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Space is a prominent feature in Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987/1988), and whether it is literal or figurative, it compels an allegorical appreciation as to how and what it signifies. For example, 124 Bluestone is unmistakably an architecture that reifies pastness and entrapment. Here, Sethe and Denver are locked in a persistent memory that refuses to set them free. The Clearing, the backyard over which 124 Bluestone overlooks, is, as its name suggests, a place of renewal. This is where Baby Suggs, Sethe's mother-in-law, encourages the black people to reacquaint themselves with their bodies that have been violated by slavery (88). There is the ironically named Sweet Home, a place which only evokes painful memories for those who once sojourned there. But the novel also references figurative space to speak of memories, emotions and sometimes ideology. Paul D' s heart, for example, is spatially configured as "a tobacco tin lodged in his chest" into which his traumatic memories are placed so that "nothing in this world could pry it open" (113). In this way, he protects himself from being overwhelmed by the perpetual loss (of identity, of family and friends) he experiences. Sethe sees memory as space filled with sorrow or gaps (which she calls "empty space" [95]). And finally, the whitefolk's fear of, and desire for, power over their slaves are metaphorized as a jungle of their own creation (198-99).
As much as space functions metaphorically in the narrative, it is also undeniable that space, especially place, is also a literal, material, and geographical reality which carries social and psychological significances. Criticisms of Beloved tend to ignore that 124 Bluestone, for example, is also a place where Sethe and her daughter live, and whose very presence as architecture refracts the two women's uncanny, and their hopes. To cite two recent examples: in "Haunted Houses, Sinking Ships" by Samira Kawash, apart from postulating that "the danger signaled by 'haunting' derives from the very structure of the house, not from some external element," the essay has actually very little to say about the house's materiality, and the way this materiality influences its dwellers. Instead, the house is read as a prison metaphor, which Kawash associates with the system of slavery (74). Similarly, despite J. Hillis Miller's innovative...