Literary horror doesn’t equate to horrific

Literary horror is sort of just highbrow horror and horror is more or less a narrative that attempts to horrify, terrify, disgust, etc to tell its story along with using “horror” elements (ghosts, werewolves, spooky houses).

Fear is subjective. What horrifies, terrifies, or disgusts me might not horrify, terrify, or disgust you. I’m sure there are people that find this book super scary and others that don’t. Neither of those things on their own mean it is or isn’t horror.

This also means that just because something is a horrific topic doesn’t mean it’s horror. There are plenty of books about awful, terrible topics that aren’t horror.

Beloved, in my opinion, gets classified as literary horror because it is essentially a ghost story and a haunted house story. It uses that framework to tell its story. Her work, especially Beloved, also seems to have some gothic elements. To me, I consider Beloved to be a masterful example of the American gothic and, because I have a pretty broad definition of the horror genre, I also consider it to be a horror novel.

There will be plenty of people that have a much stricter definition or a different understanding of the topic that will disagree with me. It’s one of those books that is hard to shove into one specific genre. Either way, Toni Morrison was an absolute genius!

I think the only ones who consider the book “horrific” are the ones trying to ban the book (and often they haven’t read the book, they’ve just heard right wing messaging about the book).

Great analysis

I think there are some pretty horrific discriptions plus the whole stream of consciousness entering the mind of the main characters is hard to experience. Overall 10/10 book one of the greatest ever written.

I disagree, and it's one of my favorite novels. That book is horrific because it's trying to convey the horrors of slavery and the thorny and fraught nature of escape. They've managed to free themselves of the physical shackles that bound them, but the psychic horrors remain with them, and likely will for generations to come. Beloved was born outside slavery, but the spectre of being sent back there killed her, and she literally embodies the lingering history of her family's trauma. It's uncomfortable and it should be uncomfortable, and to me that's why it's horror.

>!Infanticide!< is a very taboo topic and the whole book is steeped in the psychological implications of it. I think many people find that concept to be so distressing that they have a hard time engaging with a whole novel about it.

Yeah, the entire scene where that taboo is shown is very disturbing, and the themes around it and how it ties to real world oppressions and the ghost story quality of it definitely make it a horror book imo.