Character Analysis
Molly Beauchamp is the central female character in Go Down, Moses, and the most positively portrayed: she's loving, selfless, spiritual and persistent. But if we look closely at Molly, she's nevertheless a somewhat passive character who responds to situations created by the male characters around her rather than actively shaping her own destiny.
Her description as a spiritually attuned selfless mother figure, and an African American "mammy" to Roth, borders on stereotype. Besides, the narrators of the stories she's in never show the events from her perspective. So we never know what she's really thinking. She only takes a serious stand twice in the stories, but when she does, people listen.
The Only Mother He Ever Knew
As a new mother, Molly nurses and raises not only her own son but also her white landowner Zack Edmonds's son Roth after his mother dies in childbirth. She becomes the object of contention between her husband Lucas and Zack Edmonds when Lucas gets jealous of the fact that she lives with Zack for six months while nursing the two babies.
The issue gets resolved (violently) and she remains a loving foster-mother, who
"[…] had surrounded [Roth] always with care for his physical body and for his spirit too, teaching him his manners, behavior--to be gentle with his inferiors, honorable with his equals, generous to the weak and considerate of the aged, courteous, truthful and brave to all--who had given him, motherless, without stint or expectation of reward that constant and abiding devotion and love which existed nowhere else in this world for him [...]" (2.3.1.66).
For all her selfless efforts, she later gets monthly visits from Roth in his adulthood, not really out of love or even conscience, but as "a libation to his luck" (2.3.1.1). Roth really feels no emotional attachment to her as an adult despite what she's given him.
Sold My Benjamin
Much later in life, Molly raises her grandson Samuel Beauchamp with the same devotion. Her grandson, however, steals from the commissary when he's nineteen and Roth kicks him off the plantation. He's not heard from for five years.
On the eve of Samuel's execution for murder way up in Illinois, Molly senses he's in trouble and demands that the district attorney track him down. She does everything in her power to give him a proper funeral and burial in their hometown. In her old age, Molly is still the same selfless mother figure she was in her youth.
What's She Thinking?
Want to know what Molly thinks? Nope, you can't. For all of Molly's importance as the central female character in Go Down, Moses, the narrator never gives us direct access to her thoughts. Maybe that's why she can surprise us.
We see how, after years of being an obedient wife, she decides she can't tolerate Lucas's obsession with treasure-hunting. She goes to Roth Edmonds and insists she wants a divorce, and Roth proceeds to arrange it. She's afraid Lucas will find the treasure and that it will bring sin into the house. In an effort to teach her husband a lesson, this tiny woman goes off with the heavy metal-detector herself and nearly dies in the trying.
As an elderly, frail woman, she walks miles into town in the scorching heat to ask the district attorney to find her grandson Samuel, whom she imagines has met some terrible fate. The imagery in both these scenes is similar: she approaches a man in every way her "superior" and he does as he's told.
Molly's Timeline
- Molly and her brother Hamp are born on the Worsham plantation.
- Molly marries Lucas Beauchamp and moves to the McCaslin plantation where Lucas is a tenant farmer. Their first child, Henry, is born.
- A few months later, Molly delivers her landowner Zack's child, but Zack's wife dies in childbirth.
- Molly moves in with Zack to nurse Zack's child Roth along with her own son Henry.
- Six months later, Molly's infuriated husband Lucas demands that she come back home. Lucas also tries to kill Zack, but when the gun misfires, he gives up. Thankfully.
- Molly and Lucas remain on the McCaslin plantation. Lucas farms the land and runs a successful illegal still. They're financially well off and have two daughters.
- Molly decides to divorce Lucas because he's obsessed with buried treasure. After forty-three years. She means business.
- They show up at the courthouse, and halfway through the hearing, Lucas changes his mind and gets the judge to cancel the hearing. No one asks Molly what she wants.
- Molly raises her grandson Samuel after her daughter dies in childbirth.
- She has a premonition that he's in serious trouble. She's right.