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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Kind, Kindness, and Discrimination
The Power of Books
Hardship and Humanity
Change and Modernization
Autonomy and Interdependence
Summary
Analysis
Two days later, Cussy Mary protests that she’s just Blue, not ill. She doesn’t want to go with Doc to Lexington; she wants to stay home and work on a scrapbook for her patrons. Pa grabs her wrist and insists that she will go and help with the experiments. Maybe they will even discover a cure. Once again, Pa is trying to keep Cussy safe. If Doc says anything about Vester, they’ll be executed. Their self-defense was justified, but Blues have been hanged for less.
Cussy Mary protests that she isn’t ill because she knows that there’s nothing inherently wrong with her skin color. She feels stigmatized and isolated because of the way other people react to it, but that only shows their short-sightedness and discriminatory tendencies. Nevertheless, her skin color has rendered her vulnerable to the judgments and control of others, and to preserve her safety, she must help Doc advance scientific understanding.
Themes
At 7 a.m., Doc arrives to collect Cussy Mary. They ride his horse into Troublesome Creek, where his Jamaican housekeeper, Aletha, refuses to allow a Blue into the home of her late mistress, “Missus Lydia.” Her accent is musical but so thick that Cussy can barely understand her.
Earlier in the book, Cussy Mary maintained that her situation was worse than that of the Black residents of town, since her skin color is both devalued and considered unnatural. When Aletha, who is Black, refuses to let her into Doc’s house, this seems to reinforce Cussy’s sense of persecution.
Themes
To get to Lexington, Doc and Cussy Mary will take his car. Cussy has seen them at a distance, but she’s never ridden in one before. At first, she’s scared stiff, but soon she’s marveling at the speed and smoothness of the ride. She is even lulled to sleep by the gentle motion of the car and the warm sunshine.
Doc gently wakes Cussy Mary up when they reach Lexington, and she is overwhelmed by the fancy clothes people wear, the easy availability of newspapers (which are so precious and rare in the mountains), the smells of oil and concrete, and the sound of urban bustle. When they arrive at the hospital, she sees a nun in real life for the first time. Doc leads Cussy through the maze of hospital corridors to the Colored Ward, where he brings her to a room and asks her to undress and put on an examination gown.
As they enter the city, the overwhelming details of the urban landscape strike Cussy as strange and mechanical. The city and the hospital are a bewildering maze of paths that she can’t navigate herself, which contributes to the feeling that Cussy is a small person unable to control her own destiny. And, since Doc is using Cussy Mary as an experimental subject rather than an individual, he further contributes to her sense of dehumanization.
Themes
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Cussy Mary, overwhelmed and panicked by the new atmosphere and the medical tools on display, is unwilling to comply. A Black man named Dr. Randall Mills will be joining Doc to examine Cussy and after introductions, the two men leave the room so Cussy can change. When she realizes that the exam gown is split up the front—or back, she can’t tell—she refuses to put it on. Impatient, Doc summons two nurses, who wrestle Cussy Mary to the floor, undress her, and administer a sedative via anal suppository. They marvel at her blue skin, poking, slapping, and commenting on it. They lay Cussy, naked, on the exam table with her arms and legs spread out and restrained with leather straps. For a few moments, Cussy can feel the doctors’ hands “crawling over and down and inside” her, taking samples, until she falls into a drugged sleep.
Doc is kinder and more humane to Cussy Mary than many of the other people in her community—or the nuns who prepare her for examination. But still, his gentleness turns to impatience and frustration when she doesn’t comply with his orders. Again, this suggests that his ability to see her as an individual human being (rather than an interesting scientific specimen) is limited. He reminds us of the range of discrimination and abuse that Cussy faces. Sometimes it’s outright abuse, like when Harriett and Eula mock her. At other times (like in the hospital), it’s a more subtle belief that she’s not worthy of the same dignity as other people.
Themes
