Is about the Grimke Sisters
Excerpt below from Oprah’s Talk http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-with-Sue-Monk-Kidd-About-The-Invention-of-Wings
The novel tells the
story of four women from Charleston, South Carolina—two sisters from the
prosperous white Grimké family and an African American mother and daughter who
are the Grimkés' house slaves. All four share an ardent desire to break free:
Sarah and Angelina Grimké from the constraints of being female in the early
19th century, and Hetty (Handful) and her mother, Charlotte, from the bonds of
slavery. Though the tale is fictional,
the Grimké sisters were real-life abolitionists whose stories captivated Kidd.
Also drawn from real life is Hetty, though her real life story is unknown after
Sarah’s infamous birthday gift.
Some Quotes The Resonated:
“My body might be a
slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”
“To leave or die
trying.”
“Only women hearing
each other can create a counter-world to the prevailing reality.”
“Mauma had sewed
where she came from, who she was, what she loved, the things she’d suffered and
the things she hoped. She’d found a way to tell it.”
“All sorrows can be
borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.”
“People say love gets
fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn’t know for sure whether Miss Sarah’s
feelings came from love or guilt. I didn’t know whether mine came from
love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used
her. It never was a simple thing.”
Our Conversation:
We had a rich and
complex discussion. While we retold the story to one book group member who
hadn’t finished the book, we added editorial comments from interviews with the
author (see excerpts from interview below) and what we saw as overarching
themes. Kidd drew the story from facts
about the Grimke sisters and slavery at that time. We loved this book. It was like Kidd had brainstormed a list of
stereotypes of African Americans from that time period (lazy, forgetful, losing
things, etc.) and set out to debunk/explain reality. It gave a perspective of resistance that is
often absent in other slave narratives.
It also brought in heroes for the African American people (i.e.: Denmark Vessey) and abolitionists (i.e.:
Quakers).
Themes:
• Restriction/Lack of Control over one’s own
life: So much of Sarah’s life is about
exile and seeking her place of belonging in the world. Obviously, slavery takes away all control.
• Siblings:
The relationship between Sarah and her sister and then between Handful
and her sister.
• Mothers:
The relationship between Sarah and her mother and Handful and her
mother.
• Forgiveness:
Father apologizes to Sarah, Sarah apologizes to Handful, etc.
• People are Complex/No one is “all good” or
“all bad”: Denmark had affairs, Father
knows slavery is wrong but cannot acknowledge it publically, Sarah’s potential
husband cannot let her work, the Quakers focus on abolition and cannot see its
connection to feminism (equal rights for women).
• Finding Your Own Path: Charlotte went to town and made her own money
by sewing for others, Handful used the bathtub without permission, etc.
• The Power Of Reading: Handful wrote Charlotte a pass to go to town,
Sarah lost access to the library once it was discovered that she had taught
Handful to read, etc.
• Men Have the Power: Sarah’s father took away the dream of
becoming a lawyer, the man Sarah might have married expected her to give up the
idea of becoming a minister, etc.
Original Discussion Questions:
1. What were the qualities
in Handful that you most admired? As you read the novel, could you imagine
yourself in her situation?
2. After laying aside her
aspirations to become a lawyer, Sarah remarks that the Graveyard of Failed
Hopes is “an all-female establishment.” What was your experience of reading
Kidd’s portrayal of women’s lives in the nineteenth century?
3. In what ways does Sarah
struggle against the dictates of her family, society and religion? What sort of
risk and courage does this call for?
4. The story of The
Invention of Wings includes a number of physical objects that have a special
significance for the characters: Sarah’s fleur de lis button, Charlotte’s story
quilt, the rabbit-head cane that Handful receives from Goodis, and the spirit
tree. Choose one or more of these objects and discuss their significance in the
novel.
5. Were you aware of the
role that Sarah and Angelina Grimke played in abolition and women’s rights?
Have women’s achievements in history been lost or overlooked? What do you think
it takes to be a reformer today?
6. How would you describe
Sarah and Angelina’s unusual bond? Do you think either one of them could have
accomplished what they did on their own? Have you known women who experienced
this sort of relationship as sisters?
