Who is Beloved?
After completing the novel, I am still unsure about who Beloved really is. I’m pretty certain that she is not simply a woman who escaped slavery and coincidentally has the same name as the baby that Sethe killed. From what I can tell through Morrison’s writing, Beloved is more of a materialized otherworldly character. However, I am on the fence about Beloved’s true identity. Is she the manifestation of Beloved’s ghost or a sort of reincarnation of Sethe’s mother? There is evidence that Beloved is Sethe’s dead baby, such as Sethe’s urge to urinate as soon as Beloved first appears at 124, and the scar under her chin in the place where the baby was killed. Yet there is evidence that Beloved could instead be representative of Sethe’s mother. In chapter twenty two Beloved has knowledge of the passage from Africa to America that only Sethe’s mother would have, and then in chapter twenty six Beloved switches places with Sethe and takes on a motherly role. Either way, if she supposed to be Sethe’s baby or her mother, Morrison uses Beloved to portray that the people can never escape their past, especially Sethe who has constant “rememories” of hers.
3 responses so far
Interesting! I kind of feel like Beloved is both Sethe’s mother and daughter, and also neither of them at the same time. (So confusing, I know – I’m not entirely sure I understand what I’m thinking here!) I think Beloved is a manifestation of Sethe’s pain that presents itself as a ghostly figure to try and help her to overcome her own pain and understand her past, sometimes as her daughter and sometime as her mother (as you mentioned). However, I think what you said in your last sentence is the most crucial part of this for readers to understand: it doesn’t really matter who Beloved is because it is most important to note that she is the past, and the past cannot be escaped.
I honestly thought she wasn’t even an actual person. She seemed to me like some manifestation of what everyone repressed or aspired to have most at that point in time. She was the attention Denver craved, she opened the iron box thing for the guy and provided some sort of closure for Sethe. Maybe it’s reaching but nobody really saw her much other than the main cast, so that was kind of my take on it.
I kind of agree with that last comment. I think Beloved represents the horrors of slavery and one of the many hardships that slaves, more specifically slave mothers, faced at that time. Your point is also interesting that Beloved didn’t really have much interactions with anyone else. Maybe her presence is just another chilling manifestation for the people living in and interacting with the house.