Someone who is injured or physically disabled is generally stereotyped as being weak and dependent, but Kidd uses Mrs.Grimke and Handful's injuries as symbols of power.
Handful
Initially after Handful's Work House injury, she was dependent on other due to her inability to walk and care for herself, but her injury fueled her rebellious nature. She no longer can sympathize with the problems of the white family that owned her, claiming they "think you care about everything in the world that happens to them,every time they stub their toe"(172). Because Handful has two separate minds after her accident: one mind for the master to see and another mind for what [she] knows is [her]," Sarah views her as dangerous despite the fact that she is injured (172). In addition to increasing her self-empowerment, Handful uses her injury to show the evils of slavery. Nina advises Handful to show the Female Prayer Society the wound and when she does "the girls pressed their fingers under their noses and blanched white as flour, but Henrietta Smith...fainted sideways in her chair" (227). Handful uses her injury as a weapon to show the young girls the negative affects of slavery up close, therefore making her injury a weapon in raising anti-slavery feelings.
Mrs.Grimke
Mrs. Grimke, on the other hand, uses her injury as physical weapon, showing her strength and power over the slaves. She uses her cane, something usually associated with the elderly and the weak, to beat the slaves. She"hit Minta with thegold-tip cane so much you never saw her without black bruises" (227). Her excessive usage of the cane as a weapon not only shows Mrs. Grimke's power but changes the traditional thoughts about canes and disability.