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It may go missed by first-time watchers, especially children, but the opening scene of Coraline shows us the Beldam’s lair. From these shots of her nest, we can begin to understand more about her character and intentions. Her metallic, inhuman hands can be seen disassembling a doll that looks like a young girl, who we later know to be one of the ghost children the Beldam has eaten, Wybie’s Grandmother’s twin sister. Tens of tools can be seen in her workshop, along with materials, buttons and machinery. The sheer amount of these items shows how the Beldam expects to repeat this process of doll-making over and over again in the future. She is prepared and stocked with hundreds of options, depending on what her next victim may look like. However, the dust and negligence of her equipment, such as the sewing machine and spindle, indicates to us that the Beldam has not been able to secure another victim in years. 

Throughout the scene, we can see the care, precision and speed which the Beldam works at. Unsettlingly, she shows no sign of nerves, caution or hesitancy. Her lack of empathy at creating this trap shows us immediately that we should fear this person. 

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The Beldam creates a world that she knows Coraline will want to stay in. She makes her parents loud, up-for-anything, and care-free. Her neighbours are talented, instead of strange and unsettling. In some cases, they are modified to not being able to speak to please her. She becomes fixated and obsessed with Coraline, doing whatever she can to lure her back to the other world each night. She is starving, sinister and her patience is growing increasingly thin. Despite the colourful other world that has been created for Coraline, each scene that we spend inside it feels as though a breath is being held. 

 

She has a thing for games. 

The Beldam’s love of games can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, we know that her natural form is a spider-like creature. Spiders create hunting games by weaving webs and deceiving their prey. The Beldam allows Coraline to feel as though they are equals when asking to play games, especially during the film’s finale, when all the Beldam truly wants is to show her prey how powerful and intelligent she is. She has no interest in losing, nor does she ever intend too. Even after Coraline finds all the ghost eyes, and her parents, she is warned by the children that even if she wins, The Beldam will never let her leave. When faced with the chance of losing, the Beldam turns to cheating. She has no intention of being honourable or true to her word because she is being driven by hunger. There is an animalistic urge driving her to consume and kill. She will die without food. She cannot survive any other way. 

However, her obsession with games could also be associated with her innately child-like nature and mindset. She primarily creates worlds for children, and therefore, she could be arguably immature and childish. She believes she is intelligent and wise, but her cheating and tantrum nature reflect more a child’s mindset. As she is surrounded by and mainly communicates only with children, she tends to act and speak as one. 

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The Beldam, to the eyes of a child, is unbeatable. Most adults would find her terrifying. She requires something entirely new to defeat her. Something she has never come across before.

 

Mother-Daughter Relationship 

It cannot be ignored that at its core, Coraline is the story of a mother and a daughter. The story takes a seemingly mundane relationship, that billions of people experience and peels it open, revealing the intricate and complicated layers that bind two humans together, especially through something as inescapable as blood. 

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Though we know the Beldam has mainly sinister intentions, there is an interpretation of love that can be explored here. When asked what the Beldam wants from Coraline, the cat cannot decide between her wanting something to love and something to eat. This could imply that these two feelings are two sides of the same coin. The Beldam needs to be chosen; she needs to be wanted so badly by the children that the line between loving and consuming them becomes blurred. She cannot see where one begins and the other ends. 

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One line in particular that reinforces this theme of duality comes from Coraline’s nervous remark of “Mothers don’t eat daughters.”. This statement presents a literal horror with the threat of Coraline being eaten by the Beldam, but also a more metaphorical horror of being consumed and devoured by a parental figure, who is responsible for your well-being and growth. This plays on a very real concept that can occur, known as Munchhausen’s by proxy. The term is used to describe parental figures suffering from a unique type of mental illness, where they fake or create real symptoms to make a child believe they are sick. It is most commonly found within mothers and is a phenomenon that cannot be explained or understood in full. Hundreds of tiny factors play into the development of this mental illness, and in most cases the mother cannot comprehend what they have done when presented with the factual evidence. The story of Coraline can certainly be analysed through this lens.

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As previously mentioned, it is possible that the Beldam does need to be loved by a child in order to feel the full extent of her powers. Though she wants to hurt them, she wants to be with them for all time, which could explain why she refuses to let the ghost children be free and keeps their eyes hidden. Even after they have died, she cannot part with them. The confusing nature of Munchhausen’s by proxy comes into play through the Beldam stating the following phrases throughout the film, “You may come out, when you learn to be a loving daughter.” “I only want what’s best for you.” and “You know I love you.” Though these phrases sound reasonable and believable, they are coupled with violent actions. The Beldam continues to speak to Coraline in a loving manner, even when presenting her with grotesque tasks such as sewing through her eyes and revealing her true, spider form. This connection to Munchhausen’s rings through heavily when the last line of the Beldam is spoken, “Don’t leave me, I’ll die without you.” A large motivating factor that has been theorised for Munchhausen’s by proxy is mothers wanting to preserve a certain state of childhood forever, keeping a child inhumanly perfect. Not only can this theme be seen through the Beldam’s dialogue, but also through the concept of the button eyes.  

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When the ghost children first appear to Coraline, they can be seen wearing perfect, matching clothing. They look doll-like and frozen in time, forever stuck in the way they were when the Beldam finally pounced and took them. The Beldam has preserved these children in their most desired forms for her, how she wants to remember them. She would have controlled their appearance, as we see after she makes clothes for Coraline. She controls who they interact with in the other world, where they can go and how far. She wants the children to be dolls for her, much like the dolls she uses to spy on them in the beginning of her lure, the same doll which Is being created for Coraline in the opening scene. Once again, these themes of childhood, growing up, being your own person away from your parents despite them wanting you to stay, are all relatable ideas that are portrayed in more surrealist forms in Coraline. 

Though the Beldam is highly motivated by hunger and power, she needs the children to want her, to choose her, over their real lives. She needs the validation of being chosen, much like how Coraline and the other children want to be seen and chosen. It’s an extremely interesting conversation about the temptation of desire and greed, and how it can blind us to choosing things that harm us.