To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need-Bridges to Understanding in Toni Morrison's Beloved

College Literature, Fall 2005 by Coonradt, Nicole M

I will call them my people,

which are not my people;

and her beloved,

which was not beloved.

And it shall come to pass

in the place where it was said to them,

"You are not My people,"

there they shall be called

children of the living God. (Romans 9:25-26)

So writes the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans as he prophesies the Gentiles' acceptance, and so begins, in part, Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved (1988), a poignant, hopeful tale in which Morrison expands the boundries of the traditional slave narrative to explore the far-reaching damage of the institution of slavery and the promise of acceptance and healing. The fulfillment of this promise lies in bridging the gulf of racism that still exists between blacks and whites. Perhaps only then can all people, regardless of race, be loved and healed.

Throughout the text, Morrison presents healers who accept others and reach beyond self. Besides the title character, Morrison offers another beloved: Amy Denver, the often-ignored young white woman marginalized by society. In a novel about the evils of slavery where it would seem easy enough-and perhaps entirely logical-to draw a line of demarcation between black and white as between protagonist and antagonist, reader take care: in Morrison's artistic hands, nothing is ever quite what it appears at first glance. It may seem ironic, in a novel so obviously about the African slave experience, even to bother about a white girl whom Morrison directly devotes only about fifteen pages of the novel's 275, and to whom critics devote even fewer-indeed, to date, there are no scholarly studies exclusively focused on Amy Denver.1 In fact, she often is mentioned only in passing-in one instance, as a parenthetical aside (Krumholtz 1992, 399)-as if she is too insignificant even to warrant dismissal in the first place. Indeed, how can one dismiss what has not been noticed? This essay, however, takes up what has been passed over focusing on Amy Denver as significant and integral to the very telling of the story, for without her there would likely be no story.

Studying Amy Denver not as a minor character, but one of greater importance than heretofore accorded, this essay posits her as one of Morrison's "bridges" to deeper understanding in Beloved. Morrison employs her as a literary foil to various other characters in the novel-primarily Sethe-revealing Amy as an indentured servant, a prophetic healer, and a compassionate white woman who plays a crucial role in the very continuation of the story that clearly must be "passed on." As a "foil" is literally "a 'leaf of bright metal placed under a jewel to increase its brilliance" (Harmon 2000, 216), so the fair Amy contrasts sharply with the dark Sethe to highlight her distinctive characteristics. Through these contrasts, and combining Amy's three roles, Morrison reveals her essential function as a bridge between black and white, racism and understanding, destruction and renewal, for she too proves "beloved" if one identifies the meaning behind her name.

~and her beloved, which was not beloved~

In what the reader is told repeatedly is "not a story to pass on" (Morrison1988, 274-75), Morrison adeptly wields the instability of language, revealing the slipperiness of the sign, where "word-shapes" (99) vanish or splinter into symbolic fragmentation in attempts to recount the unspeakable (210-13), in no small part because language, we are told, has been appropriated by "the definers-not the defined" (190). Morrison establishes a richly subversive pattern of multiple significance where words act as both nouns and verbs and webs of hidden meaning abound. "Rememory"2 and "beloved," both central to the text, are just such words that signify both action and object. In light of this, it seems important to scrutinize Morrison's use of language all the more closely, including her seemingly benign use of "Amy." The etymology of this word reveals the striking fact that the name, from the Old French "Aimee," in use since the twelfth century, derives from the Latin amatus (loved), and literally means "beloved." Recognizing this, one must logically ask why Morrison named not one, but two characters Beloved. The answer to this question lies in exploring Amy's key role in the larger story of "beloved" characters-those broken souls who need love to heal-and subsequently, her role as bridge.

Besides the name "Amy," one can easily argue for the multiple meaning of the title Beloved, also the last word of the novel. As a noun, it tragically names the murdered "crawling already?" baby at a Christening that is also a funeral. It names the baby's ghost that returns in human form to haunt the inhabitants of "124"-the number that sequentially indicates the absence of the number "3" signifying that murdered and missing, third-born child. Perhaps most importantly, as critics have noted, beloved names the "Sixty Million and more" of Morrison's dedication-those Africans and their descendents killed by the inhumane institution of slavery-especially if we read it figuratively as an epitaph that marks their myriad unmarkable graves.3