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Sapphira and the slave girl
In her final novel, Willa Cather departed from her usual Great Plains settings to plumb the turbulent relationships between slaves and their owners in the antebellum South.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl is set in Virginia just before the Civil War. Sapphira is a slave owner who feels she has come down in the world and channels her resentments into jealousy of her beautiful mulatto slave, Nancy. Sapphira’s daughter Rachel, an abolitionist, opposes her mother’s increasingly shocking attempts to persecute Nancy. The struggles of these three strong-willed women provide rich material for Cather’s narrative art and psychological insight.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl is set in Virginia just before the Civil War. Sapphira is a slave owner who feels she has come down in the world and channels her resentments into jealousy of her beautiful mulatto slave, Nancy. Sapphira’s daughter Rachel, an abolitionist, opposes her mother’s increasingly shocking attempts to persecute Nancy. The struggles of these three strong-willed women provide rich material for Cather’s narrative art and psychological insight.
295 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1940
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1596 people want to read
About the author
Willa Cather
879 books2,772 followersWilella Sibert Cather was born in Back Creek Valley (Gore), Virginia, in December 7, 1873.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
She grew up in Virginia and Nebraska. She then attended the University of Nebraska, initially planning to become a physician, but after writing an article for the Nebraska State Journal, she became a regular contributor to this journal. Because of this, she changed her major and graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
After graduation in 1894, she worked in Pittsburgh as writer for various publications and as a school teacher for approximately 13 years, thereafter moving to New York City for the remainder of her life.
Her novels on frontier life brought her to national recognition. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, 'One of Ours' (1922), set during World War I. She travelled widely and often spent summers in New Brunswick, Canada. In later life, she experienced much negative criticism for her conservative politics and became reclusive, burning some of her letters and personal papers, including her last manuscript.
She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1943. In 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an award given once a decade for an author's total accomplishments.
She died of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 73 in New York City.
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March 29, 2017
Cather's last novel, written just a few years before her death, was the only one set in her home state of Virginia. Her age and failing health is given as the reason that Sapphira didn't meet the level of her earlier novels. This story was based on an incident that was recounted to her by her grandmother. It occurred in 1856, shortly before the Civil War, and provides an example of what must have been endured by many of the young house slave girls.
Willa Cather was one of the best American novelist's of the 20th century. Her two novels, My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop are ranked in the top 100 novels of the 20th century on many lists, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.
Willa Cather was one of the best American novelist's of the 20th century. Her two novels, My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop are ranked in the top 100 novels of the 20th century on many lists, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.
November 8, 2016
Rating: 4* of five
I suspect that the passing of time has improved my ability to read what writers don't write. This book's many creaks and wobbles mattered to me as a younger reader, whereas now I'm not really that interested in cataloging failures.
As one important example of this trend in my analyses, the concept of a woman "marrying beneath her" once made me furious: If you don't want what's offered, don't say yes! Now I see a shade of grey I never thought to look for: How else is a smart woman going to stay on top? That shift in perception alone made this less a mean old bat's vicious competitive streak running roughshod over all about her and more a natural leader's recognition of a threat to her power.
Cather was old and ill when she wrote this roman à clef. She likely knew that the end was nigh and felt the strong need to get this one down on paper before she lost it into the winding-sheet, that final dreamcatcher. I love reading first and last books by dead authors. Nothing makes a career trajectory so clear as experiencing the starting gun's firing and the bullet's landing place in close temporal proximity.
I suspect that the passing of time has improved my ability to read what writers don't write. This book's many creaks and wobbles mattered to me as a younger reader, whereas now I'm not really that interested in cataloging failures.
As one important example of this trend in my analyses, the concept of a woman "marrying beneath her" once made me furious: If you don't want what's offered, don't say yes! Now I see a shade of grey I never thought to look for: How else is a smart woman going to stay on top? That shift in perception alone made this less a mean old bat's vicious competitive streak running roughshod over all about her and more a natural leader's recognition of a threat to her power.
Cather was old and ill when she wrote this roman à clef. She likely knew that the end was nigh and felt the strong need to get this one down on paper before she lost it into the winding-sheet, that final dreamcatcher. I love reading first and last books by dead authors. Nothing makes a career trajectory so clear as experiencing the starting gun's firing and the bullet's landing place in close temporal proximity.
