71 pages • 2-hour read
Beloved
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Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
After Sethe learns the devastating news that Halle witnessed her sexual assault and disappeared following the traumatic sight, she leads Denver and Beloved to a place in the woods called the Clearing where Grandma Baby Suggs used to preach. As they make their way there, Sethe recalls the events following her giving birth on the run and Amy’s departure. She came across some Black men by the Ohio River, one of whom was named Stamp Paid, who gave her safe passage to the other side. There, she met a black woman named Ella. Ella explained that Stamp Paid left open a sty door as a sign that a fugitive enslaved person needed passage. He also tied a white rag on the post to indicate that Sethe was traveling with a newborn child. Ella came prepared with food and sustenance for Sethe and her newborn because of Stamp Paid’s signal. When Sethe finally arrived at Grandma Baby Suggs’s house, they embraced. Grandma Baby Suggs soaked Sethe’s feet and tended to the wounds on her back. Grandma Baby Suggs had made a life for herself as a preacher who spoke about Black people loving themselves after slavery. However, a month after Sethe’s arrival and shortly after Beloved’s murder, Baby Suggs came to believe her sermons were all a lie. Before she passed away, she said, “There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks” (105).
At the Clearing, Sethe remembers Grandma Baby Suggs’s tender hands massaging her neck. She feels the sensation of hands touching her neck and mistakes it for Grandma Baby Suggs’s presence. Suddenly the hands choke Sethe. Denver and Beloved intervene but not before Sethe’s neck is covered in bruises. Beloved touches Sethe’s neck gently and kisses her face, which soothes Sethe until the smell of breastmilk on Beloved’s breath alarms her. Sethe leads the way back to 124, craving intimacy with Paul D.
Denver accuses Beloved of choking Sethe, confused as to why she would do so after professing to love their mother. Beloved responds, “I fixed it, didn’t I? Didn’t I fix her neck?” (119). She runs away from Denver. Suddenly alone, Denver remembers taking writing and reading lessons with Lady Jones. She loved those classes until one day, a boy named Nelson Lord said to her, “Didn’t your mother get locked away for murder? Wasn’t you in there with her when she went?” (123). Denver was afraid to ask her mother these questions and stopped going to the classes out of shame. Two years later, Denver first heard the baby ghost.
Back at the Clearing, Denver attempts to find Beloved to seek forgiveness. She finds Beloved lowering her dress into the water, as two turtles mate nearby.
Chapter 10 Summary
After Sethe ran away from Sweet Home, the schoolteacher sold Paul D to a man named Brandywine. Paul D tried to kill his new master and was sent to a prison farm where he was bound with 45 other Black men as part of a chain gang in Alfred, Georgia. The men were forced to sleep behind bars in small quarters underground, still chained to one another. Every day, they woke up to the sound of a rifle shot and were forced to work in the quarry. The white guards would torture the prisoners, often forcing the prisoners to perform oral sex on them or be shot to death. When Paul D thought he might be next, he vomited.
At one point, it rained for days, and the underground quarters were flooding. Hi Man, the leader of the chain gang, yanked their chain, alerting the others to the flood. Each member of the chain gang passed the message to the next person by yanking the chain. Hi Man gave the signal to dive under the bars when the water loosened the dirt and permitted them to swim to freedom. The men worked together by signaling one another through their connected chain to survive. When the 46 men reached the surface, they eventually came across some Cherokee who helped cut them out of their chains and offered them food. One of the Cherokees gave them the advice to “follow the tree flowers” (132) that blossomed after the rain. The flowers would lead them to freedom. The men parted ways, with Paul D the last of the escaped prisoners to leave the Cherokee camp. Eventually Paul D arrived in Delaware, where he stayed with a woman who passed him off as her nephew. When he was finally able to move again, he made his way to Ohio where he found Sethe at 124.
Chapter 11 Summary
Despite his growing intimacy with Sethe, Paul D begins to fall asleep in places that are not her bed. At first, he falls asleep on a rocker by the stove. Then he starts to sleep in Grandma Baby Suggs’s bed. He does not know why he is compelled to sleep elsewhere but feels that “the moving was involuntary” (136). He suspects that Beloved’s growing attractiveness has to do with his agitation at night. He tries to avoid this lust by having sex with Sethe every day, but his nighttime unrest persists. Paul D begins sleeping in the shed. Beloved finds him there one night and tries to have sex with him. She tells him, “I want you to touch me on the inside part,” and “Call me by my name” (137). He agrees to call her by her name if she agrees to leave. However, when he does utter the name Beloved, she remains unmoved. Eventually he gives in, and they have sex. While they are having sex, Paul D repeatedly chants, “Red heart” (138)—a reference to the recurring imagery of “that tobacco tin buried in [Paul’s] chest where a red heart used to be” (86). As his words get louder, Denver overhears.
Chapter 12 Summary
Aware of Paul D and Beloved’s sexual intimacy, Denver stays silent, trying her best to keep Beloved from causing further trouble at the house. She keeps Beloved busy by accompanying her through her daily tasks. One day Denver and Beloved go to the shed to get some cider. The door closes, and Beloved playfully hides in the darkness for so long that Denver believes that she is gone permanently. As Denver begins to cry, Beloved appears again. When Denver expresses her fear that Beloved had returned to where she came from, Beloved points to the cracks of sunlight spilling into the shed and says that she is like those cracks of light. Suddenly she stands up and declares that she sees “her face” (146) in the darkness. When Denver asks whose face she sees, Beloved responds that it is her own.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
While Beloved’s presence has been benign so far, her first act of physical violence toward Sethe at the Clearing foreshadows the future violence. At the Clearing, Sethe seeks the tender presence of her mother-in-law, Grandma Baby Suggs, remembering the way she would rub her neck. Beloved takes advantage of Sethe’s moment of vulnerability to strangle her, leading Sethe to believe that the spirit of Grandma Baby Suggs is responsible. However, as Sethe is unaccustomed to divorcing tenderness and violence given her past experiences, she copes by brushing aside the attack and having sexual relations with Paul D instead.
As Paul D’s presence poses a threat to Beloved’s relationship with Sethe, Beloved hurts him next by seducing him in the cruelest manner. After coaxing him into the shed at night, she “hoist[s] her skirts and turn[s] her head over her shoulder” (137), backing into him like the cows that Paul D and the other Sweet Home men would take their sexual frustration out on. Reminding him of his past, she amplifies her harm by compelling him to call out her name, which doubles as an intimate expression. As they are in the throes of intimacy, Paul D chants, “Red heart” (138), a sign of his lost vitality newly rediscovered through an act of sexual betrayal against Sethe.
Beloved’s increasingly worrisome behavior takes a toll on Denver as well. As the only one who knows Beloved’s identity, Denver conceals it from Sethe and Paul D, believing that her dead sister is the one who needs protection. However, after watching Beloved choke her mother, Denver is torn between Beloved’s dangerous behavior and the knowledge of her mother’s violent past. While her allegiance to Beloved is certain from the beginning, Denver has started playing a mediator role to keep Beloved’s dangerous behavior at bay. She becomes a “strategist” (142) who tries to predict Beloved’s mood swings and provide distractions so that she does not harm Sethe. Through this process, she transforms from an “indolent, resentful” girl to a “spry, executing” (142) grown woman who becomes increasingly capable of taking care of others.
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