Is Beloved Really a Ghost?

I think no one can deny the incredibly obvious connection between Sethe's dead child and the mysterious character of the young women Beloved. From her baby-like smooth skin, to her age being comparable to what the age of the dead child would have been had she been alive. There is even a line explaining how after seeing her, Sethe has an urge to pee resembling her water-breaking. As Mr. Mitchell said, the birth imagery is simply undeniable.
          Because we as readers are given all this birth-imagery, we are able to draw connections between Beloved and the ghost of the house. However, the characters in the book are unable to make the same connections. To be fair, it makes sense when viewed from a non-reader perspective. For example, Beloved is nothing like a ghost. For one, she has a physical body, and has to walk (or shuffle) around like a normal person. While her voice, the way that she struggles to hold her head up, and the 3 marks on her forehead (which are noted to resemble baby hair, more birth imagery) may be weird, at the end of the day she isn't exactly a ghost. Or atleast, she doesn't exactly fit the depiction of a ghost that one might expect. Could she be classified as something different? Maybe a Morrisonian Ghost? Who knows? It has already been shown that Sethe and Denver feel an attraction to her for some reason, as well as Denver having suspicions of her supernatural abilities, so maybe she strikes a balance between normal living person and infantile poltergeist that makes her fit in so well.

Where is the Proto in Janie?

Something that struck me, as it must have struck most people were our first impressions of Janie as a character. For starters, Janie is the first female main character of any of the novels we've read in class so far. Besides that, she is seen in the first chapter taking harsh comments from the entirety of Eatonville in stride. If we thought she was strong then, she only appears stronger once we finish the book. Dealing with having to murder the love of your life as they try to do the same to you isn't something anyone can do. Along with surviving a hurricane and having to bury dead associates, you truly appreciate why Janie's overalls are dirty at the end of the book.

Earlier in class, we referred to Janie as a proto-feminist character. When regarding proto-feminism as the feminism before feminism, its not hard to see that this is true for Janie's character. Unlike most other female characters in literature at the time, Janie is the main focus of the entire book, with most if not all events being told more so through her perspective (its literally a frame narrative of Janie's experiences). Alongside this, she is shown being independent in and outside of her relationships, she doesn't match the clingy damsel-in-distress motif at all. Even though she spends the book looking for love, she doesn't let her marriages control or define her. Even at the end of the book, she retires to her room a wealthy, independent and content woman. She certainly is successful, but at the same time why is she considered proto-feminist?

I think that perhaps this is because she is a black character. Keep in mind that at the time the black and white feminist movements would be separate, with the white feminist movement being already much more established. Janie is only considered a proto-feminist character because she existed before the concept of strong black female leads, white feminism had already explored the strong female lead in books such as Mrs. Dalloway.