The Invention of Wings: With Notes

by Sue Monk Kidd

  Above all, I wanted Charlotte’s story quilt to speak about the deep need we have to make meaning out of what befalls us. I wanted it to suggest how important it is to take the broken, painful, and discarded fragments of our lives and piece them into something whole. There can be healing, and power, too, in giving expression to what’s inside of us, in having our voices heard and our pain witnessed. As writer Isak Dinesen put it, “All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.”

  9. Sarah Grimké was both attracted to and repelled by organized religion. What role does it play in Sarah’s life? How, if at all, does religion influence Handful? How would you describe Handful’s spirituality?

  The real-life Sarah Grimké was more pious than my version of her in the novel. During her Presbyterian and Quaker years, her devoutness seemed, at times, to border on asceticism. There’s speculation among her biographers that her self-denial might have influenced her refusal to marry as much as her desire for independence. Both Sarahs, though, the one in history and the one in my story, carry on an intricate relationship with church and faith that was as conflicted as it was compatible. In the novel, it begins as twelve-year-old Sarah sits in church listening to the minister defend slavery. I felt it was important to acknowledge that slavery was supported not just by the government, but largely by the church. The scene in St. Philip’s precipitates Sarah’s first crisis of faith. Did I make up my God, she asks, or did the reverend make up his? Later, in the wake of her heartbreak from her first love, Burke Williams, she leaves the Anglicans for the Presbyterians. She was genuinely in pursuit of God, but I muddied the water a bit, suggesting she was also in pursuit of a way out of the miseries she experienced in Charleston society.

  From the time Sarah is four and witnesses a slave whipping—the “unspeakable” thing that mutes her voice—she moves between voice and voicelessness, her words often stuck in her throat. It struck me as fascinating and more than coincidental that she gives herself to the Quakers, a religion centered on the inner voice. As a Quaker, she’s compelled to listen for a voice inside, a true one, and find a way to articulate it on her tongue. This, of course, is the large and ongoing struggle of her own life. Her audacious move to the Quakers gave her a way out of the South, just as the Presbyterians had given her a way out of society, and their doctrines supported and emboldened her antislavery beliefs and opened up the possibility of a vocation as a minister. She would pin all her hopes on the latter. She lands, however, in a branch of Quakerism that takes a highly conservative approach, and she often finds herself at odds with it. Her conflict with organized religion is nowhere more pronounced than in the scripture verse: “I suffer not a woman to teach, not to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence,” a verse that was hauled out and used against her by New England ministers during her public crusade. After her expulsion from the Quakers, organized religion held less sway over her, and she came to rely more on her own spiritual core.

  As a child, Handful compared God to master Grimké and wondered if there was a black God, too. Like many slaves in Charleston, she participated in house devotions, which helped to Christianize the slaves, but it was also a means of controlling them. Accentuating Bible verses on obedience, submission, and suffering was common. On this score, though, Handful learned how to give almost as good as she got. She adopted the “Jesus-act” from her mother, which she used to her advantage. It got her permission to attend the African church, where she hoped to obtain information about her mother, but surprisingly enough to her, she found herself drawn into the church’s message of hope and deliverance. She found strength in the solidarity of the congregation. But I think, at heart, Handful was an animist, finding her connection with the divine through natural objects like the water she watched with such devotion from the alcove, making up songs to it. Her belief that God animated nature seems present, too, in her devotion to the spirit tree. In some ways, the tree, which she tended with red thread and wore pieces of about her neck, was her real “church.” It was a sort of sanctuary, a place of ritual, a place that held her spirit, her pain, and her hope. The water and the tree, and perhaps even the birds in the branches, seemed to mediate God to her. They became Handful’s primary scripture.

  10. Your writing tends to do more for your readers than simply entertain them. Reading one of your novels can be a kind of transformation. How do you hope that The Invention of Wings might affect someone who reads it?

  It would certainly please me if readers finished the novel having learned something new about slavery, about the history of the early nineteenth century and the innovations of thought that helped to create the abolition and women’s rights movements. I would definitely be happy if it helped readers discover or rediscover Sarah and Angelina Grimké and the roles they played. I think every novelist wants her book to enlighten the mind in some way and be a carrier of ideas. My greatest hope, however, is for readers to take away a felt experience of the story, of what slavery might have been like for someone or what it was like back then for a woman without rights. I want the reader to feel as if he or she has participated in the interior lives of the characters and felt something of their yearnings, sufferings, joys, and braveries. Empathy—taking another’s experience and making it one’s own—is one of the most mysterious and noble transactions a human can have. It’s the real power of fiction. While in college, I studied Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of “the common heart,” a place inside of us where we share an intrinsic unity with all humanity. The idea has remained with me all these years. As a writer, I believe in it. The hope that this story would help us find a portal into that place is the most I could hope.

