Amy Denver Effect / Affect

Amy Denver Effect / Affect of the Life

Amy Denver is a minor and vaguely sketched character in Toni Morrison's Beloved, but nevertheless, a character who plays a crucial role in the novel. Thus, the episode in which Amy appears in one of great significance: it recounts Sethe's flight from Sweet Home, therefore the beginning of her quest for freedom. Amy is also very important because she is the one who helps Sethe give birth to Denver, the girl who is part of Sethe's present and who, alongside with Beloved's ghost, is one of the symbols of motherhood in the book.

Thus, there are two major interpretations available for the Amy Denver episode in Beloved: one is related to the striking religious symbols that appear in this scene, and the other with the glimpses we are given of an interracial relationship between two fugitives: the black slave runaway and the white runaway girl, who goes to Boston in what may seem a trivial quest, as compared to that of Sethe- to buy red velvet-, but which is symbolic in its turn.

In the first place, the scene which describes the birth of a black child in the middle of a wilderness, in a Kentucky forest, is replete with mythological and Christian symbols. Critical opinion is ambivalent when it comes to pinpointing the exact significance of the fugitive relationship that establishes between the black and the white woman who in the end deliver the baby.

Thus, according to some of the critics the episode is intensely religious and Amy Denver functions as a Good Samaritan figure, who helps Sethe delivering her baby unconditionally and selflessly, and who moreover, performs a series of ritualistic gestures which are clearly Biblical allusions. One of these gestures is the massaging of Sethe's swollen and travel-worn feet, which is an obvious hint to the Biblical ritual of humiliation and charity- the washing of the feet. It is significant that in the Bible, one of the best known scene which illustrates this ritual is that between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and in which, the washing of the feet is associated with the forgiveness of sins.

This symbol and the even more striking one of the tree shape that the whippings of the white boys have left on Sethe's back, and which recalls the symbol of the cross, form the context that led the critics to interpret the Amy Denver episode as one hinting to the sin of slavery, in which Sethe acts like a Christ figure who has to bear the cross, while Amy Denver is the Good Samaritan or as a healer who helps Sethe in a symbolic feat: the birth of the baby.

The passage which describes the two women lying by the river seems indeed to support this Biblical interpretation of the text:

On a riverbank in the cool of a summer evening two women struggled under a shower of silvery blue. They never expected to see each other again in this world and at the moment couldn't care less. But there on a summer night surrounded by bluefern they did something together appropriately and well. A pateroller passing would have sniggered to see two throw-away people, two lawless outlaws -- a slave and a barefoot whitewoman with unpinned hair -- wrapping a tenminute-old baby in the rags they wore. But no pateroller came and no preacher. The water sucked and swallowed itself beneath them. There was nothing to disturb them at their work. So they did it appropriately and well." (Morrison, 84-85)

The way the passage presents the short-lived union between the two women seems to imply a feat that has a religious character through the idea that what they did was "good work," that is a good feat, an almost heroic one. This is why Amy Denver's role has been interpreted by some critics like Carolyn Mitchell in her study " I Love to Tell the Story": Biblical Revisions in Beloved who saw the white girl as having a parallel, Christ -like role, alongside with that of Sethe:

Amy Denver is Christ, too; like Sethe, her life is not an emulation, but an embodiment of his. She is the Good Samaritan whose attention to the victim robbed and abandoned by the roadside earned him a place in biblical history. Amy does not falter when called to aid and abet a fugitive slave, or touch a mutilated black woman, or bring new black life into the world. She drags Sethe back to life, using spider-webs to ease her back, massaging circulation into her damaged feet, and delivering her baby. Proactive Christianity provides the tension that undercuts passive emulation and dissimulation. Amy's religion is eminently present, representing her sense of urgency and agency. Sethe owes her life to Amy, who is irreversibly linked to black life, both through her own suffering and through her surname, Denver, which the grateful Sethe gives to her newborn daughter. " (Iyasere, 179)

The commentaries made by Amy Denver are also very significant: first, her call on Jesus: " Come here Jesus" when she looks at the tree on Sethe's back is what suggests the parallel between Sethe's tree shaped mark and the cross that Jesus had to wear. Also, her naive commentary "what God had in mind I wonder," is a very deep question which speaks of the inhumanity and injustice of slavery, and moreover, can be seen as a question that indicates the tree is a message from God to all those who are oppressors and who behave inhumanely.

Your back got a whole tree on it. In bloom. What God have in mind, I wonder. I had me some whippings, but I don't remember nothing like this. Mr. Buddy had a right evil hand too. Whip you for looking at him straight.' (Morrison, 79)

As it can be seen, the white girl is a victim, just like Sethe, and this is why she can be seen as Christ-like figure herself.

On the other hand, other critics have brought a somewhat opposed view to the one discussed above, in which the Amy Denver episode is seen as cross racial encounter, but which also lays emphasis on the style Morrison uses for the scene, and which is definitely not an idealizing one for neither of the characters. It is significant that Amy Denver is seen here as a re-embodiment of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Sethe, respectively as the Jim figure. A very significant clue for this is that the little white girl appears on the scene in search of huckleberries, which is an obvious hint to the name of Mark Twain's character.