7. Contrast Handful’s
relationship with her mother with the relationship between Sarah and the elder
Mary Grimké. How are the two younger women formed—and malformed—by their
mothers?
8. Kidd portrays an array of
male characters in the novel: Sarah’s father; Sarah’s brother Thomas; Theodore
Weld; Denmark Vesey; Goodis Grimke, Israel Morris, Burke Williams. Some of them
are men of their time, some are ahead of their time. Which of these male
characters did you find most compelling?
9. How has your
understanding of slavery been changed by reading The Invention of Wings? What
did you learn about it that you didn’t know before? Were you aware of the
extent that slaves resisted? Why do you think the myth of the happy, compliant
slave endured? What were some of the more inventive or cunning ways that
Charlotte, Handful and other characters rebelled and subverted the system?
10. Sarah believed she could
not have a vocation and a marriage, both. Do you think she made the right
decision in turning down Israel’s proposal? How does her situation compare to
Angelina’s marriage to Theodore? In what way are women today still asking the
question of whether they can have it all?
Interview with Sue Monk Kidd (I just pasted a paragraph or two below from the
complete answer)
Read more at:
http://suemonkkidd.com/books/the-invention-of-wings/reading-groups-2/
2. The Invention of Wings is voiced by two verbally
powerful narrators: Sarah Grimké, who is inspired by the real-life abolitionist
and feminist of the same name, and Hetty Handful, who is the child of your
imagination. How does creating a character from the ground up differ from
adapting a real person into a fictional persona, and which do you find more
challenging?
One of the more unexpected
things I experienced in writing the novel was that Handful’s character and
voice came to me with more ease than Sarah’s. Handful would talk, talk, talk.
Often I couldn’t keep up with her. When I first began writing in her voice, the
only parameters I gave myself were that I didn’t want her voice to be weighed
down with dialect and it must have traces of humor. I’d read a great many first
person slave narratives from the nineteenth century, as well as the Federal
Writers’ Project of the 1930s, and I had the voices of African-American women
from my own childhood still resonating in me, along with the those of the
quilting women of Gee’s Bend, but I think what made Handful so accessible to me
was her free, unrestricted reign in my imagination. She did not come with the
fetters of a previous history. She could speak and do as she wished.
Sarah, on the other hand,
came with a big historical script, and that turned out to be one of my biggest
challenges. I revered Sarah’s history to the point I initially became boxed-in
by it. In the beginning, I had a hard time letting her venture outside factual
borders. The longer she was cooped up by the facts, the quieter she got. I’d
read the Grimke sisters’ diaries and essays, and while they gave me an
extraordinary glimpse into their lives, their writing was rendered in
nineteenth century language, wrapped in rhetoric, piety and stilted phrases.
3. What was the process of writing the novel like for
you? How did you go about your research? You’ve commented that you went further
out on the writing limb with this novel than you’ve been before. What did
you mean?
It took four years to
write The Invention of Wings— three and a half years of writing, following six
months of research. I’m not the fastest writer on the block. I spent a lot of
protracted time sitting at the computer screen just contemplating the story,
letting my imagination browse, trying to connect little dots, allowing ideas
and revelations to come to me. Plus, I was constantly stopping to look up
something in a book—what sort of mourning dress did women wear in 1819? What
book titles would be on a library shelf in 1804? What were the emancipation
laws in South Carolina? When I wasn’t ruminating or scouring books, I was
writing, and then rewriting as I went, rarely moving to the next chapter until
I felt I’d rendered the last one as close as possible to the final draft. I
would easily spend an entire day tinkering with the prose on a single page.
4. For us, one of the pivotal moments in the story
comes when Handful reads the ledger on which she and her mother are listed and
appraised as part of the Grimké family’s property. What does that moment
in the novel mean to you?
During my research, I
came upon a thesis about the Grimké’s Charleston house that included a
transcript of a legally executed inventory and appraisal of all the “goods and
chattels” in the house at the time of Sarah’s father’s death in 1819. As I read
through this long and detailed list, I was shocked to come upon the names of
seventeen slaves. They were inserted between a Brussels staircase carpet and
eleven yards of cotton and flax.