March 26, 2014
Sapphira and the Slave girl was my classic club spin book result. I am currently on something of a Cather kick, this is the second Willa Cather novel I have read this month, and I now have four other Cather novels tbr. Willa Cather is perhaps best known for her novels which portray the Nebraskan frontier life that she knew growing up. However the first eight years of Willa Cather’s life were spent in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and it is to this community that she pays homage in her final novel. Sapphira and the Slave girl, has elements of family autobiography about it – Willa Cather herself making a somewhat surprise appearance in the epilogue of the novel, as a five year old child who witnesses the return of a runaway slave. Willa Cather’s maternal grandmother had assisted in the woman’s escape, just as Cather’s character Rachel Blake does in the novel. The Virginian community that Willa Cather was born into – like that of the community in this novel, was not a traditionally slave owning one. Willa Cather’s own family represented both sides of this bitter divide. So on to the novel itself, it is 1856 and Sapphira Colbert is one of the few Virginians who own slaves. She is an ageing woman, disabled by dropsy, her mill owner husband has little to do with the slaves and would much rather free them, but views them as Sapphira’s property which she brought with her into their marriage. Sapphira presides over her property absolutely with the help of her maid Till, who has been with Sapphira’s family many years. Henry, Sapphira’s husband has taken to spending more and more time at the mill, often sleeping there, and young slave Nancy often goes down to the mill to clean up Henry’s room. Henry comes to enjoy her gentle, quiet presence, appreciating the wild flowers Nancy places in a jar on his window sill.
“The miller, in his bed, heard her come and go. He lay still and prayed earnestly, for his daughter and for Nancy. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without thy knowledge. He would never again hear that light footstep outside his door. She would go up out of Egypt to a better land. Maybe she would be like the morning star, this child; the last star of night…She was to go out from the dark lethargy of the cared for and irresponsible; to make her own way in this world where nobody is altogether free and the best that can happen to you is to walk your own way and be responsible to God only.”
Overhearing a conversation between two of the other women slaves in her household Sapphira begins to have concerns about the relationship between her husband and Nancy, Till’s beautiful daughter. Sapphira demonstrates the power she unjustly holds over these people, and Willa Cather brilliantly depicts the awful contradictions of slave owners who actually seem to believe they care for the slaves they own, and have earned their loyalty. Sapphira of course holds sway over these human beings – their fate is completely in her hands, and yet we see Sapphira tolerating the absences and laziness of one slave, and deeply saddened over the death of the elderly Jezebel whose dreadful story of capture from Africa is told in flashback. However there is also a definite feeling of wistful nostalgia in the novel, nostalgia for a time already in the distant past for Cather herself. Cather was certainly against the practice of slavery – already abolished by the time she was born, however I think maybe, that when one has grown up hearing the stories of a time long before that of our own, there is a tendency to see it with a slight rosy glow, and it is this taint of nostalgia that leaves an impression. Sapphira’s daughter, Rachel Blake, is a young widow, recently returned to Back Creek from Washington, with her two young daughters, she lives nearby. Rachel and her mother don’t really see eye to eye, Rachel has been influenced by her politician husband, and the abolitionist postmistress and a sympathetic preacher she has been befriended by. When Sapphira invites her husband’s nephew Martin to stay, a man known for his rakish behaviour, Rachel becomes convinced it is with the deliberate intention of ruining Nancy. It is to Rachel that Nancy runs for help, as she finds it increasingly hard to keep out of Martin Colbert’s way. Rachel’s decision to help Nancy will set her against her mother, but change Nancy’s life forever. I am not going to go on about the fact that there is language used in this novel that we would find deeply offensive and inappropriate now – that surely is a given. The novel is set in the 1850’s and was first published in 1940 – but I think Cather’s intention is clear enough. She was not writing an angry treatise on slavery – her novel is a retrospective of a society and a time thankfully long over but which concerned the generation of her grandparents, and about which she was brought up hearing stories of. Cather’s depiction of the Old South, and the relationship between an old, white woman and her black slaves who are her legal property – is beautifully poignant, the sense of time and place so absolutely spot on, that the Back Creek Valley of Cather’s grandparents’ day envelops the reader completely. I loved this novel, it may not be perfect – but it was a definite five star read for me, and my Cather kick, continues, threatening to turn into a definite obsession.
