dark story showing the experiences and the severe outcomes that slavery caused on millions of African Americans. But in this passage, it is uplifting and is showing African Americans as overcoming slavery, and facing it.