Eroticism and Familial Love in Beloved

Throughout Beloved, there is a distinct, though underlying, tension between eroticism and love. The relationships between characters, most notably between Beloved, Sethe, and Denver, reside on this tension—a residence that feels displaced. Consistently, eroticism overrides feminine and familial love and, further, complicates the experiences and relationships of the women in the novel. This distorted lack of boundary is reminiscent of a lack of solid identity, as the women are entirely, dangerously, and desperately dependent on each other for pleasure, connection, and control.

Denver’s desire for Beloved’s presence and attention is tightly interwoven throughout the storyline. She is dependent on her presence. When she fears that Beloved has disappeared, she falls into an erratic panic (122-123). Denver expresses that she feels more in control in the house with Beloved there (104). However, the dependence surpasses sisterly affection when Denver seems desperate for even Beloved’s physicality. She is consistently craving Beloved’s gaze, loving the feeling of being looked at by her. Even when Beloved is asleep, Denver is enamored by her: “Denver will turn toward her then, and if Beloved faces her, she will inhale deeply the sweet air from her mouth. If not, she will lean up and over her, every once in a while, to catch a sniff” (121). Breath and proximity fuel the eroticism in this scene, an intimacy that is pretending to be sisterly love. Denver has little expressed identity besides only this. 

Beloved’s love for Sethe is also distorted by erotic desire. Beloved is obsessed with Sethe. Her gaze is constantly on her, and she flourishes when she is near her. But, further, she demands the entirety of her attention. When Beloved returns to the noises of Sethe and Paul D having sex under the stairs, she leaves the house in fury, insinuating specifically sexual jealousy. (100-101) The scene in the Clearing only confirms the sexual undertone of the relationship. “Beloved watched the work her thumbs were doing and must have loved what she saw because she leaned over and kissed the tenderness under Sethe’s chin” (98). Even Sethe reacts to the inappropriateness of this gesture. The next line encompasses the distorted eroticism between the three of them: “They stayed that way for a while because neither Denver nor Sethe knew how not to: how to stop and not love the look or feel of the lips that kept on kissing” (98). These women need each other, desperately, as family, but their love had to retreat into eroticism. Even her name, “Beloved”, reveals her utter dependency on Sethe for mere existence.

Generational trauma is at the root of the distorted relationships between Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. The mother-daughter love between Sethe and Beloved was obliterated by the murder. Erotic connection seems like the only connection available when love is taken away. Further, Denver’s perverted obsession with Beloved can be linked to the murder, too: “So Denver took her mother’s milk right along with the blood of her sister” (152). The murder, a direct result of generational trauma that stemmed from slavery, destroyed the capacity for any of the women to be able to operate under normal terms of identity and relationship. They have been spun into something new. Morrison, in the lapse between eroticism and love in familial feminine relationships, exposes the implications that generational trauma stemming from slavery has on women—a collapse of boundaries and a distance from identity.