“The miller, in his bed, heard her come and go. He lay still and prayed earnestly, for his daughter and for Nancy. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without thy knowledge. He would never again hear that light footstep outside his door. She would go up out of Egypt to a better land. Maybe she would be like the morning star, this child; the last star of night…She was to go out from the dark lethargy of the cared for and irresponsible; to make her own way in this world where nobody is altogether free and the best that can happen to you is to walk your own way and be responsible to God only.”
Overhearing a conversation between two of the other women slaves in her household Sapphira begins to have concerns about the relationship between her husband and Nancy, Till’s beautiful daughter. Sapphira demonstrates the power she unjustly holds over these people, and Willa Cather brilliantly depicts the awful contradictions of slave owners who actually seem to believe they care for the slaves they own, and have earned their loyalty. Sapphira of course holds sway over these human beings – their fate is completely in her hands, and yet we see Sapphira tolerating the absences and laziness of one slave, and deeply saddened over the death of the elderly Jezebel whose dreadful story of capture from Africa is told in flashback. However there is also a definite feeling of wistful nostalgia in the novel, nostalgia for a time already in the distant past for Cather herself. Cather was certainly against the practice of slavery – already abolished by the time she was born, however I think maybe, that when one has grown up hearing the stories of a time long before that of our own, there is a tendency to see it with a slight rosy glow, and it is this taint of nostalgia that leaves an impression. Sapphira’s daughter, Rachel Blake, is a young widow, recently returned to Back Creek from Washington, with her two young daughters, she lives nearby. Rachel and her mother don’t really see eye to eye, Rachel has been influenced by her politician husband, and the abolitionist postmistress and a sympathetic preacher she has been befriended by. When Sapphira invites her husband’s nephew Martin to stay, a man known for his rakish behaviour, Rachel becomes convinced it is with the deliberate intention of ruining Nancy. It is to Rachel that Nancy runs for help, as she finds it increasingly hard to keep out of Martin Colbert’s way. Rachel’s decision to help Nancy will set her against her mother, but change Nancy’s life forever. I am not going to go on about the fact that there is language used in this novel that we would find deeply offensive and inappropriate now – that surely is a given. The novel is set in the 1850’s and was first published in 1940 – but I think Cather’s intention is clear enough. She was not writing an angry treatise on slavery – her novel is a retrospective of a society and a time thankfully long over but which concerned the generation of her grandparents, and about which she was brought up hearing stories of. Cather’s depiction of the Old South, and the relationship between an old, white woman and her black slaves who are her legal property – is beautifully poignant, the sense of time and place so absolutely spot on, that the Back Creek Valley of Cather’s grandparents’ day envelops the reader completely. I loved this novel, it may not be perfect – but it was a definite five star read for me, and my Cather kick, continues, threatening to turn into a definite obsession.
June 8, 2022
Willa Cather, escritora estadounidense ganadora del premio Pulitzer, es una de mis nuevas y grandes obsesiones literarias tras descubrir este año su obra. Escribió en 1940, la que sería su última novela publicada “Sapphira y la joven esclava”. Esta lectura solo ha hecho que reafirmar mi incipiente pero profundo amor hacia ella. Por suerte, tengo un gran abanico donde escoger para seguir disfrutando de una de las mejores narraciones que he descubierto recientemente.
Ambientada en 1856, en un pequeño pueblo de Virginia (en el sur de Estados Unidos), la historia nos presenta las vivencias de algunos de sus singulares habitantes. La trama se centra en el matrimonio entre Sapphira y Henry Colbert, dueños del molino y poseedores de una granja donde ella trajo una cantidad de esclavos a pesar de la disconformidad de Henry. Una de ellas es la joven Nancy, por la que Sapphira guardaba gran cariño hasta que empieza a sospechar de ella por la cercanía que tiene con su marido.
Recordemos que esta obra se sitúa en una época muy controvertida: pocos años antes de que estallara la Guerra de Secesión tras innumerables desavenencias entre el sur y el norte de los Estados Unidos. Tenemos a una protagonista que encarna el sentimiento ultraconservador y cuya presencia sobrecoge: está en silla de ruedas, siempre se muestra severa, seria y sobria, carente de emociones y en contraposición tenemos a numerosos personajes que batallan en contra de esos ideales.
