In An Age Of Slavery, Two Women Fight For Their 'Wings'
Sarah and Hetty's stories are told in alternating chapters. Sarah is trapped by the limitations of her role as the daughter of a socially prominent family. Unable to stop the cruelty against slaves which she witnesses, Sarah develops a stutter. She becomes a misfit and social outcast until she begins speaking out against slavery.
Hetty, who is also known as Handful, the name her mother gave her, finds ways to defy the system that enslaves her — and at times, she suffers terribly as a result. Kidd says she didn't want Hetty to be seen as a passive victim.
"I mean, I feel like we need to understand that so many slaves resisted, they fought, they freed themselves, they escaped," she says. "They worked in subversive ways. I mean, it was not a passive, victimized situation all the time."
Sarah and Hetty's lives are entwined, whether they like it or not. Their feelings for each other are deep and complicated, as Hetty explains at one point in the novel: "People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing."
Kidd says she knew it was important not to romanticize the relationship between Sarah and Hetty.
"It is complicated, and it's disfigured by so many things: guilt, estrangement and defiance. And yet in the midst of all this disfigurement they care about each other, and that's very complicated," she says. "And can love really exist in a situation like this? What kind of love? What form of love? What kind of a relationship is really possible when you have this vast injustice between them. Can you find redemption? Can you find your way to some sort of uneasy sisterhood? "
Kidd says trying to get the relationship between Sarah and Hetty right used to keep her up at night — and when she wrote the last sentence, she burst into to tears. She couldn't believe she had actually taken on the subject of slavery and managed to write a book about it.
Read an excerpt of The Invention of Wings