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.
I still kinda think that she is undeniably the same soul as the baby ghost, simply because Denver seems to still know that she is the ghost and that she was the one who began to strangle Sethe. I do believe that she fits into this "Morrisonian Ghost" category that you talk about, where the dead can become the living again.
ReplyDeleteYou make some interesting points and I agree with the term "Moriisonian Ghost," if that is what she is. I don't really know where this book is going so for all we know it could be something else entirely. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteYou raise a very interesting question, which I myself have asked countless times while reading the novel. Originally I just accepted the supernatural aspect of Beloved's character and believed that she indeed must be a ghost. However, I came to question my stance on this topic, and for a while believed that Beloved was an actual living person, who was trying to take advantage of Sethe and ruin her life, as several towns people might have motive to do so. As I neared the ending I suppose I went back to my initial theory that Beloved is a ghost, but I am still a bit uneasy about the supernatural aspects to this book, in such a realistic context.
ReplyDeleteGood question. The connection between Beloved the baby and Beloved the woman continues to perplex me. Like I know that they are connected somehow but it doesn't make sense how the woman is the baby in a grown body. Maybe it's some kind of curse or something, who knows. But Beloved being connected to the baby somehow is what makes her fit into the family so well in my opinion. For Sethe, it may feel like her child is still there and may relieve any guilt she has. For Denver, she can finally form a bond with her older sister.
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