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Chapter 36
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
The late-July morning is miserably hot as Cussy Mary rides Junia to the Moffit homestead. Both woman and mule catch sight of the body hanging from the tree at the same time. And the baby lying on the ground next to an empty lard tin. Cussy slides to the ground, picks up the newborn, and runs into the cabin calling out Angeline’s name. She finds her friend in bed atop blood-soiled sheets, barely alive.
The hardships of life have finally overwhelmed Mr. Moffit and caused him to take his own life. And Angeline is barely clinging to her life. In a place and time where doctors were few and far between and people like the Moffits couldn’t afford them, dangers lurked in every aspect of life. It seems that the rain crows Angeline heard in an earlier chapter were warning her about her impending death.
Themes
As Angeline puts Honey to her breast, she tells Cussy that when the baby was born, less than an hour ago, Mr. Moffit got mad and took her away. He said he’d rather be dead then stuck with Angeline and Honey, said he wouldn’t keep her, said he married a white and now people would think he hadn’t. It’s only then that Cussy looks at the baby and sees that she is a Blue. But it was Mr. Moffit who carried the genetic mutation, not Angeline; she noticed it when he was sick, and his fingers and toes showed blue. It’s Angeline who “married…a colored an’ didn’t know’d it.”
Mr. Moffit died by suicide rather than face the shame of having a “colored” child—because Honey is Blue. It’s characteristic of his intolerance toward others that he thought it was somehow Angeline’s fault. Because of Doc’s explanations, Cussy understands that both Mr. Moffit and Angeline had to have carried the recessive gene. Angeline doesn’t realize her own role, but she does know that Mr. Moffit carried the blueness, which became apparent during his earlier illness. Yet she shows no shame over her husband’s color because she doesn’t share his intolerance and discriminatory tendencies.
Themes
Cussy Mary wants to fetch Doc, but Angeline knows it’s pointless. Her mother died the same way after birthing her last child. Angeline begs Cussy to take Honey. She is sure that Mr. Moffit will never come back for the baby (even though she doesn’t know he’s committed suicide), her kin are all dead, and he was abandoned by his own as a baby. Cussy knows all too well the life of ostracism and loneliness that Honey faces, and for a moment she’s overwhelmed by it. Honey deserves rich love that the white world won’t give her. And Cussy knows that if she doesn’t take and protect Honey, no one will. She promises to care for the baby, and Angeline kisses Cussy’s hands.
Life is brutal in this corner of rural Kentucky, and Angeline faces her impending death calmly; she saw her mother die this way, too. Cussy Mary protects her from the knowledge of Mr. Moffit’s suicide but she can’t shield Angeline from an awareness of the difficult life Honey will face as a Blue and an orphan. Thinking about the love and care that Honey deserves is painful for Cussy, since it reminds her of the love and care that she, too, deserves but hasn’t received.
Themes
Angeline’s last library loan was a Good Housekeeping magazine, and she asks Cussy Mary to read an article she’d marked to her and Honey. Opening the magazine, Cussy sees a picture of a stylish mother holding a plump, well-dressed, and happy baby on her lap. She stops reading when she senses that Angeline is drawing her last breaths, and she whispers, “I love you,” to her friend. Angeline’s final words are to her daughter: “I want you to read lots of books [because] books’ll learn you, Honey.” The magazine falls from Cussy’s lap to the blood-soaked floor and she begins to pray. Her desperate pleas for Angeline’s miraculous revival turn into a howl of fury over the pain in the world.
Cussy Mary read to Henry as he was dying but wasn’t able to sit with him until his last breath, because that was his mother’s right. Angeline has no mother and no other kin, so Cussy Mary sits and reads to her until she slips away. This is an act of love for a woman who, like Cussy, was alone in the world. To her dying breath, Angeline believes in the power of books to change lives, and her final wish for her daughter is to grow up surrounded by books and their wisdom. When Cussy howls in grief over Angeline’s death, it recalls her drunken raging against God over the pain and suffering of the world.
Themes
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