Me da la sensación que leer a Willa siempre va a resultar sumamente agradable, la facilidad con la que construye la ambientación es encomiable. Las descripciones que crea son especialmente bellas, logra desplegar ante el lector sensaciones magníficas que recrean olores, sonidos y visiones del lugar que nos describe. El ejercicio de dedicación que requiere su obra es magistral, con sus pausas necesarias y la dosis exacta y conveniente de acción. La admiro profundamente.
En definitiva, la cotidianidad que vivimos en esta obra es un perfecto retrato fotográfico de la época, de sus sombras y de sus luces. Un costumbrismo que esconde una fuerte crítica de la esclavitud, que no la romantiza y en la que Willa no oculta sus convicciones. En definitiva es una de esas historias que emocionan, que enamoran por sus personajes con los que simpatizas y logras entender pues no todo es blanco o negro y hay que tener en consideración la educación de cada uno.
Ambientada en 1856, en un pequeño pueblo de Virginia (en el sur de Estados Unidos), la historia nos presenta las vivencias de algunos de sus singulares habitantes. La trama se centra en el matrimonio entre Sapphira y Henry Colbert, dueños del molino y poseedores de una granja donde ella trajo una cantidad de esclavos a pesar de la disconformidad de Henry. Una de ellas es la joven Nancy, por la que Sapphira guardaba gran cariño hasta que empieza a sospechar de ella por la cercanía que tiene con su marido.
Recordemos que esta obra se sitúa en una época muy controvertida: pocos años antes de que estallara la Guerra de Secesión tras innumerables desavenencias entre el sur y el norte de los Estados Unidos. Tenemos a una protagonista que encarna el sentimiento ultraconservador y cuya presencia sobrecoge: está en silla de ruedas, siempre se muestra severa, seria y sobria, carente de emociones y en contraposición tenemos a numerosos personajes que batallan en contra de esos ideales.
Me da la sensación que leer a Willa siempre va a resultar sumamente agradable, la facilidad con la que construye la ambientación es encomiable. Las descripciones que crea son especialmente bellas, logra desplegar ante el lector sensaciones magníficas que recrean olores, sonidos y visiones del lugar que nos describe. El ejercicio de dedicación que requiere su obra es magistral, con sus pausas necesarias y la dosis exacta y conveniente de acción. La admiro profundamente.
En definitiva, la cotidianidad que vivimos en esta obra es un perfecto retrato fotográfico de la época, de sus sombras y de sus luces. Un costumbrismo que esconde una fuerte crítica de la esclavitud, que no la romantiza y en la que Willa no oculta sus convicciones. En definitiva es una de esas historias que emocionan, que enamoran por sus personajes con los que simpatizas y logras entender pues no todo es blanco o negro y hay que tener en consideración la educación de cada uno.
December 27, 2020
Cather's final novel has the affect of a nostalgic look at slavery. I really don't know how else to put it. This book is largely a non-critical exploration of a well run Virginia planation house with twenty slaves. The master of the house is wheel-chair bound Sapphira, who inherited her twenty-odd slaves. Her husband married in, is against the idea of slavery, but generally keeps to the side of these things. The slaves all have a role, set partially by conditioning, partially temperament. There is a level of comfort and security in these roles. And when everything is going well, there is a kind of mutual affection between owner and slave, even pride. This is all...well, really disturbing.
Cather seems very interested in roles, and in how rigid this whole system is. There is no simple way to mess with things if you're against slavery, and there no benefit to try if you're enslaved. Freedom is not a ticket to a better life, but a fragile existence severed from family and the basic life security the planation provides. When Henry offers to buy a slave and free him and set up in a profession, the slave, a skilled miller, balks at the problems this will cause and the loss of his family. Sapphira herself is actually trapped in her role of master - although she may not see it that way exactly.
This all takes place in 1856 Virginia, very close to the town of Winchester, where she was born in 1873. That is, this, what she is describing, is the world her parents' grew up in.
