It

It

by

Stephen King

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Beverly Marsh Rogan Character Analysis

Beverly is the only girl in the Losers’ Club. She is tomboyish, smokes cigarettes, and demonstrates a talent for marksmanship. Beverly is the daughter of Elfrida Marsh, a server at Derry’s best restaurant, and Al Marsh, a janitor at the Derry Home Hospital. From her father, Beverly inherits her red hair, her lefthanded-ness, and her talent for drawing, which she parlays into a career as a dress designer and the creative force behind Beverly Fashions—a business that she runs with her husband, Tom Rogan. Beverly develops an attraction to abusive men due to her childhood experiences with her father Al, who routinely beats Beverly and is verbally and sexually abusive. Her friendship with the feminist author Kay McCall suggests an aversion to this treatment, though she remains reluctant to disavow Tom, even after fighting with him and leaving him behind in Chicago, where they live. As a child, both to help send It away and to defy her father’s obsessive control over her body, Beverly invites each boy in the Losers’ Club to lose his virginity to her—an act that helps to solidify the group’s bond. Beverly’s beauty and curvaceous figure, along with her gender, are points of distinction that King depicts as both blessings and burdens. She is objectified sexually by most men who enter her life, particularly her father and her husband. The only males who do not sexualize her are (most of) the other members of the Losers’ Club. During childhood, she harbors a crush on Bill Denbrough. They have a brief affair during their reunion in Derry as adults. She is also the lifelong object of Ben Hanscom’s love, and the two end up together at the end of the novel. Beverly does not return to Chicago, but goes back to Nebraska with Ben.

Beverly Marsh Rogan Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Beverly Marsh Rogan or refer to Beverly Marsh Rogan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Her father tucked her in as he always did, and kissed her forehead. Then he only stood there for a moment in what she would always think of as “his” way of standing, perhaps of being: bent slightly forward, hands plunged deep—to above the wrist—in his pockets, the bright blue eyes in his mournful basset-hound's face looking down at her from above. In later years, long after she stopped thinking about Derry at all, she would see a man sitting on the bus or maybe standing on a corner with his dinnerbucket in his hand, shapes, oh shapes of men, sometimes seen as day closed down, sometimes seen across Watertower Square in the noonlight of a clear windy autumn day, shapes of men, rules of men, desires of men: or Tom, so like her father when he took off his shirt and stood slightly slumped in front of the bathroom mirror to shave. Shapes of men.

Related Characters: Beverly Marsh Rogan, Tom Rogan , Alvin “Al” Marsh
Page Number: 404
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

What a bunch of losers they had been—Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough who could say nothing but "Hi-yo, Silver!" without stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick, and Richie Tozier with his thick glasses and his A averages and his wise mouth and his face which just begged to be pounded into new and exciting shapes. Was there a word for what they had been? Oh yes. There always was. Le mot juste. In this case le mot juste was wimps…

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Stanley Uris , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

He looked at her, eyes narrowed, mouth smiling casually, completely alive, ready to see what would come next, how she would react. His cock was stiffening in his pants, but he barely noticed. That was for later. For now, school was in session. He replayed what had just happened. Her face. What had that third expression been, there for a bare instant and then gone? First the surprise. Then the pain. Then the (nostalgia) look of a memory . . . of some memory. It had only been for a moment. He didn't think she even knew it had been there, on her face or in her mind. Now: now. It would all be in the first thing she didn't say. He knew that as well as his own name […] He had regressed her. He was in this car with a child. Voluptuous and sexy as hell, but a child.

Related Characters: Beverly Marsh Rogan, Tom Rogan
Page Number: 110
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Oh!” He smiled a little at her now, as if pleased by this explanation. “Was that it? Damn! If you'd told me, Beverly, I never would have hit you. All girls are scared of spiders. Sam Hill! Why didn’t you speak up?” He bent over the drain and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out a warning . . . and some other voice spoke deep inside her, some terrible voice which could not have been a part of her; surely it was the voice of the devil himself: Let it get him, if it wants him. Let it pull him down. Good-fucking-riddance. She turned away from that voice in horror. To allow such a thought to stay for even a moment in her head would surely damn her to hell…

Related Characters: Alvin “Al” Marsh (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Beverly Marsh Rogan
Page Number: 403
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