5. The Invention of Wings is about several
simultaneous struggles for freedom. How did you develop the movements toward
freedom in Handful’s and Sarah’s characters?
Handful and Sarah are
both imprisoned in their own particular way. As a white woman in South Carolina
in the early 1800s, even a privileged one, Sarah’s life was vastly limited.
Women had few rights, not to property or even to their own children.
Essentially, they were the property of their husbands, and their purpose in
life was to marry, have children, and live their lives within the domestic
sphere. And yet, their lack of freedom could not compare to the horrific
subjugation of enslaved women, whose entire lives were determined by their
owners and whose suffering was infinitely worse. I felt like the primary thing
I had to do was never lose sight of that.
6. Sarah shared a close friendship with
Lucretia Mott. What motivated you to include this relationship in the story?
It was a surprise for me
when Lucretia Mott turned up as a character. I knew from my research that Mott,
a famous abolitionist and women’s rights pioneer herself, had attended the same
meetinghouse in Philadelphia as Sarah, at least for a time, but I didn’t know
she would step into the pages of my story until the very moment she did so. It
was a relief to me when she turned up. At this juncture, Sarah is alone in the
North, and the only female presence in her life is Israel’s sister, who is
hardly a friend to her. Inevitably, a community of women will show up in my
fiction, even if it’s a community of two.
7. One of the more unique and striking aspects
of the novel is Charlotte’s story quilt. What drew you to include it in the
story? What meaning did you want it to carry?
I was inspired by the quilts
of Harriet Powers, who was born into slavery in 1837 in Georgia. She used West
African applique technique and designs to tell stories, mostly about Biblical
events, legends, and astronomical occurrences. Each of the squares on her two
surviving quilts is a masterpiece of art and narration. After viewing her quilt
in the archives of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.,
it seemed more than plausible to me that many enslaved women, who were
forbidden to read and write, would have devised subversive ways to voice
themselves, to keep their memories alive, and to preserve their African heritage.
8. How did you go about writing the complicated relationship
between Handful and Sarah?
Their relationship is disfigured by so
many things: guilt, shame, pity, resentment, defiance, estrangement. I tried to
create a relationship between them that allows for all of that, yet also has
room for surprise, redemption, and even love. Someone who read an early copy of
the novel commented that the two women create a sisterhood against all odds. I
think they do—an uneasy, but saving sisterhood.
9. Sarah Grimké was both attracted by and repelled by
organized religion. What role does it play in Sarah’s life? How, if at all,
does religion influence Handful? How would you describe Handful’s spirituality?
Both Sarahs, the one in history and the
one in my story, carry on an intricate relationship with church and faith that
was as conflicted as it was compatible. In the novel, it begins as
twelve-year-old Sarah sits in church listening to the minister defend slavery.
I felt it was important to acknowledge that slavery was supported not just by
the government, but largely by the Church. The scene in St. Philip’s
precipitates Sarah’s first crisis of faith. Did I make up my God, she asks, or
did the reverend make up his? Quakers
gave her a way out of the South, just as the Presbyterians had given her a way
out of society.
As a child, Handful compared God to
master Grimké and wondered if there was a black God, too. Like many slaves in
Charleston, she participated in house devotions, which helped to Christianize
the slaves, but it was also a means of controlling them. Accentuating Bible
verses on obedience, submission, and long-suffering was common. On this score,
though, Handful learned how to give almost as good as she got. She learned the
“Jesus-act” from her mother, which she used to her advantage. It got her
permission to attend the African church, where she hoped to obtain information
about her mother, but surprisingly enough to her, she found herself drawn into
the church’s message of hope and deliverance.
She found strength in the solidarity of the congregation. But I think,
at heart, Handful was an animist, finding her connection with the divine
through natural objects like the water she watched with such devotion from the
alcove, making up songs to it. Her belief that God animated nature seems
present, too, in her devotion to the spirit tree.