  Discussion Questions

  The title The Invention of Wings was one of the first inspirations that came to Sue Monk Kidd as she began the novel. Why is the title an apt one for Kidd’s novel? What are some of the ways that the author uses the imagery and symbolism of birds, wings, and flight?

  What were the qualities in Handful that you most admired? As you read the novel, could you imagine yourself in her situation? How did Handful continue her relentless pursuit of self and freedom in the face of such a brutal system?

  After laying aside her aspirations to become a lawyer, Sarah remarks that the Graveyard of Failed Hopes is “an all-female establishment.” What makes her say so? What was your experience of reading Kidd’s portrayal of women’s lives in the nineteenth century?

  In what ways does Sarah struggle against the dictates of her family, society, and religion? Can you relate to her need to break away from the life she had in order to create a new and unknown life? What sort of risk and courage does this call for?

  The story of The Invention of Wings includes a number of physical objects that have a special significance for the characters: Sarah’s fleur-de-lis button, Charlotte’s story quilt, the rabbit-head cane that Handful receives from Goodis, and the spirit tree. Choose one or more of these objects and discuss their significance in the novel.

  Were you aware of the role that Sarah and Angelina Grimké played in abolition and women’s rights? Have women’s achievements in history been lost or overlooked? What do you think it takes to be a reformer today?

  How would you describe Sarah and Angelina’s unusual bond? Do you think either one of them could have accomplished what they did on their own? Have you known women who experienced this sort of relationship as sisters?

  Some of the staunchest enemies of slavery believed the time had not yet come for women’s rights and pressured Sarah and Angelina to desist from the cause, fearing it would split the cause of abolition. How do you think the sisters should have responded to their demand? At the end of the novel, Sarah asks, “Was it ever right to sacrifice one’s truth for expedience?”

  What are some of the examples of Handful’s wit and sense of irony, and how do they help her cope with the burdens of slavery?

  Contrast Handful’s relationship with her mother with the relationship between Sarah and the elde
r Mary Grimké. How are the two younger women formed—and malformed—by their mothers?

  Kidd portrays an array of male characters in the novel: Sarah’s father; Sarah’s brother, Thomas; Theodore Weld; Denmark Vesey; Goodis Grimké, Israel Morris, Burke Williams. Some of them are men of their time, some are ahead of their time. Which of these male characters did you find most compelling? What positive and negative roles did they play in Sarah and Handful’s evolvement?

  How has your understanding of slavery been changed by reading The Invention of Wings? What did you learn about it that you didn’t know before?

  Sarah believed she could not have a vocation and marriage, both. Do you think she made the right decision in turning down Israel’s proposal? How does her situation compare with Angelina’s marriage to Theodore? In what ways are women today still asking the question of whether they can have it all?

  How does the spirit tree function in Handful’s life? What do you think of the rituals and meanings surrounding it?

  Had you heard of the Denmark Vesey slave plot before reading this novel? Were you aware of the extent that slaves resisted? Why do you think the myth of the happy, compliant slave endured? What were some of the more inventive or cunning ways that Charlotte, Handful, and other characters rebelled and subverted the system?

  The Invention of Wings takes the reader back to the roots of racism in America. How has slavery left its mark on American life? To what extent has the wound been healed? Do you think slavery has been a taboo topic in American life?

  Are there ways in which Kidd’s novel can help us see our own lives differently? How is this story relevant for us today?

  Ms. Winfrey’s Highlighted Passages and Notes for

  The Invention of Wings

  There was a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old. She said, “Handful, your granny-mauma saw it for herself. She say they flew over trees and clouds. She say they flew like blackbirds. When we came here, we left that magic behind.”

  Oprah’s note:

  I just love an opening sentence that grabs your attention. This one did. “The people could fly.”

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  I was shrewd like mauma. Even at ten I knew this story about people flying was pure malarkey. We weren’t some special people who lost our magic. We were slave people, and we weren’t going anywhere. It was later I saw what she meant. We could fly all right, but it wasn’t any magic to it.

  Oprah’s note:

  That passage gave me an immediate sense of Hetty’s likability. Even though I didn’t yet know anything about her, I was already intrigued, drawn in.

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  The day life turned into nothing this world could fix, I was in the work yard boiling slave bedding, stoking fire under the wash pot, my eyes burning from specks of lye soap catching on the wind. The morning was a cold one—the sun looked like a little white button stitched tight to the sky. For summers we wore homespun cotton dresses over our drawers, but when the Charleston winter showed up like some lazy girl in November or January, we got into our sacks—these thickset coats made of heavy yarns. Just an old sack with sleeves. Mine was a cast-off and trailed to my ankles. I couldn’t say how many unwashed bodies had worn it before me, but they had all kindly left their scents on it.

  Oprah’s note:

  I know this makes me appear ancient, but this paragraph reminds me of my early life with my grandmother. Watching her boil clothes in a big iron pot, making lye soap, feeling the sting of it burning my own eyes catching on the wind.

