Lady Button Eyes

Lady Button Eyes is a lullaby that appears in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved as a song sung by Amy Denver, a poor white girl who helps the escaped slave Sethe during her harrowing flight to freedom. The song is a tender, fairy-tale-like bedtime verse about a mystical figure who soothes a weary child to sleep, and it stands in stark contrast to the violence and desperation of the novel's central events. Amy's performance of the song, which she learned from her own mother, becomes a moment of unexpected grace and humanity in the midst of Sethe's ordeal, and it underscores the novel's exploration of motherhood, memory, and the fragile bonds that form between strangers in times of crisis.

Origins and Context

Amy Denver introduces the song while she is caring for Sethe in a lean-to on the hillside, after finding the pregnant, exhausted, and brutally whipped runaway slave. Amy, who is on her own journey to Boston in search of velvet, has just massaged Sethe's swollen feet and applied spiderwebs to her lacerated back, which she describes as a "chokecherry tree." As she works, she begins to sing, and the song emerges naturally from her chatter about her life, her mother, and her dreams. Amy explains that the song is "my mama's song. She taught me it," linking the lullaby to her own maternal heritage and to a world of domestic tenderness that seems far removed from the harsh realities of slavery and poverty that surround both women.

The song itself is a lullaby with a gentle, rocking rhythm, describing how "Lady Button Eyes" comes "through the muck and mist and glaam" to a "quiet cozy home," where she lays her hands upon a sleeping child and smooths its eyelids down. The figure of Lady Button Eyes is a fairy-like presence, a comforting and protective force that brings peace and rest. The lyrics evoke a sense of safety and warmth, with images of moonbeams, playthings, and a cradle rocking "to and fro." This idyllic vision is a stark contrast to the reality of Sethe's situation: she is fleeing from Sweet Home, her back has been savagely beaten, and she is about to give birth in the wilderness.

The Song's Role in the Scene

Amy's singing serves multiple purposes in the scene. On a practical level, it provides a soothing distraction for Sethe, who is in immense physical pain and terrified for her own life and that of her unborn child. The song's gentle cadence and comforting imagery help to calm Sethe, who later reflects that "the voice full of velvet and Boston and good things to eat" urged her along and made her think that maybe she wasn't "just a crawling graveyard for a six-month baby's last hours." The lullaby becomes a lifeline of sorts, a thread of humanity that connects the two women across the vast divide of race and circumstance.

On a symbolic level, the song represents the possibility of tenderness and care in a world that is otherwise brutal and unforgiving. Amy, despite her own poverty and marginalization, offers Sethe a kind of maternal nurturing that Sethe has been denied. The song also foreshadows the birth of Denver, who is named after Amy, and who will become a central figure in the novel. The lullaby, with its focus on a child's sleep and safety, resonates with Sethe's desperate determination to protect her children, a theme that will culminate in the novel's tragic climax.

Thematic Significance

The inclusion of Lady Button Eyes in Beloved highlights the novel's broader concerns with motherhood, memory, and the transmission of culture. Amy's song is a piece of her own heritage, passed down from her mother, and it represents a form of cultural continuity that survives even in the most adverse conditions. For Sethe, the song becomes a memory that she carries with her, a reminder of the kindness she received from an unexpected source. The lullaby also underscores the novel's exploration of the ways in which stories and songs can provide comfort and meaning in the face of trauma.

Furthermore, the song's fairy-tale quality creates a poignant irony. The world of Lady Button Eyes, with its "haunted green" and "fairies dance around their queen," is a world of innocence and magic that stands in stark opposition to the reality of slavery, violence, and loss that pervades the novel. The lullaby offers a brief escape from this reality, but it also serves to highlight the cruelty of the world that makes such an escape necessary. In this way, Lady Button Eyes becomes a symbol of the fragile hope and humanity that persist even in the darkest of times, a theme that resonates throughout Beloved.