Beloved: Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Since she was a small child, Denver has enjoyed going to a growth of boxwood in the woods behind 124. The boxwood bushes grew together to form a kind of room, where Denver felt protected and often sought refuge. Once, when she was returning to 124 from the boxwood room, Denver saw Sethe through a bedroom window, praying. A white dress was kneeling next to Sethe, with its sleeve around her waist.

The dress embracing Sethe reminds Denver of the story of her own birth. As Sethe has told her, she was running away from Sweet Home while pregnant with Denver. She was in great pain and her legs and feet were swollen, but she was determined to get to her children (who had been sent ahead to Baby Suggs). As Sethe lay exhausted on the ground, she remembered bits of her childhood. She could barely recall her mother, but remembered dancing and singing. She thought she was going to die.

Then, she heard someone passing by. She feared that it would be a white man, but it turned out to be a friendly white woman named Amy. Amy was an indentured servant who was trying to get to Boston, where she could buy some velvet. Amy walked Sethe to a nearby abandoned house and massaged her swollen feet.

Thinking about the story of Amy, Denver enters 124 and tells Sethe about the dress she saw. She asks Sethe what she was praying for and Sethe responds that she was just thinking about time. Sethe tells Denver that some things stay with you and describes her ideas about “rememory.” According to Sethe, you can walk into someone else’s “rememory.” Denver asks if nothing ever really dies, and Sethe says that nothing does.

Denver asks Sethe about Sweet Home. Sethe tells her about Schoolteacher, who came to the plantation after Mr. Garner died. Schoolteacher would ask the slaves questions and write in his notebook, preparing for a book he was writing about them. Denver says that she thinks the incident with the dress means that the spirit of the baby has plans.

Paul D has moved into 124, disturbing the house’s arrangement that Denver had grown used to. Denver had learned to take pride in the haunting of their house, but now Paul D has scared the baby’s ghost away. Sethe thinks about Denver’s idea that the baby has plans. She reflects that she does not trust the future enough to make plans, but now, with Paul D, wonders if she might be able to plan a future.

Looking around one of the rooms of the house, Sethe notices that it is completely devoid of color except for two orange squares on one quilt. Sethe realizes that this was why Baby Suggs was “starved for color” shortly before her death, always asking for bits of colored cloth. The last color Sethe remembers is the pink from part of her dead child’s tombstone. But now that Paul D has moved in, Sethe is suddenly aware of how colorless the house is.

Paul D sings as he mends things around the house, but none of the songs he knows seem to fit the place. He thinks to himself that he cannot stay with any woman for more than two months at a time, but he feels that 124 is different. In order to survive his difficult life, Paul D has “shut down a generous portion of his head,” but now those parts of himself that he has shut off—emotions, feelings, hopes—are being opened again by Sethe and 124.

Paul D tells Sethe that he can look for work around 124 and she tells him that he can stay at the house. Paul D is hesitant, since Denver evidently does not want him to stay, but Sethe assures him that it’s okay and tells him not to worry about Denver. She says that Denver is “a charmed child” and credits Denver with the miraculous appearance of the white girl who helped her when she was fleeing Sweet Home and about to die. Sethe begins to think about a possible future with Paul D, but she is still preoccupied with protecting Denver and “keeping her from the past that was still waiting for her.”