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  We had a wooden patch box for keeping our scraps, a pouch for our needles and threads, and a true brass thimble. Mauma said the thimble would be mine one day. When she wasn’t using it, I wore it on my fingertip like a jewel. We filled our quilts up with raw cotton and wool thrums. The best filling was feathers, still is, and mauma and I never passed one on the ground without picking it up. Some days, mauma would come in with a pocketful of goose feathers she’d plucked from mattress holes in the house. When we got desperate to fill a quilt, we’d strip the long moss from the oak in the work yard and sew it between the lining and the quilt top, chiggers and all.

  Oprah’s note:

  I love the idea of a thimble being a treasure, and how the author paired thimble with the word ‘jewel’—that struck me, as did the sense of pride a young slave girl took in her mother’s work. You had to use what you had to make yourself feel special. I love that entire paragraph!

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  Noise was on her list of slave sins, which we knew by heart. Number one: stealing. Number two: disobedience. Number three: laziness. Number four: noise. A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost—don’t see it, don’t hear it, but it’s always hovering round on ready.

  Oprah’s note:

  This reminded me of a line in the movie The Butler: “The room should feel empty when you’re in it,” and of how devaluing it is to be asked to disappear.

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  Her name was Mary, and there ends any resemblance to the mother of our Lord. She was descended from the first families of Charleston, that little company of Lords that King Charles had sent over to establish the city. She worked this into conversations so tirelessly we no longer made the time or effort to roll our eyes. Besides governing the house, a host of children, and fourteen slaves, she kept up a round of social and religious duties that would’ve worn out the queens and saints of Europe. When I was being forgiving, I said that my mother was simply exhausted. I suspected, though, she was simply mean.

  Oprah’s note:

  This perfectly sets the tone for what lies ahead: a mean and privileged southern belle running a house of slaves.

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  Every eye fixed on me. Missus said, “This is our little Hetty. Sarah, dear, she is your present, your very own waiting maid.”

  Oprah’s note:

  I read that and think of my 10-year-old self and what it would feel like to be someone’s present. This helps me imagine that, and reminds me that I was born at the right time.

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  At the age of eleven, I owned a slave I couldn’t free.

  Oprah’s note:

  Both the power and the powerlessness of this struck me. To know at age eleven that slavery is wrong, and yet be able to do nothing about it.

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  What came next was a fast, bitter wind.

  Monday, after we got done with devotions, Aunt-Sister took mauma aside. She said missus had a friend who didn’t like floggings and had come up with the one-legged punishment. Aunt-Sister went to a lot of trouble to draw us a picture of it. She said they wind a leather tie round the slave’s ankle, then pull that foot up behind him and hitch the tie round his neck. If he lets his ankle drop, the tie chokes his throat.

  We knew what she was telling us. Mauma sat down on the kitchen house steps and laid her head flat against her knees.

  Oprah’s note:

  As a student of African-American history, it’s always been stunning to me that otherwise seemingly civilized people could concoct such punishments for other human beings, for people they ‘owned.’

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  I closed my eyes then, but what I saw in the dark was worse as the real thing. I cracked my eyes and watched her trying to keep her leg from dropping down and cutting off her air, fighting to stay upright. She set her eyes on top of the oak tree. Her standing leg quivered. Blood from her head-cut ran down her cheek. It clung to her jaw like rain on the roof eave.

  Oprah’s note:

  I’m thinking of how a child must have seen this, how the image must have embedded itself in her spirit and colored everything from then on—influenced her entire future.

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&n
bsp; Mauma’s legs would walk again same as ever, but she never was the same inside. After that day, it seemed part of her was always back there waiting for the strap to be loosed. It seemed like that’s when she started laying her cold fire of hate.

  Oprah’s note:

  There it is. “The cold fire of hate.” Such a vivid foretelling of the future.

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  Turning, I watched her carry the lantern to my dressing table, light swilling about her feet. When she set it down, I said, “Hetty, shall I teach you to read?”

  Oprah’s note:

  Knowing the risk for both of them—for a slave to learn to read was against the law—I thought this was an incredibly powerful statement. For Sarah, it was about doing what she could. If she couldn’t free Hetty physically, she could at least empower her mind.

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  That summer, I turned eleven years, and mauma said the pallet I slept on upstairs wasn’t fit for a dog. We were supposed to be working on the next ration of slave clothes. Every year the men got two brown shirts and two white, two pants, two vests. Women got three dresses, four aprons, and a head scarf. Mauma said all that could wait. She showed me how to cut black triangles each one big as the end of my thumb, then we appliquéd two hundred or more on red squares, a color mauma called oxblood. We sewed on tiny circles of yellow for sun splatter, then cranked down the quilt frame and pieced everything together. I hemmed on the homespun backing myself, and we filled the inside with all the batting and feathers we had. I cut a plug of my hair and plug of mauma’s and put them inside for charms. It took six afternoons.