The use of it in Beloved is great because it’s never arbitrary, it’s in the service of the story. Here, it foreshadows the arrival of Beloved and the relationship Beloved will have with Sethe.
When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual. What was unusual (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the living activity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve around her mother’s waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver remember the details of her birth—that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit of common flowers.
