Did a sexual assault precipitate Beulahs descent into madness?
Beulah’s someone I have trouble speaking about. But in general I don’t really think we can very often explain a given character trait or tendency from a childhood event. We know children are wounded by things, and must be changed by them. But the outcomes are so varied, so individual and particular, that maybe we’ll have to settle for the less direct terms of predispositions and contributing factors. I think this for Beulah would have been one in a series of moments driving her to frame the question much as the mystics of old might have. How are we to see and experience the beauty in the world amidst such vast and obscene suffering? Can she find a path to happiness that does not lead through an anaesthetized indifference? Whether her descent was into madness is a key question in the book, and for each reader to decide.
