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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
That weekend, Cussy Mary has another fainting spell. While she recovers on the floor, Pa bends over her in tears, begging her forgiveness for giving her the blue curse. Ashamed of her “foolish airs” and frightened, Cussy stops taking the methylene blue. She can’t afford to be sick or lose her route, and the words of Jackson and Oren are making her think that, if God made her Blue, then blue must be enough for her. When she tells Doc, he simply says that he’ll get her more medicine if she changes her mind. But after she turns her back on it, his visits become infrequent and impersonal.
Cussy comes to terms with who she is because of several influences. First, she sees that patrons like R.C. Cole value her as a person and a librarian. Second, Oren Taft suggested that she’s pretty because of her skin color, not in spite of it. Third, renouncing her identity as a Blue risks passing judgment on her own kind, confirming that she sees them as less worthy than other people. Doc was interested in Cussy because she represented an opportunity for him to showcase his scientific and medical skills. When she stops participating, he loses interest in her, suggesting that he still doesn’t value her as a human being instead of a test subject.
Themes
On a hot Monday afternoon, Cussy Mary rides into the schoolyard. The children were dismissed when the superintendent came by for his annual meeting. He brought news that the WPA is building a new stone school and that Winnie’s husband is going to bring her to Detroit at the beginning of August. Winnie wishes she could stay during the months it will take to find a replacement but without her husband’s blessing, the superintendent won’t let her. And there’s one final piece of news: despite the food someone has left for the students, Henry is now too weak to come to school. His mother has requested a drop-off and read.
The work of the WPA represents opportunity for many impoverished people and hope for a better future. But in the near term, Cussy faces the first in a devastating series of losses in the news that Winnie is leaving. Her inability to make her own decision highlights the limitations placed on women and offers a pointed reminder of why Cussy Mary resisted marriage so vehemently. As a wife, Winnie doesn’t have full control over her life. And none of the WPA’s improvements will save the life of Henry, who is dying of starvation.
Themes
Henry is added to Cussy Mary’s route the next week, and she skips R.C. to ride to his tiny, remote cabin. His mother, Comfort Marshall, meets Cussy at the door. Cussy gives her a sack of food (courtesy of a basket from Doc), and when Comfort tries to give her a gift in return—a tiny metal crucifix—Cussy refuses, saying, “Jesus needs to stay with you.” A heap of children lie on a corn-shuck mattress, and Cussy notices that all they have to eat is a pan of morel mushrooms and wild thistle soup.
Comfort Marshall has suffered much hardship (she recently lost a baby and is about to lose one of her other children), yet she still tries to offer Cussy Mary hospitality and a gift. Hardship may subject people to sub-human conditions, but it can’t destroy their humanity and kindness. Cussy refuses the gift, acknowledging that her life, while difficult, is much easier and better than that of the Marshall family.
Themes
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A skeletal Henry lies on a pallet in the corner, too weak to sit up. Cussy has brought Peter and Wendy to read and a homemade Pack Horse librarian badge. She solemnly swears him in, then gathers his siblings and asks him to read to them. He can barely make it through the first sentence: “All children, except one, grow up.”
By making time for Henry, Cussy Mary acknowledges his importance and gives him back some of the humanity his circumstances have stolen from him. This moment also shows the power of books to offer solace in hard times. Henry is dying, but the idea of Peter Pan, the boy who doesn’t grow up, comforts him.
Themes
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