“Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Forgotten and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.” (323, Morrison)
Beloved is clearly somewhere unfamiliar where no one cares to remember who or what she is. She is a long lost memory in the hearts and minds of those who tried to show her love; that especially of Sethe who tried to prove to her that she loved her and explained why she had to kill her from the hands of the slave masters.
Beloved was never satisfied at any point. The passage shows that Beloved is in a mental state of depression. Somewhere lost and deprived of love. This can also refer to “The Yellow WallPaper” wherein she needed love and attention and her husband thought she was sick. she was suffering, felt abandoned and alone. Perhaps suffering from postpartum depression. The similarities that Beloved showed which was loneliness, isolated and depressed and longed for love. Beloved seemed like a bad dream that noone wanted to remember. She tried to separate Sethe from everyone to have for herself. She was selfish. Now Beloved is a lost soul in the minds of who once was known.
The narrator describes the passage as sad as that of a ghost story, wherein Beloved who once was alive in human flesh, blood pumping true her veins is no more in the minds of her people. She is an illusion, a past memory, a fantasy. Clearly an outcome of aberration.
