Biscuits and Beloved

Beloved.

Toni Morrison’s classic Beloved, sees former slave Sethe provide fractured memories that come rushing back after an unexpected reunion with Paul D, whom she hadn’t seen for almost 20 years. We only need to read the first chapter, to get a feel of the effect comfort food had on her. This reunion is the cause for the re-ignition of memories that she’d had buried deep for almost this time. The thing she chose to distract her from these memories, was comfort food: making biscuits. Southern biscuits are a simple, traditional food to make at home. This is especially true for black families, as these were some of the very few ingredients available to them. “Soul food has its roots in slavery, when African-Americans had to make do with whatever food was available to them. For the next 100 years after the abolition of slavery, many African-Americans continued to make use of cheaper ingredients.” (Jefferies,   ). This also helps explains the reason Sethe was able to make the biscuits without any measuring equipment- years of practice and repeating the exact recipe. She’s extremely delicate and careful, when using her hands as utensils. Whilst making the biscuits she is discussing getting her breast milk to her baby- something that she was prevented from doing, and the thing that was the most important to her. This was because it was the one thing she could provide her child that no other could, therefore the prevention of that was detaching the connection between the two. In her ‘Food Habits in a Southern Community’, Mary Douglas describes the preparation of the food “Biscuits and rolls are baked […] When questioned about why certain foods were prepared in certain ways, the study KKP’s would respond “that’s just the way it is done,” “that’s the way my mother taught me” or “that’s how my family likes it””(119). The distress of the unimaginable situation of having a child taken away causes her and Paul D to have this moment of intimacy. “And they took my milk!” (19). He grabs her breasts almost as a way of comforting her, as the discussion about being whipped when pregnant was not the forefront of her heightened emotions, it was the fact that she had to try and hide her breasts leaking with milk. The biscuits symbolise a way of Sethe finding comfort through emotional distress, baking was a natural way for her to distract herself from the memories that were flooding back to her.