Toni Morrison's Beloved offers a compelling look at the lives of former slaves during the Reconstruction era and the weight of a past they desperately try to reconcile. Sethe, a former slave, is the protagonist of Morrison's study. For her, memories of her life as a slave on the Sweet Home plantation are inescapable. His devotion to his children is unquestionable. Her love and commitment to protecting her children is so deep that she, unwilling to abandon them to the physical, sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of slavery, attempts to kill them. This single act haunts Sethe (literally and figuratively) for the rest of her life. Baby Suggs, Sethe's "mother-in-law", a spiritual woman who preaches to the black community, is also affected by Sethe's actions. Sethe and Baby Suggs are both mothers and former slaves. Both women were negatively affected by their experiences of slavery. Those experiences, for these two very different mothers, influenced the relationship between them and their children. Beloved opens in Cincinnati, Ohio. The year is 1873. Sethe, her daughter Denver, and Baby Suggs have lived there for 18 years. Sethe tries her best not to remember her past life. His most painful memories take place at Sweet Home. The owners of Sweet Home were a childless couple named Mr. and Mrs. Garner. The Garners were, as far as plantation owners were concerned, benevolent. Sethe, unlike most slaves, had had some level of personal control while at Sweet Home. She had the ability to select a husband from at least 5 slaves on the plantation. She was able to choose “despite the fact that each [of the slaves] would beat the others to have her” (Morrison, 12...... middle of the paper...... something happened to her and [she ] can't say it to your face” (Morrison, 72). The stigma haunted Sethe throughout her life. She remembered witnessing the mass killing of slaves on her way to Sweet Home. She believed, as a 9-year-old. one of the burnt bodies that were hanging had the mark that her mother had shown her (Morrison, 73) Sethe remained imprinted and, in my opinion, caused her to associate motherhood with death. The events surrounding Sethe's birth are described to her by Old Nan, a slave who came to America on the ship with Sethe's mother, who tells Sethe how the two women were repeatedly raped on the ship but that her mother "threw away" (Morrison, 73) the children of the white sailors but he kept Sethe because she had a black father. This is where we see the first acts of infanticide. They won't be the last.