She looked back and here he came again, Al Marsh, janitor and custodian, a gray man dressed in khaki pants and a khaki shirt with two flap pockets, a keyring attached to his belt by a chain, his hair flying. But he wasn’t in his eyes—the essential he who had washed her back and punched her in the gut and had done both because he worried about her, worried a lot, the he who had once tried to braid her hair when she was seven, made a botch of it, and then got giggling with her about the way it stuck out everyway, the he who knew how to make cinnamon eggnogs on Sunday that tasted better than anything you could buy for a quarter at the Derry Ice Cream Bar, the father-he, maleman of her life, delivering a mixed post from that other sexual state. None of that was in his eyes now. She saw blank murder there. She saw It there.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Beverly Marsh Rogan, Alvin “Al” Marsh
Page Number: 923
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis:
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Beverly Marsh Rogan Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Beverly Marsh Rogan or refer to Beverly Marsh Rogan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Her father tucked her in as he always did, and kissed her forehead. Then he only stood there for a moment in what she would always think of as “his” way of standing, perhaps of being: bent slightly forward, hands plunged deep—to above the wrist—in his pockets, the bright blue eyes in his mournful basset-hound's face looking down at her from above. In later years, long after she stopped thinking about Derry at all, she would see a man sitting on the bus or maybe standing on a corner with his dinnerbucket in his hand, shapes, oh shapes of men, sometimes seen as day closed down, sometimes seen across Watertower Square in the noonlight of a clear windy autumn day, shapes of men, rules of men, desires of men: or Tom, so like her father when he took off his shirt and stood slightly slumped in front of the bathroom mirror to shave. Shapes of men.

Related Characters: Beverly Marsh Rogan, Tom Rogan , Alvin “Al” Marsh
Page Number: 404
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

What a bunch of losers they had been—Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough who could say nothing but "Hi-yo, Silver!" without stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick, and Richie Tozier with his thick glasses and his A averages and his wise mouth and his face which just begged to be pounded into new and exciting shapes. Was there a word for what they had been? Oh yes. There always was. Le mot juste. In this case le mot juste was wimps…

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Stanley Uris , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

He looked at her, eyes narrowed, mouth smiling casually, completely alive, ready to see what would come next, how she would react. His cock was stiffening in his pants, but he barely noticed. That was for later. For now, school was in session. He replayed what had just happened. Her face. What had that third expression been, there for a bare instant and then gone? First the surprise. Then the pain. Then the (nostalgia) look of a memory . . . of some memory. It had only been for a moment. He didn't think she even knew it had been there, on her face or in her mind. Now: now. It would all be in the first thing she didn't say. He knew that as well as his own name […] He had regressed her. He was in this car with a child. Voluptuous and sexy as hell, but a child.

Related Characters: Beverly Marsh Rogan, Tom Rogan
Page Number: 110
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Oh!” He smiled a little at her now, as if pleased by this explanation. “Was that it? Damn! If you'd told me, Beverly, I never would have hit you. All girls are scared of spiders. Sam Hill! Why didn’t you speak up?” He bent over the drain and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out a warning . . . and some other voice spoke deep inside her, some terrible voice which could not have been a part of her; surely it was the voice of the devil himself: Let it get him, if it wants him. Let it pull him down. Good-fucking-riddance. She turned away from that voice in horror. To allow such a thought to stay for even a moment in her head would surely damn her to hell…

Related Characters: Alvin “Al” Marsh (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Beverly Marsh Rogan
Page Number: 403
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

She looked back and here he came again, Al Marsh, janitor and custodian, a gray man dressed in khaki pants and a khaki shirt with two flap pockets, a keyring attached to his belt by a chain, his hair flying. But he wasn’t in his eyes—the essential he who had washed her back and punched her in the gut and had done both because he worried about her, worried a lot, the he who had once tried to braid her hair when she was seven, made a botch of it, and then got giggling with her about the way it stuck out everyway, the he who knew how to make cinnamon eggnogs on Sunday that tasted better than anything you could buy for a quarter at the Derry Ice Cream Bar, the father-he, maleman of her life, delivering a mixed post from that other sexual state. None of that was in his eyes now. She saw blank murder there. She saw It there.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Beverly Marsh Rogan, Alvin “Al” Marsh
Page Number: 923
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis: