Untold Story in the Law within Morrison's Beloved

Robert Ferguson speaks of 'untold stories in the law' (84); Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved contains both the untold stories in the law, as well as untold stories in history. Morrison uses each character in Beloved ' Sethe, Baby Suggs, Denver, Beloved, Paul D., etc. ' as a representation of the complex ideas of the collective strife, the collective oppression, suppression and repression, that each slave in some way personally encountered - ideas that law was specifically written not to allow either expression or documentation. Further, Morrison uses her novel to bring to the foreground discussion and awareness of the collective attitude of denial, inequality, and point the finger to us, society as a whole, as culprits in the crime of forgetting the memories the "Sixty Million and more" (dedication) slaves that never completed the journey to our shores.

In this paper I will answer the question, why does Morrison’s story succeed in telling what Ferguson calls an “untold story in the law”? This paper takes as its departure that Ferguson read alongside Morrison allows: (a) the significance of Ferguson to expand beyond that of the courtroom, into history and literature, and (b) the significance of Morrison’s novel to expand beyond that of fictional slave narrative, into a means to inspire social change through discussion of inequalities of the past and present, by belief that remembering the past is key to a colorblind future.

To answer the question of why Morrison’s story succeeds we must first accept Ferguson’s theory of courtroom storytelling. Ferguson’s theory states that the trial is built upon competitive storytelling, as such:

[T]he competition between stories gives high priority to timeliness in courtrooms storytelling. The most believable story, by definition, will tally with what competing lawyers are always searing for: a contemporary understanding. (86)

Ferguson’s theory continues to claim:

[T]he struggle of attorneys to find the best accounts for their clients turns courtrooms transcripts into excellent barometers of what is said and thought in a culture at any given moment of time… On the other hand, advocates also know that jurors must first recognize the developing contours of a story to accept it, and the perception makes them practical students of preexisting narrative forms. (87)

Once we accept Ferguson’s theory we can use it to extrapolate beyond the courtroom, to illuminate successful storytelling as a whole.

Using Ferguson’s criteria, in order for a story to be successful, a story must be told in a proper manner for its purpose; additionally, a story must consider every account of an event and been seen by its audience, readers in the case of a written story, as the most likely and the most compelling account of what occurred.