Beloved

Character Analysis

Where to begin?

Beloved is the sun, the moon, the stars… in other words, she's everything in this book. Without Beloved, the story would lack a core and a structure—without her, we have no plot. And to top it off, she's also the character that compels Denver and Sethe to face themselves. Kind of a biggie. Add the title to the mix, and you know this girl's a big deal.

The Name

It's a strange name, yes. It's also really morbid, considering its origin. Yep, it's the word that was engraved on her headstone, and it comes from that generic invocation of the funeral service prayer that you've probably heard before: "Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today…"

So wait, did Beloved go unnamed until her death? Or is Sethe, for whatever reason, just unwilling to use her real name?

If you really want to speculate about how Beloved gets her name, we have to take one other possibility into account. In Chapter 5, when Beloved first shows up at 124, she tells Paul D that her name is "Beloved." Hmmm. Is it possible that Beloved names herself?

What implications would that have?

Well, it's kind of up there up there with Ron Artest deciding to change his name to Metta World Peace. It's a self-empowering act that can fundamentally change how we view this enigmatic girl. How would you think differently of her if you knew she'd chosen her own name? Would she be stronger? Creepier? More mysterious?

Our Beloved Epigraph

Then there's the "Epigraph." And the onion is peeled even more. Let's take a look:

I will call them my people,
which were not my people;
and her beloved,
which was not beloved.
If those last two lines don't sum up the meaning of Beloved's name, we don't know what does. Why? (1) It's totally weird, contradictory, confusing, and mysterious. And (2) Beloved is literally Sethe's beloved, but she ends up not beloved—because, you know, Sethe kills her.

Beloved seems to personify the plight of the outcast in search of love and community. If the epigraph is all about how inclusive God's love is (check out "What's Up With the Epigraph?" for more on that), then the jury is still out on whether or not that kind of love is actually possible in Beloved's world.

After all, the girl's name is composed of two words—be and loved—which sort of sounds like a command, right? And why would being loved need to be a command unless love isn't all that natural to the little community of Cincinnati?

Historical Memory, Coming at You

So Beloved is there right from the epigraph, and she's sure still there in the ending. The ending of the novel is all about a lonely spirit wandering around the woods. Whoever Beloved is (a ghost? a runaway girl? a zombie?), if that is her running around in the woods behind 124, she's basically alone and—worse—forgotten.

All of which begs the question: how do we deal with the memory and story of Beloved? And looking at the bigger picture, how do we deal with other memories and stories as traumatic as Beloved's?

In the last chapter, we read the words "It was not a story to pass on" are repeated (and passed on) until they become "This was not a story to pass on" (28.274-275). Even if you don't want to pass a story on, something is getting passed on whether you like it or not—even if it's the command not to pass the story on.

And if you try to repress that story, well, it may just come back to haunt you. Just like Beloved.

Yowza.

Baby Ghost or Runaway Slave?

Who—or what¬—is Beloved? Well, that depends on who you ask. Most scholars will go ahead and say that Beloved is the dead baby ghost. After all, the narrator tells the story as if Beloved is a ghost come back from the dead. It's suspicious, for instance, that she seems to know about Sethe's diamond earrings, that she's so obsessed about seeing Sethe's face (8.75), and that she knows the song Sethe used to sing to her baby girl (19.176).

Plus, there's the way Beloved acts. For example, she walks around the house like she's sick, but she doesn't look sick (5.56); especially her skin, which is so smooth it's "like new" (5.50) (baby-skin new?). And we can't ignore the larger feel of the book. The story kind of loses its supernatural appeal if you think of Beloved as just a random runaway girl, right?

But that's exactly what some other scholars think: that Beloved is an amnesiac runaway on whom Sethe projects the identity of her dead baby girl.

What evidence do we have to support that theory? Well, we have the word of Stamp Paid. This guy tells Paul D that Beloved is the runaway girl who had been kept captive by a white man in a nearby house (25.235). Stamp's story doesn't explain everything, but it does just enough to lead us to doubt Sethe's belief that Beloved is her Beloved. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

And you know what? There's actually a third possibility, too. (And probably a fourth, fifth, sixth, and zillionth. This is Morrison, after all). Could it be that Beloved is that runaway girl who, once she finds herself at 124, gets possessed by the dead baby ghost? That idea allows us to combine the first two theories, and allows the book to retain its ultra-creepy factor. Win-win-win.

Out to Get Sethe?

It's pretty easy to think of Beloved as—at the very least—a hateful little thing. In the very first paragraph, 124 is described as a house that's "spiteful. Full of baby's venom" (1.1). If you buy the idea that Beloved is that baby ghost, then that makes her venomous and spiteful. Not the nicest descriptive words. Plus, she does seduce Paul D—again, she's not winning any points there.

But if Beloved wanted to exact revenge on Sethe through her seduction of Paul D, it fails pretty miserably. Not only does Paul D not leave 124 (that is, not until he hears about Sethe's past), Sethe doesn't even know what's going on. She's clueless about Beloved's whole seduction, even when Beloved looks pregnant at the end of the book.

Maybe, just maybe, Beloved wants to be Sethe. Maybe she goes after Paul D not because she wants him out of the way, but because she wants to be like Sethe.

Take a look at Chapter 22, which Beloved narrates. Here's what goes down in the first paragraph:

I am not separate from [Sethe] there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too (22.1).

"Her face is my own"? "I am not separate from her"? Talk about a lack of boundaries.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

But there's more to it than just that. For instance, how it's possible for Beloved to be "where [Sethe's] face is and to be looking at it too"?

Go stand in front of mirror. What do you see? You looking at you, right? Well, maybe that's what Beloved wants: to be in Sethe's place but in front of a mirror—Beloved looking at herself through Sethe.

You might be thinking, "Why would she want that? Why not just get her own mirror and look at herself?" Fair questions. But have you ever heard of little duckies "imprinting" on their mama ducks? The idea is that a baby duck will follow and imitate whoever it sees first. The mama duck leaves an "imprint" on the baby duck's brain of what a duck is all about. Maybe Beloved needs Sethe like a baby duck needs someone—preferably a mama duck—to model what it means to be a duck.

Too many ducks? Let's put it this way. Beloved wants what any infant or kid (or heck, even an adult) wants: a mother she can see as her mother; a mother who loves her enough to give her a head start on an identity and a place to belong to.

Is she asking for too much?