In Beloved by Toni Morrison there is a chapter about Baby Suggs' and her slavery experience. In this chapter, she narrates the horrors of the plantation she worked at before getting to Sweet Home. Morrison paints the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Garner, as "good" slave owners. They don't abuse their slaves, they make them work but not too hard, and Mr. Garner even allows Halle to buy his mother's freedom.
I am struggling to see why Toni Morrison made them out to seem like such heroes. If she's acknowledging that not all slave experiences were gross violations of humanity it largely down plays the violations of slavery as an institution. I believe her argument to be that the Garners were bad because they owned slaves but did not abuse them for the benefit of their own. They were "good" slave masters so that it would reflect on them negatively as people. But I feel like this is a largely missed point. Readers, like the Garners, are able to say that they are such nice and humane slave owners but completely omit the fact that the Garners owning slaves makes them wrong, because everything about the institution of slavery is flawed.
So long story short, the Garners can not be considered good people, not even conditionally, they are still slave owners which automatically taints their character.
I think that it's hard to discuss this entirely right now (unless you've read the whole book) because at least only having read part one it's completely possible that new information about Sweet Home, and therefore the Garners, will make them more complex characters, including giving them bad sides (besides what we already can infer from their owning slaves.)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, in my opinion, it's still true that there were comparatively-less-bad slave owners, and I don't see the problem with writing those kinds of people. If stories like Baby Suggs' existed, I think it's fine to write them. People can choose to interpret stories however they like, and if they choose to twist them into something racist like justifying slavery, that's on them, not the author.
I guess I do agree to an extent that authors have a responsibility to show what may seem to be presented in their books (the idea that the Garners are "good" slave owners) are flawed. I'm just not sure that Beloved is particularly wrong to have that portrayal of Baby Suggs' story.