I liked this novel. It's clearly not her best work, but whatever its flaws and limitations, and there are many, it has Cather's voice and her integrity. She is not re-writing history, or white washing crimes. This is her view of how this world could have been, and therefore part of how we got wherever we are now. And, thinking it through, this theme of people trapped within their world, living lives within larger forces, is actually one that kind of pervades through all her work. It's just more foregrounded here.
I'm gratefully not done with Willa Cather yet. Next year I plan to read through her short stories, and the one novel that I missed, her first, titled Alexander's Bridge.
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59. Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
published: 1940
format: 295-page paperback (2010 Vintage)
acquired: June
read: Nov 30 – Dec 15
time reading: 5 hr 49 min, 1.2 min/page
rating: 4
locations: 1850’s rural Virginia, near Winchester, Va
about the author born near Winchester, VA, later raised in Red Cloud, NE. December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947
Cather seems very interested in roles, and in how rigid this whole system is. There is no simple way to mess with things if you're against slavery, and there no benefit to try if you're enslaved. Freedom is not a ticket to a better life, but a fragile existence severed from family and the basic life security the planation provides. When Henry offers to buy a slave and free him and set up in a profession, the slave, a skilled miller, balks at the problems this will cause and the loss of his family. Sapphira herself is actually trapped in her role of master - although she may not see it that way exactly.
This all takes place in 1856 Virginia, very close to the town of Winchester, where she was born in 1873. That is, this, what she is describing, is the world her parents' grew up in.
I liked this novel. It's clearly not her best work, but whatever its flaws and limitations, and there are many, it has Cather's voice and her integrity. She is not re-writing history, or white washing crimes. This is her view of how this world could have been, and therefore part of how we got wherever we are now. And, thinking it through, this theme of people trapped within their world, living lives within larger forces, is actually one that kind of pervades through all her work. It's just more foregrounded here.
I'm gratefully not done with Willa Cather yet. Next year I plan to read through her short stories, and the one novel that I missed, her first, titled Alexander's Bridge.
-----------------------------------------------
59. Sapphira and the Slave Girl by Willa Cather
published: 1940
format: 295-page paperback (2010 Vintage)
acquired: June
read: Nov 30 – Dec 15
time reading: 5 hr 49 min, 1.2 min/page
rating: 4
locations: 1850’s rural Virginia, near Winchester, Va
about the author born near Winchester, VA, later raised in Red Cloud, NE. December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947
April 18, 2022
“Jamás debería haber venido a este sitio tan apartado —me decía Till a menudo—. No la educaron para esto. La señora Matchem, allí en la vieja casa, no superó nunca que la señorita Sapphy no comprase Chestnut Hill y viviese como una dama, en lugar de dejarse caer en total abandono en manos de los Bushwell y venirse aquí, donde nadie era gran cosa”
Este es el párrafo final de “Saphira y la joven esclava” de Willa Cather y es significativo porque dice mucho sobre Saphira Colbert, uno de los ejes en torno al que gira este libro que, a forma de novela, es en realidad un recuento de pequeñas historias de gentes sencillas y de esclavos negros en Virginia, gentes muy ligadas a la infancia de Willa Cather y a sus recuerdos. Claro que en 1940, cuando se publicó este libro, la esclavitud en Estados Unidos y las tradiciones en que se basaba, meras excusas para mantener un status quo inhumano, ya se había erradicado.
.
Así pues estamos en un pueblecito de Virginia uno o dos años antes de que estallara la guerra entre el norte antiesclavista y el sur ultraconservador. Es un pueblo de gentes sencillas sin muchos pudientes cuyos habitantes, en mayoría, el único privilegio que tenían era el color de su piel. La esclavitud estaba bien vista aunque no la exagerada ostentación de los Colbert y los veinte esclavos que Saphiara aportó a su matrimonio. El señor Colbert está disgustado con la situación, pero mira hacia otro lado mientras le dejen vivir tranquilo en su molino, donde se está convirtiendo en una especie de bondadoso ermitaño.
Cada mañana la joven esclava Nancy acude al molino para limpiarlo. Es una muchacha alegre, hija de Tilly, la doncella y ama de llaves del ama en la casa, de su padre sólo se sabe que fue un hombre blanco. Es tan inocente y bien dispuesta que Henry, el molinero, quiere que sea ella la única que limpie su habitación y eso despierta los celos de la cocinera, quien tiene una hija de la edad de Nancy que no sirve para nada. Esta mujer, Lizzie, se encarga de malmeter contra Nancy a oídos de Saphira quien comienza a ver fantasmas donde no los hay.
