Research: What is a Beldam? and why eyes?
01/11/18- what is sculpture day 4
A Beldam is a witch, “an older woman, typically ugly” which originated in 1400-50. Related words are crone, hag.
This makes sense. She manipulates and changes as Coraline starts getting close to finding the answers, and when she does escape, the beldams hand follows her into the ‘Real’ world and attempts to get the key off Coraline, to get the Beldam into this world and get Coraline back, as she had no intention of letting her leave or win. Like my art teachers going from someone who was there, a lot calmer and easing us into the course, to a teacher who had no faith or belief we would even pass the course, and when we did, couldn’t congratulate us on it.
Eyes are the window to the Soul
Maybe this is why the Other Mother wanted to sew buttons onto Coraline’s eyes? Since she had stolen the other children’s souls (”She stole our hearts, and she stole our souls”) and they had all allowed her to sew buttons onto their eyes (”It doth not hurt”). The Beldam would sew buttons into Coraline’s eyes, removing her soul and keeping it elsewhere; the other children's eyes were hidden in marbles, and her parents in a snow globe, so the witch had the ability to capture and transform objects. Once she grew bored of Coraline, she would then move onto the next child, and leave Coraline with the other children in the space behind the mirror.
My Art teacher would do something similar. Once she had given up on a student (They weren’t doing the work to the level she expect for our level and would then drop them to units or the level below) or if a student exceeded her expectation she would move onto the next, favouring a few students (myself included) and spend the time getting on at the other students. She wouldn’t stop getting on at them, I realise that she did just want the best for all of us, however the way she portrayed this want for us to excel wasn’t always what did well.
Neil Gaiman (The Author) said “There is also a tradition, which I think goes back to the Romans, of putting coins on the eyes of the dead; The idea that the eyes are the windows to the soul. With buttons you somehow lose all the things that make you human. it is the metaphor that allows for as hindered interpretations, or a thousand interpretations, and they are all correct.”
The saying “The eyes are the windows to the soul” Is often used because you can easily tell what someone is thinking due to emotions and facial expression. For example, if someone is scared or worried they will furrow their brow, which makes the eyes appear smaller, or if they're happy the corners of their eyes will wrinkle and the smile ‘reaches’ their eyes (I’ve never understood that phrase in writing until now...). If the other mother removes the eyes (covering with buttons) she removes the window to the soul (and therefore the soul as well?) and then keeps the children trapped (”We wish we could,’ they sighed.... ‘But she has our hearts in her keeping. Now we belong to the dark and to the empty places. The light would shrivel us, and burn.’”). This means the children rely on her, much like we did to my art teacher. We relied on her because she was the one who could pull the strings to make us drop the course, or give us the plentiful advice needed to make our work the best it could be and give us the best chances of passing.