ACK! I KNEW I forgot something!
I've been doing a lot of character dissection lately on Quentin, Beth and Jenny for one story, which when blocked, then turned into another one to explore the character aspects blocking me on story #1 (redo of the Orpheus storyline but in 1897 w/Beth).
Beth gets dissed a lot for being all crying and helpless, yet she starts out as very very strong, willing to stand right up to Quentin and take the gun away when he wants to kill Jenny.
She fits his description to Angelique of what he finds attractive in a woman: ..."Beautiful, smart, dangerous" I believe the quote was (dont have the dvd handy to check). Aside from bad writing, its hard to explain the turnaround. When trying to figure something out for the story, a possible explanation occurred to me.
Let me throw this out for consideration and discussion: Beth is the one knew about Jenny, knew about the babies. She told no one the babies were at Mrs Fillmore's -- not even Quentin. Or Magda. When Madga curses Q in the manner she does, she does so because she didn;t KNOW.
How much of Beth's later wussy, crying behaviour -- even the suicide attempt -- comes from GUILT because she believes SHE is responsible for a lot of what happened. Especially when the boy dies.....
Just sumitted for your consideration, as Rod Serling used to say.