Quizá la envidiosa Lizzie y su mala costumbre de meter cizaña sea el personaje que menos me ha gustado junto con Martin, el sobrino calavera de Henry. Todos los demás me han parecido muy entrañables. Incluso Saphira con su rectitud y sus manías. Tanto blancos como esclavos llevan una vida sencilla en la que se guardan todo dentro, para no creerse débiles, todos tienen ese carácter fuerte, luchador, humilde y resignado. Lo que es curioso porque lo único que les diferencia es que unos son los amos y los otros son esclavos. Esto es algo sobre lo que reflexionan a menudo Henry y su hija Kate, salvo que ella está más echada para adelante que su padre. Willa Cather, a pesar de estar retratando a Saphira y Henry como buenas gentes que realmente se preocupan por sus sirvientes y no los maltratan, no romantiza la esclavitud ni la defiende de ninguna manera, al contrario: trata de que sus lectores comprendan que la esclavitud no tiene sentido y da razones más que suficientes para apoyar sus convicciones.
Además escribe maravillosamente. Consigue un retrato casi fotográfico de la época, la sociedad y el lugar. Es el segundo libro suyo que leo y ambos me han resultado infinitamente agradables de leer, sencillos y sinceros. Podía notar la caricia de cada palabra como si Cather me las estuviera desgranando en el oído.
Este es el párrafo final de “Saphira y la joven esclava” de Willa Cather y es significativo porque dice mucho sobre Saphira Colbert, uno de los ejes en torno al que gira este libro que, a forma de novela, es en realidad un recuento de pequeñas historias de gentes sencillas y de esclavos negros en Virginia, gentes muy ligadas a la infancia de Willa Cather y a sus recuerdos. Claro que en 1940, cuando se publicó este libro, la esclavitud en Estados Unidos y las tradiciones en que se basaba, meras excusas para mantener un status quo inhumano, ya se había erradicado.
.
Así pues estamos en un pueblecito de Virginia uno o dos años antes de que estallara la guerra entre el norte antiesclavista y el sur ultraconservador. Es un pueblo de gentes sencillas sin muchos pudientes cuyos habitantes, en mayoría, el único privilegio que tenían era el color de su piel. La esclavitud estaba bien vista aunque no la exagerada ostentación de los Colbert y los veinte esclavos que Saphiara aportó a su matrimonio. El señor Colbert está disgustado con la situación, pero mira hacia otro lado mientras le dejen vivir tranquilo en su molino, donde se está convirtiendo en una especie de bondadoso ermitaño.
Cada mañana la joven esclava Nancy acude al molino para limpiarlo. Es una muchacha alegre, hija de Tilly, la doncella y ama de llaves del ama en la casa, de su padre sólo se sabe que fue un hombre blanco. Es tan inocente y bien dispuesta que Henry, el molinero, quiere que sea ella la única que limpie su habitación y eso despierta los celos de la cocinera, quien tiene una hija de la edad de Nancy que no sirve para nada. Esta mujer, Lizzie, se encarga de malmeter contra Nancy a oídos de Saphira quien comienza a ver fantasmas donde no los hay.
Quizá la envidiosa Lizzie y su mala costumbre de meter cizaña sea el personaje que menos me ha gustado junto con Martin, el sobrino calavera de Henry. Todos los demás me han parecido muy entrañables. Incluso Saphira con su rectitud y sus manías. Tanto blancos como esclavos llevan una vida sencilla en la que se guardan todo dentro, para no creerse débiles, todos tienen ese carácter fuerte, luchador, humilde y resignado. Lo que es curioso porque lo único que les diferencia es que unos son los amos y los otros son esclavos. Esto es algo sobre lo que reflexionan a menudo Henry y su hija Kate, salvo que ella está más echada para adelante que su padre. Willa Cather, a pesar de estar retratando a Saphira y Henry como buenas gentes que realmente se preocupan por sus sirvientes y no los maltratan, no romantiza la esclavitud ni la defiende de ninguna manera, al contrario: trata de que sus lectores comprendan que la esclavitud no tiene sentido y da razones más que suficientes para apoyar sus convicciones.
