At the end of Toni Morrison's Beloved, it is unclear as to whether or not Sethe has actually forgiven herself for killing her daughter. It is evident that she knows she did something wrong, and that she wants forgiveness. The fact that others have forgiven her shows that what she has done is forgivable. Sethe is fully capable of reaching complete forgiveness because she had to have realized that she did something wrong, and others have forgiven her for her actions. A person needs to understand what they did wrong in order to forgive him/herself. It there is no notion of wrongdoing, then why would that person need forgiveness? Sethe knew she did something wrong right after she killed her daughter in the shed when four white men came running onto her property. "Glancing at the baby he was holding, [she] made a low sound in her throat as though she'd made a mistake, left the salt out of the bread or something"" (160). But she did not want to admit to what she did as such a bad thing right away. Sethe would say, "I took and put my babies where they'd be safe " (172). .
Sethe has to have known she did something wrong from the actions of those around her. Although Sethe acts as if she did not already notice, Denver makes it very clear to her that, "Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by, " (15). Sethe tries to persuade her and Paul D that people are scared of the house. But Denver made it quite obvious that "It's not the House. It's us! And it's you! " (15). This is a great example of how Sethe at first tried to deny she did anything wrong. If Sethe was still continuing to deny her misconduct, there were many other signs of her family's disapproval. Her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, "began to collapse twenty-eight days after her daughter-in-law arrived, " at the same time Sethe killed her crawling-already? Baby (94). Baby Suggs just gave up. This is when what she had done really hit Sethe. "Sethe blamed herself for Baby Suggs' collapse " (95).
