Character Analysis
Lemony Snicket dedicates The Bad Beginning to a mysterious lady named Beatrice.
To Beatrice—
dearest, darling, dead.
Later, he mentions that he has "a blurry photograph, taken a very long time ago, of a woman whose name is Beatrice" (11.4) in his bedroom. You can find out more about Beatrice in future books (each story in the series is dedicated to her), but for our purposes, Beatrice is functioning as a bit of a muse for the author. She is his inspiration, the one he loved that got away—and then died. So sad.
Her name is a play on the Beatrice that led Dante through The Paradiso. That Beatrice was also beloved by the poet, but died very young and tragically. We're guessing this Beatrice follows the same path, but it's just a hunch at this point.