Summary
Chapter 9: Florens
The Blacksmith is delighted to see Florens but when he hears about Mistress, he says he will go immediately. Florens can remain here, but he says there is someone else here too—a little boy, abandoned by his family. The Blacksmith is taking care of the boy, named Malaik, and Florens sees how he looks at the child as if he, not her, is his future. She remembers her little brother and how her mother chose him over her.
They spend the evening together and Florens wants to say that she will stay forever. She tries not to worry when he does not kiss her or hold her, but instead saddles up and leaves. Malaik stares at her with hate, also wanting her to leave. That night she dreams of a minha mae and Malaik.
The next day, Malaik stays away from her. She seems quiet on the outside but “I am loose inside and not knowing how to be” (139). The following day, the boy stares at the road waiting for the Blacksmith. Florens notices her shoes are gone and her feet begin to hurt. She never finds them. Her guess is that Malaik took them, and as she watches him clinging to his corn husk doll, she wonders if his power is in the doll. She puts it on a shelf too high for him to reach and he screams.
Later she sees it is not on the shelf, and worries it is hiding from her. The boy starts screaming at her again and she pulls his arm to make him stop. Even though she is not trying to hurt him, there is a small crack. He faints and blood dribbles from his mouth.
The Blacksmith is suddenly there, shouting for the boy. He knocks Florens away and twists the boy’s arm back in place. The boy faints again. Florens sees that he believes the worst of her.
The Blacksmith strikes her and she knows he chose the boy. He comforts the boy and lays him down and then returns to Florens. He tells her that her mistress is recovering and he will hire someone to take her home. When she protests, he tells her she is a slave and her “head is empty and your body is wild” (141). She is frantic, trying to crawl toward him but he keeps insisting on her wildness. It seems like she is “living the dying inside” (142) like when her mother left her, and she flies at him, scratching and then hitting him with a hammer.
Chapter 10: Willard and Scully
Jacob Vaark comes out of his grave to haunt the grand house. The men realize this, and it makes sense to them. They always liked working for Vaark, who was kind to them and gave them rum at Christmastime. They volunteered to dig his grave, and felt it was their duty to stay on and help Mistress with the farm. She even paid them their first wages ever, lifting them from “pity to profit” (144).
Things are different now, and they definitely have a great deal of work to do. A pall has descended on the farm. Lina does her work but seemed to be “simmering” (145). Scully had always watched her river bathing undetected, and now she is not doing that anymore. Mistress has changed, and is now melancholy and stern. Only Sorrow seems improved, and the men assume godfather status for her baby. Her baby always comes first. Florens, now back, is very different, almost feral. She was blood-spattered and bedraggled when she returned, almost like an animal.
Willard Bond had been sold for seven years to a Virginia planter and hoped to be free by 21, but years were added to his term for theft and assault so he was sent to a wheat farmer up north. Then that farmer made a land-for-toil trade with Vaark, and he came to the farm. Scully’s arrival brought him companionship, and he was happy enough.
The construction of the great house was a social time, as the two were part of a crew of laborers. The Blacksmith was there, and Willard admired his gates. Yet when he first realized the Blacksmith was getting paid, he was incensed, and encouraged Scully not to listen to the man. Vaark chastised them, but it was actually the Blacksmith himself who calmed him. One day the man called him “Mr. Bond,” which tickled him, and he resigned himself to the legal situation of how that man could be paid and he could not. He also understood why Florens was so attracted to him.
The changes in Florens bothered Scully, who saw people beyond what they revealed on the surface. He always thought Lina had a purity about her as well as honor. He preferred Sorrow to the others and did not think it was fair to deem her the odd one, for, after all, she had a “quick and knowing sense of her position” (152) and was no more daft than the rest of them.
When Florens came home, though, he saw that she was now untouchable. If he had been a predatory man, he would have seen Florens as a target, but he actually had no physical interest in females. The world of men made its mark on him. As a boy, Scully’s maybe-father leased him to the Synod as a boy, where he and an Anglican curate started a relationship. When they were caught, the curate had to pretend the boy was dangerous and seductive, which Scully understood because if this had not been the case, he would have been defrocked and executed.
As for the Mistress, Scully cared for her less than Willard did. He saw something cold and maybe cruel under her new piety. The death of Jacob had destroyed her, and she had begun making things harder for everyone else. Yet she paid him, and he had always planned to run away and now rethought this.
One day when Willard prophesies marriage for her, a natural thing for a lonely widow, Scully is disturbed. He does not want his arrangements changed by another man. He is necessary to her for the time, as the women cannot do certain tasks, and he tries to make his helpfulness obvious to her.
He also tries to be good to the other women. When Mistress beats Sorrow, he makes a lined cradle for the baby. He takes down signs for Florens’ sale when he can find them. There is nothing he can do for the unapproachable Lina, but he wishes there was.
These are the “ravages of Vaark’s death. And the consequences of women in thrall to men or pointedly without them” (155). They once seemed like a sort of family. But that was false, and there seemed nothing on the horizon to unite them. At least Scully and Willard have wages and potentially a future.
Chapter 11: Florens
Florens walks home, remembering the clash with the Blacksmith, which was long and bloody. She saw him stagger and fall. She had no shoes when she walked home.
Addressing him now, she says he will have to bend down to read her telling of her story, which she has written in the grand house. She sleeps among her words, taking a break there from the useless chores.
Mistress is cured but she is not well; her “heart is infidel. All smiles are gone” (159). She goes to church now and prays often. She does not like Sorrow’s baby, and does not let Lina have her hammock.
