ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the house at 124 Bluestone Road in Morrison’s novel Beloved as three qualitatively different places, namely, the place of the haunting, the place of (un)spokenness, and the place of Beloved’s disappearance. The analysis shows that an idea of co-constitution, or joining, runs through these textual places. The house is written as co-constituted with Beloved, but also with its former inhabitants, and places of the past become part of the place in the present. In the lyrical passages, geographically distant places are conjoined. (Un)spoken telling becomes part of the house at the same time as places—Africa, the cargo hold of a slave ship, the Atlantic Ocean, and the creek in Cincinnati—are conjoined in the telling. Interplaces—passageways and places in-between—are imperative in the writing of Beloved’s disappearance. Here, the idea of joining is prominent both thematically and textually: despite her disappearance through rupture, Beloved is still part of the place. The exploration of Morrison’s manuscripts, furthermore, suggests that the notion of joining was an aesthetic feature part of the writing process, a textual leitmotif tying the text and its places together.
