This scene is one of intense symbolism. Beloved, the
mysterious girl sitting on the stump, provides a connection for Sethe to the older
woman's dead daughter, who she killed in an attempt to protect them from a cruel master.
Sethe, in her inner soul, believes Beloved to be a reincarnation or a ghost of that dead
daughter. In the scene, seeing Beloved sitting on the stump causes Sethe to develop a
sudden need to urinate:
Not since she was a baby girl... had she had an
emergency that unmanageable. She never made it to the outhouse. Rigt in front of its
door she had to lift her skirts, and the water she voided was endless... there was no
stopping water breaking from a breaking womb and there was no stopping
now.
(Morrison, Beloved, Google
Books)
The moment echoes the
breaking of amniotic sac that protects a baby during gestation. When a woman's "water
breaks," the amniotic fluid that surrounds and protects the baby begins to flow out of
the vagina; this is often misrepresented as a sudden and fast gush of fluid, but is
often a slower seepage, easily controlled. For Sethe, the sudden need to urinate is
symbolic for going into labor again; Beloved is "born" in this moment, and Sethe's body
unconsciously repeats some of the physical characteristics of labor and birth. In fact,
is is passing ordinary urine, but her mind and body associate the act and the appearance
of Beloved with birth, further connecting the two women.
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