Además escribe maravillosamente. Consigue un retrato casi fotográfico de la época, la sociedad y el lugar. Es el segundo libro suyo que leo y ambos me han resultado infinitamente agradables de leer, sencillos y sinceros. Podía notar la caricia de cada palabra como si Cather me las estuviera desgranando en el oído.
April 6, 2015
Cather set this story near her birthplace of Winchester, Virginia. In 1856, Sapphira and Henry Colbert live on a mill farm where Henry is a miller. Sapphira brought about twenty slaves with her to the marriage; Henry owns none of them. The titular slave girl is Nancy, a pretty mulatto whom Sapphira, now past middle age and crippled by dropsy, becomes jealous of when she notices that Henry seems to have developed an affection for her. Sapphira begins to persecute Nancy in subtle ways, including inviting her lecherous nephew Martin for a long visit. Martin soon makes life miserable for Nancy. Two clandestine abolitionists live nearby the mill farm, the postmistress, and Sapphira and Henry's grown daughter Rachel. Henry himself begins to question whether slavery is right, poring over his Bible for evidence.
Lots of references to niggers and darkies (from both the slave and the white characters) may turn off some (the novel was published in 1940), but Cather treats her slave characters with deep compassion.
November 11, 2017
Me ha encantado como escribe Willa Cather...
April 17, 2023
(3.5) I was surprised to find that this was my seventh book by Cather, so I’ve actually read over half of her novels now. I think all her other works I know were set on the prairies of the Midwest (or in Santa Fe in the case of Death Comes for the Archbishop), so Sapphira and the Slave Girl feels like an odd one out not just for its antebellum historical subject matter but also for its setting in Cather’s hometown of Winchester, Virginia.
In 1856, the Colberts’ is a house divided: Henry, a miller from Quaker stock, disapproves of slavery; his wife, Sapphira, grew up with slaves and treats them severely. While the other Colbert brothers’ meddling with Black women is an open secret – one of them is assumed to have fathered Henry and Sapphira’s mixed-race teenage slave, Nancy – Henry looks fondly on Nancy and thinks of her almost like a second daughter. Sapphira resents that attention.
Had this been written 40–80 years later, it would have been completely different: first of all, I would expect it to much more graphically recount Black suffering, rather than depicting generally happy “darkies” with folksy accents and quirky character traits; secondly, there would be either a redemptive or a punitive plot arc for Sapphira. Instead,
I wish I remembered from the Hermione Lee biography more about the immediate inspiration for this novel, and its reception. Simply taking an interest in Black characters must have set it apart. For instance, there is a whole chapter on Nancy’s grandmother, Aunt Jezebel, the first generation kidnapped from Africa; and It was good to experience a lesser-known American classic that I can imagine appealing to fans of Thomas Hardy and Edith Wharton as well.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
In 1856, the Colberts’ is a house divided: Henry, a miller from Quaker stock, disapproves of slavery; his wife, Sapphira, grew up with slaves and treats them severely. While the other Colbert brothers’ meddling with Black women is an open secret – one of them is assumed to have fathered Henry and Sapphira’s mixed-race teenage slave, Nancy – Henry looks fondly on Nancy and thinks of her almost like a second daughter. Sapphira resents that attention.
Had this been written 40–80 years later, it would have been completely different: first of all, I would expect it to much more graphically recount Black suffering, rather than depicting generally happy “darkies” with folksy accents and quirky character traits; secondly, there would be either a redemptive or a punitive plot arc for Sapphira. Instead,
I wish I remembered from the Hermione Lee biography more about the immediate inspiration for this novel, and its reception. Simply taking an interest in Black characters must have set it apart. For instance, there is a whole chapter on Nancy’s grandmother, Aunt Jezebel, the first generation kidnapped from Africa; and It was good to experience a lesser-known American classic that I can imagine appealing to fans of Thomas Hardy and Edith Wharton as well.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
January 8, 2008
I know this is classified as one of Cather's "lesser" works but I love it. The view of life from the slave, master and mistress lens is somehow a thread that weaves a mournfully beautiful tale. I started reading this at sixteen and haven't stopped.
