In Beloved, the aforementioned character’s eyes denote their magical qualities. At moments it is as if her eyes are completely without whites and instead are entirely black. What is perhaps most interesting about this particular description is typically this is saved for demonic or evil characters. Often in horror movies that feature a demonic character, or more broadly, in films that have a magical component the villain’s grand reveal will be that their eyes are completely pitch black.
What does this mean in the case of Beloved? First, the obvious answer is that in some way she is not a force of good in the novel. That is not to say that she is potentially a great evil who has come to commit violent acts against Denver and Sethe. What is more likely, in my opinion, is that she represents tremendous pain. That the manifestation of her eyes is not because she herself is evil but instead that the evil of slavery has infected her. Thus, the reader is presented with an extremely interesting and somewhat subtle description of the true violence of slavery. As the horrific actions of the institution have literally filled Beloved up with evil. Have changed her eyes into a symbol which is one of pure unaltered evil.
Perhaps, then, the reader is left questioning how this evil relates to Sethe, and by extension Denver. It is in the destruction of natural bonds of love. Sethe should not be afraid to love her children, and yet the institution of slavery has taken what is typically a person’s first experience of love, that of their mother, and replaced it with coldness. This of course, in reference to slavery more broadly, as Sethe takes the risk of loving her own child. Thus, the evil that is represented in Beloved’s eyes in two-fold. First, it shows the psychical, obvious violence of slavery, but secondarily, it demonstrates the more subtle, less talked about, destruction of the family and bonds of kinship amongst those who are enslaved.
I absolutely loved this post, especially because the idea of eyes are so multi layered. While pitch black eyes often depict evil, its also so interesting because eyes can also depict pure goodness too. When people say they saw “purity in her eyes” or go into detail about how looking into someone’s eyes told them all that they needed to know about a person, it shows that eyes can also be a representation of someone’s soul. In other words, someones humanity. It’s so fascinating that Beloved’s eyes were sometimes completely black because it just shows that she is missing something human in her. This could be so many things that are inherent in the human experience, things like feeling a mother’s touch or even having your first words/understanding of words. These are things that Beloved never got to do, so it could also say something about her humanity just in her lack of human experience.