Baby Suggs, Hopeful

In Beloved, Morrison crafts a multitude of complex and interesting characters, almost all of whom struggle through intense oppression and grief throughout the novel. Baby Suggs certainly has her share of traumas to work through, but despite this she maintains a larger than life presence. Her work on the underground railroad as well as protecting Sethe and her children personally identify her as a larger-than-life beacon of hope. People's intense reverence and belief in her, from Halle's willingness to buy her out of slavery to her common suffix of "holy", further demonstrate her enigma-ness.  However, when Sethe does the unthinkable, Baby Suggs retreats - marking the loss of hope and the era of fear in 124. 

Baby Suggs work within the black community mark her as the human embodiment of hope. She ran 124 as a safehouse for escaping slaves - already instilling countless fugitive slaves with hope as they made it one stop further to freedom - and while there, served as a pseudo-preacher. In her Clearing, she called children to laugh, men to dance, and women to cry, allowing them to cope with their griefs and fears as fugitive slaves (103). She would tell the crowd that, "the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine" (103). She preached what was feasible, she gave them hope not through some divine god but through the autonomy of themselves, of the community, of humanity. She gave them hope they could actually use. 

Clearly, others had hope in her. Otherwise, she would not have been called "Baby Suggs, holy". More than this, Halle had great hope in his mother. She states that it was almost foolish for Halle to buy her out of slavery so late in her life, she had very few years left to live even if they were free. Why then, did Halle give up years of Sundays for Baby Suggs? He had hope in her. He had hope in freedom. Halle believed so firmly in the promise of a better life outside slavery that he was willing to give up what little freedom he had to give someone else full freedom. For Halle, Baby Suggs represented the hope of a better life, which is why he was willing to work so hard to get her out of Sweet Home. 

Once Sethe commits The Misery, Baby Suggs is no longer representative of people's hopes and dreams. She retreats into a room, searching aimlessly for her own hope by thinking through colors. 124 becomes barren, no longer the hotspot for hopeful runaways on the Underground Railroad. Halle never makes it to 124, never gets the freedom he believed in so hard and paid so much for. When she finally and truly dies, Sethe and Denver are left alone in the haunted house, with no hope of ever being accepted and loved again by society. 

Throughout the novel, Baby Suggs is a vessel and representation of various character's hopes. She is a manifestation of the hope the Underground Railroad brought to fugitive slaves, a proof of Halle's hope in a free life, and her retreat and death mark the point at which 124 lost all hope of being a normal and not frightful house. In Beloved, Baby Suggs truly earns the title 'Baby Suggs, Hopeful'.