Autonomy and Interdependence Theme Analysis

A lot of people were leery of our looks. Though with Pa working the coal, his mostly pale-blue skin didn’t bother folks as much when all miners came out of the hole looking the same.

But I didn’t have coal to disguise me in black or white Kentucky. Didn’t have myself an escape until I’d gotten the precious book route. In those old dark-treed pockets, my young patrons would glimpse me riding my packhorse, toting a pannier full of books, and they’d light a smile and call out “Younder comes Book Woman…Book Woman’s here!” And I’d forget all about my peculiarity, and why I had it, and what it meant for me.

I held the library book a moment and then said, “Miss Loretta, this is a Doctor Dolittle book, and I think you might like it some—”

Loretta held up a shushing hand and shook her head.

“Nonsense, child. And what I done told you before: I ain’t letting you read me them government books.”

“But—”

“Them’s books about rubbish and devilish deeds. Foolishness. Take it on back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, wishing she’d let me read her one from the library once in a while instead of her Bible.

Every time I brought one I thought she might take a liking to, she’d sour and rile on. “Them city books ain’t fitting for my kind—ain’t got a lick of sense in them pages for us hillfolk. Nothing but foolish babble an’ prattle.”

Pa believed the mattress advertisement that promised to soothe hurt bones and give better rest would help me heal faster. Pa had credit to spend at the Company store that he used for the purchase, saying he’d had a little extra that month.

But Pa didn’t have as much as two nickels to rub together […] The Company didn’t like for the Kentucky man to feel a dollar in his pocket, and they’d pay the miners mostly in Company scrip—credit that could be used only at the Company store—to make sure of just that. The Company […] [kept] the families good ’n’ indebted to them, insisting to any that might raise a brow, it serves to smarten the miners, give the coal man a vicissitude from improper business standards, and educates them on sound business practices, on acquiring sound credit.

Pa and I had seen our share of hunger. We only had the berries, morels, squirrels, rabbits, and other life we’d pinched from the forest. Sometimes Pa’d trade the miners his kills for other foods we couldn’t get, like eggs, corn, and fruit. Rarely could we afford the expensive staples at the Company store. The Company scrip and my paycheck helped us to stay afloat a little, despite Pa using most of it to buy up the store medicines rather than a doctor’s stronger ones to fight his lung illness. Still, he stayed in debt purchasing newfangled medicines, the next sure-fix potion that the store would bring in. Like a small bandage, the store-bought medicine would hide his sickness for a little bit, so that he could go back down into the mine and make more money for newer cures the Company kept stocking and pushing on the miners.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” I said, secretly touched they loved the books so dearly. Without the loans, his young’uns couldn’t learn because the moonshiner refused to send them to school. No man, no Kentucky law, could make a hillman do that. Most folks hadn’t even heard it was law. The land had its own decrees, held tight its hard ways of handling harder things. Folks would pack their little ones off to school only if it suited them, and not because of something written somewhere far away by city folks they’d never seen, or would ever see.

I had also seen the feminine hygiene advertisements in magazines and newspapers. The pictures of the weeping lady with a dainty hankie to her eyes showed she’d been a good mother, good housekeeper, good hostess, good cook, all those things, until 6:00pm.

The feminine wash advertisement scolded the sad lady, insisted the perfect homemaker did one disgraceful thing her husband couldn’t forgive by forgetting her smelly lady parts. It warned womenfolk about the dangers of neglecting intimate personal hygiene and reminded them to use the feminine wash to keep from wrecking a marriage. A powerful germicide, the product promised, and one that removes all kind of powerful things and even stranger things I’d never heard of like “organic matter” […] It will keep your man happy and is a surety for a happy marriage.

For a minute I envied her, wanted to send Junia home, unlace my heavy, tight shoes, and run free with her to escape Frazier, the doc and his medical tests, and everything damning to me—to hunt and fish in the woods like I’d done as a child. To be wilded. Have a wilded heart in this black-treed land full of wilded creatures. There were notches in these hills where a stranger wouldn’t tread, dared not venture—the needle-eyed coves and skinny blinds behind rocks, the strangling parts of the blackened-green hills—but Angeline and hillfolk here were wilded and not afraid. And I longed to lift bare feet onto ancient paths and be wilded once again.

“Hold your tongue! The men picked me, and I have to speak for my fellow miners to get better pay and safer work conditions! It’s thievery down in the shafts, the lung sickness waiting to snatch your last breath. The miserable long hours. And the Company bosses who’d murder anyone who wants better than that—they scalp our land, leave behind the dirt an’ ash, their broken coal trucks and ghost camps. They’ve left their filthy, fancy boot prints everywhere on everything, the poor ’tucky man’s back. Why, even the fish are dying from the poisons running into our streams.”