This was my second reading of Cather's last novel and I'm still stunned by Sapphira's viciousness. I'm no stranger to stories of American slavery, but this one about a white woman slave owner planning over months to have her nephew rape the pretty young slave that she suspects is sleeping with her husband is one of the most twisted stories that I've read (outside of horror or crime novels, anyway).

More thoughts on my blog: http://wildmoobooks.blogspot.com/2012/12/sapphira-and-slave-girl-thoughts_17.htm... ( )

This was Willa Cather's last novel published by Knopf in 1940. It is the story of a family and a story of slavery--Cather placed the story in pre-Civil War Virginia--where she spent the first few years of her life. The story revolves around a family and their slaves. Sapphira came from a wealthy family and brought into the marriage a group of slaves. At the point of the story, Sapphira is ill with edema. She and her husband, a Mill Owner, have been married long enough to have a grown daughter who is herself a widow with young children. There are also the slaves themselves including Nancy, a mixed race and beautiful young girl who Sapphira decides needs to go.

While the ending was wrapped up a little too tidily, the middle of the book is a good exploration of what it meant and what it means to be a man vs a woman and white vs black in America. Nancy is an entirely sympathetic character and I especially liked Rachel, Sapphira's grown daughter who is a widow. Rachel is a nurse and spends most of the novel walking between the world of rich whites and poor blacks and whites. It is especially fascinating to see how she can walk into and out of situations that others cannot, simply because of her race and her class.

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59. Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
published: 1940
format: 295-page paperback (2010 Vintage)
acquired: June
read: Nov 30 – Dec 15
time reading: 5 hr 49 min, 1.2 min/page
rating: 4
locations: 1850’s rural Virginia, near Winchester, Va
about the author born near Winchester, VA, later raised in Red Cloud, NE. December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947

Cather's final novel has the affect of a nostalgic look at slavery. I really don't know how else to put it. This book is largely a non-critical exploration of a well run Virginia planation house with twenty slaves. The master of the house is wheel-chair bound Sapphira, who inherited her twenty-odd slaves. Her husband married in, is against the idea of slavery, but generally keeps to the side of these things. The slaves all have a role, set partially by conditioning, partially temperament. There is a level of comfort and security in these roles. And when everything is going well, there is a kind of mutual affection between owner and slave, even pride. This is all...well, really disturbing.

Cather seems very interested in roles, and in how rigid this whole system is. There is no simple way to mess with things if you're against slavery, and there no benefit to try if you're enslaved. Freedom is not a ticket to a better life, but a fragile existence severed from family and the basic life security the planation provides. When Henry offers to buy a slave and free him and set up in a profession, the slave, a skilled miller, balks at the problems this will cause and the loss of his family. Sapphira herself is actually trapped in her role of master - although she may not see it that way exactly.

This all takes place in 1856 Virginia, very close to the town of Winchester, where she was born in 1873. That is, this, what she is describing, is the world her parents' grew up in.

I liked this novel. It's clearly not her best work, but whatever its flaws and limitations, and there are many, it has Cather's voice and her integrity. She is not re-writing history, or white washing crimes. This is her view of how this world could have been, and therefore part of how we got wherever we are now. And, thinking it through, this theme of people trapped within their world, living lives within larger forces, is actually one that kind of pervades through all her work. It's just more foregrounded here.

I'm gratefully not done with Willa Cather yet. Next year I plan to read through her short stories, and the one novel that I missed, her first, titled [Alexander's Bridge].

2020
https://www.librarything.com/topic/322920#7354163 ( )

An engrossing story about the relationship between master and slave--and all the socio-cultural elements that complicate it. ( )

Oh, it's nice to get back to something really good after all those non-girly books I had to read over vacation. Willa Cather is a true literary gem. Why isn't she more widely read today?

Anyway, this is a sort of historical novel concerning a Virginia family just before the civil War. They live in the hills of Virginia, not too far from Winchester. Mrs. Colbert, Sapphira, grew up rich and privileged. Her servants are all slaves. Mr. Colbert is a miller, not really of the class or pretentiousness of his spouse. He has some reservations regarding slavery, and would probably turn the slaves free were they not technically his wife's "property". At some point, Sapphira turns against her personal maid, Nancy, aka "the slave girl". She thinks Nancy has something going on with her spouse. She contrives first to sell Nancy, but her spouse blocks that move, because in those days women had agency only through the good grace of their spouses. Then, she contrives to get rid of Nancy by having one of her roguish relatives come visit and have him try to "fool" Nancy, i.e. "seduce" her (well, rape, actually, but that wasn't a word used in polite company in olden times). So, how to save Nancy?

It's rather an interesting account of attitudes people had back in the day toward the humanity or not of others, and once again demonstrates that inherited wealth and privilege can so readily make one an asshole.
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