Florens admires Sorrow’s devotion to her baby daughter, and how she has changed her name. Sorrow wants to leave and wants Florens to go with her, but Florens has something to finish here.
Florens says her “withering” (160) started in the Widow’s closet.
The room is covered with words. It is hard to see with even the lamplight, but Florens carves and carves. Yet Florens then remembers the Blacksmith cannot read letters. She knows Lina will help burn this place down if it comes to that.
Florens accepts that she is unforgiven and unforgiving, slave and free, wilderness and herself. Her main sorrow is that she doesn't know what her mother is telling her, and will never know what Florens wants to tell her. Her feet are hard now.
Chapter 12: Minha Mae, Florens’ Mother
She knows what the men want, knows Florens’ breasts are coming in and there is no protection for her. She had hoped by teaching Florens letters she might have some help, and that there is magic in learning. She did not know who Florens’ father was, as there were many men that raped her. To be a woman here in the New World “is to be an open wound that cannot heal” (163).
When the man with the yellow hair came, she saw he did not like the food or trust Senhor and his family; she observed there was nothing cruel in this man’s heart.
She had been taken from Africa by frightening white men, bound and moved many times. She wished she could throw herself to the sharks instead of remaining in chains. Many of the captives tried to die, and she could not figure out why this could not happen for her.
They were brought to Barbados, sold and dispersed. She was not a person here, only a “negrita.” The men raped them to “break them in,” but later apologized and the overseer gave them an orange. Despite the trauma, she was happy to have her children.
Senhor and his wife were terrible, and the Reverend Father told her simply to pray about it. She bound Florens’ breasts but she wanted shoes and she caught Senhor’s eye anyway. The one chance to save her daughter came to her when the yellow-haired man arrived, for he saw Florens as a human child, not money. This was a miracle bestowed by God, a mercy offered by a human.
She states she will remain here on her knees until Florens someday understands what she knows and longs to tell her: that “to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing” (167).
Analysis
Florens makes it to the Blacksmith’s, but while he is glad to see her, much has changed: he has a little boy with him, and it is clear to Florens that there is not enough room for the boy and for her. Of course, in an alternate world it may have been possible for them all to stay together, but that possibility was precluded by what happened to Florens as a child. Her interpretation of what happened at D’Ortega’s was that her mother chose to stay with her younger brother, pushing Florens on Sir because she was the less important, less loved child. She has never been able to comprehend another reason for her mother’s actions, and this trauma has indelibly shaped her.
Critics have written extensively on this profoundly wounding moment in Florens’ life. Jean Wyatt blames slavery for Florens’ inability to explore other reasons for her mother’s “abandonment” of her: “Because of the complexities of living under slavery, Florens cannot grasp the full meaning of her mother's words of dismissal; she cannot perceive the mother-love that motivates them, but only the painful rejection they contain… Of course, maternal abandonment would be traumatic for any child, and reenactment of the trauma is a common symptom of unresolved trauma. But the situation of slavery gives an added intransigence to the sway of the maternal signifier over Florens's drives and desires.”
Susmita Roye has a similar analysis, tying Floren’s underdeveloped selfhood to the loss of her mother: “Evidently, family life (or lack of it) plays a major role in shaping… [Florens] into what [she becomes]... in Florens's case, it is her abandonment by her slave mother that leaves her deeply scarred and permanently deprived of a nurturing family life. She cannot understand what must have forced her mother to part with her in such a manner; the childish impression that her ‘minha mãe’ preferred her brother to her remains with Florens forever. And it is the painful awareness of having been rejected by her own mother that engenders in her a hunger for love and attention, making her ripe for exploitation; this seriously hampers her growth as a strong, self-confident human being.” And Amanda Putnam concludes, “Instead of realizing the great sacrifice her mother has just made for her daughter, Florens only understands her own abandonment—and this shapes her entire future. Thus, even though Florens’s mother actually had pure intentions—valuing her daughter more than herself to save the child from potential sexual abuse—the outcome of not choosing to stay with Florens negatively affects the girl throughout her life, wreaking havoc on the child’s self-esteem and her ability to nurture any other relationship successfully.”
Florens’ stunted adolescence and deep wound from her mother’s abandonment means that Malaik’s presence is incomprehensible to her because that same trauma is putatively being repeated; the only way to deal with the situation of the Blacksmith choosing the boy is to lash out with violence. She has, as the Blacksmith lobs at her, an “empty” head and a “wild” body (141). He has no compassion for her, calling her a slave not because Sir owns her but because he thinks she has “become one” (141). It is difficult to fault either side here: the Blacksmith’s freedom is tenuous enough, and linking himself with Florens could be dangerous. Furthermore, the boy needs care and the Blacksmith saw Florens handling him roughly, so his supposition that she is a danger is not completely misplaced. But Florens cannot help what she is, and is worthy of respect and love despite her status as slave and the “wilderness” in her soul.
At the end of Florens’ narrative, she has returned to the farm and is much changed. Scully and Willard observe, “The docile creature they knew had turned feral” (147). The only way for Florens to cope with what has happened to her is to become a storyteller—but a teller of her own story. She writes to the Blacksmith on the floor of the abandoned house Jacob was building; her co-opting that space for herself is a powerful act by someone who, by virtue of race, gender, and social status, is the lowest of the low on the social ladder. When she finishes, she knows who she is just a bit better: "I am become wilderness but I am also Florens. In full... Slave. Free. I last" (161). As Putnam notes, “This proclamation revisits the blacksmith's view of her as enslaved by her lack of control but at the same time affirms survival and a complete identity, the word ‘free’ evoking her earlier vision of the stag and the perfumed flowers that associated liberty and choice with the wild.”
