“I have been a dutiful wife.”
Fern is light-skinned enough to pass for white and, indeed, some of her relatives do exactly that. She is also educated and an educator; she teaches the area’s free black children. She carries herself with a high opinion of herself, therefore, and it is crushing to her to live with a man who daily chips away that the edifice of pride. And so throughout the novel, this quote is repeated often enough to become a mantra; an almost zen-like meditative call to the fates to remind them of the need for justice in the universe.
“God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back.”
This philosophy is an assertion of a character who does not struggle at all with any doubt about morality. Not that this means he is immoral. He is something much worse: amoral. Amorality is generally a by-product of privilege. For those born into privilege, the amorality is not earned; they are just conditioned by being spoiled brats. William Robbins has earned his amoral outlook by becoming a self-made wealthy man. One of the worst things that happens in polite society is when a moral man comes under the tutelage and guidance of an amoral mentor. The words above are direct from Robbins to the story’s protagonist.
Moses had thought that it was already a strange world that made him a slave to a white man, but God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind. Was God even up there attending to business anymore?
The idea that God is in his heaven, as William Robbins points out and doesn’t seem to care, as he also points out, is quite okay with him because, after all, what does an amoral man have to do with God or supreme beings or the concept of justice meted out on cosmic scale? Black slaveowners could not possibly present any ethical quandary to be overcome to people like him. Moses is hardly a paragon of morality himself, but he contrasts in one distinct way from Robbins. He’s a worker not an owner. And therein lies all the difference.
Henry had been a good master, his widow decided, as good as they come. Yes, he sometimes had to ration the food he gave them. But that was not his fault—had God sent down more food, Henry would certainly have given it to them. Henry was only the middleman in that particular transaction.
After Henry dies, his widow, Caldonia, takes over the running of things and the first decision she makes is not to free her slaves. She is the embodiment of the abomination which so troubles Moses. (Though that won’t stop him from pursuing her vigorously after she is widowed.) More importantly, however, Caldonia in her widowhood reveals a terrible truth: amorality is not a genetic condition that is only disseminated through heredity. It is also a virus, contagious, and capable of being spread through sexual contact or, more specifically, the heart. Henry becomes infected by Robbins and Caldonia is infected by her husband. Symptoms of amorality includes justifying the unjustifiable and betraying those whom you actually have the power to help. And poor, simple Moses is running headlong after her.
