Elixir. Natural. Uncontrollable. Kidd often incorporates water into major events in Sarah and Handful’s lives such as Handful’s bathtub rebellion, Sarah’s swim in the ocean, and Handful’s escape to freedom. The water in the copper bathtub represented Handful’s small revolt. Sarah even said, “it seemed like an act of rebellion, an act of usurpation” (114). It was Handful’s own way of obtaining a little bit of freedom and power over slavery. When Sarah swam in the ocean for the first time, she gained freedom for herself because she did not have to listen to anyone else’s opinions of her (183). Perhaps the last scene where Kidd uses water is the most important. She uses the ocean to represent both Sarah and Handful’s freedom: Sarah has broken ties to her family and Handful is finally free from slavery (359). Water is something natural, so I think that Kidd is trying to show us how inevitable and pure freedom is. It is necessary to live a healthy, good life and without water, people become thirsty. All her life, Handful is thirsty for this idea of freedom. I think that by using water, rather than a specific color to represent freedom for example, Kidd makes freedom a more tangible and universal idea. But water, just like freedom, is not all positive. Water has the power to suffocate and drown people just as the dream of freedom lured slaves into an empty promise.
I think love and guilt are feelings that we often confuse because of the vague meaning they carry. Someone cannot give you a simple definition of either word, and, from experience, I tend to get the response, “it’s something you just feel.” In other words, I am still very confused on their meanings. But I have come to realize that it’s easier to identify both words when your point of view is from the outside. For example, one of the main themes of Handful and Sarah’s friendship is if it is out of love or guilt. Throughout the novel, Handful struggles with the difference between the two emotions because she believes that love has barriers (54). She believes that whites only pity slaves and cannot truly feel a love for them because of a lack of empathy. Handful, unlike Sarah, understands the difference between sympathy and empathy. With empathy, both people have similar experiences that allow them to feel the same thing as the other person, enabling them to understand and love each other. Even in the last pages of the novel, Handful still struggles with defining what her and Sarah share, claiming that it is still not love (335). I now have a clearer definition of love and guilt because I view Sarah and Handful’s relationship from the outside. I find guilt in the way that Sarah uses Handful as a way to satisfy her need to have anti-slavery views. I understand love better because of the lack of love Sarah has for Handful because she lacks empathy for Handful’s life as a slave. I realize that love and guilt are vague and can easily change meanings depending on context. But by reading this novel, I have filled and improved my lack of understanding for love and guilt that I had in the past.
It is interesting that Kidd stresses guilt over pity. This is the link to a graph I found that shows the word “guilt” was used most in literature during the early 1800s, the same time period Kidd writes about. |