May 26, 2009
I began reading a biography of Willa Cather and only a few pages into the book the biographer began to talk about "Sapphira and the Slave Girl". I had just picked up an old copy of "Sapphira..." at the library bookshop a couple months back, so I decided to delve into it first before learning too much about the plot and having it spoiled for me. I was surprised to find a book of Cather's that was not set out west in Nebraska or thereabouts.
This was Willa Cather's last book and it is the only novel of hers set in Virginia. This is a book that my father would have enjoyed, given his interest in the Civil War and slave stories. "The novel is set in pre-Civil War Virginia and concerns the household of Sapphira Dodderidge, a wealthy slave-owning Southern woman, married to the miller, Henry Colbert. When we first meet them at breakfast they are arguing over the slave girl, Nancy. Jealous of what she perceives to be her husband's interest in the girl, Sapphira wants to sell her but Colbert will not agree. Nancy's mother, Till, is their housekeeper and Aunt Jezebel, her great-grandmother, is still alive. The miller will not allow Nancy to be sold away from her family. Thwarted in her intention to sell Nancy, Sapphira seeks another way to get rid of her." (Phyllis C. Robinson, "Willa - The Life of Willa Cather) And the story is off...
Willa was born in Virginia and she once told a friend that not very much of the book was really fiction. "In fact, it was so largely made up of old family stories and neighborhood tales, she hardly knew where her own contribution began." For that reason alone, I found the book interesting. One of the scenes at the end of the book was described by Willa as the greatest experience of her life and it had haunted her for sixty years. It was short and simply written but it brought tears to my eyes. So this was a very personal story written when she was nearly seventy years old. Her biographer suggests that her health was poor and she was very tired at this time which would explain why it was not a more powerful book. She felt that the narrative drive had slowed and the plot had faltered before the climax. I can definitely see where it could have been a more powerful story, but nonetheless, I was intrigued the entire way through and was compelled to keep reading.
This was Willa Cather's last book and it is the only novel of hers set in Virginia. This is a book that my father would have enjoyed, given his interest in the Civil War and slave stories. "The novel is set in pre-Civil War Virginia and concerns the household of Sapphira Dodderidge, a wealthy slave-owning Southern woman, married to the miller, Henry Colbert. When we first meet them at breakfast they are arguing over the slave girl, Nancy. Jealous of what she perceives to be her husband's interest in the girl, Sapphira wants to sell her but Colbert will not agree. Nancy's mother, Till, is their housekeeper and Aunt Jezebel, her great-grandmother, is still alive. The miller will not allow Nancy to be sold away from her family. Thwarted in her intention to sell Nancy, Sapphira seeks another way to get rid of her." (Phyllis C. Robinson, "Willa - The Life of Willa Cather) And the story is off...
Willa was born in Virginia and she once told a friend that not very much of the book was really fiction. "In fact, it was so largely made up of old family stories and neighborhood tales, she hardly knew where her own contribution began." For that reason alone, I found the book interesting. One of the scenes at the end of the book was described by Willa as the greatest experience of her life and it had haunted her for sixty years. It was short and simply written but it brought tears to my eyes. So this was a very personal story written when she was nearly seventy years old. Her biographer suggests that her health was poor and she was very tired at this time which would explain why it was not a more powerful book. She felt that the narrative drive had slowed and the plot had faltered before the climax. I can definitely see where it could have been a more powerful story, but nonetheless, I was intrigued the entire way through and was compelled to keep reading.
May 29, 2016
Nancy, the slave girl of the title, can't be the woman depicted on this book cover. Well, perhaps this is stating the obvious because Nancy's a fictional character and the photo is clearly of a real person. More accurately, then, is that the women depicted on the cover can't be seen as a good representation of the character Nancy. That's because Willa Cather describes Nancy as a beautiful, young mulatto--so attractive that men, white men, are drawn to her. Her owner, Sapphira, even becomes jealous of Nancy when she believes her husband is attracted to Nancy.
And there lies the undertone and motivations in the story.
While Sapphira is good, it's not great, and certainly not up to the standards of Willa Cather at her finest (in my humble opinion). I'm a big fan of Cather and was was looking forward to delving into this novel. It's an easy read, as all of Cather's novels pleasantly are, it's just that it seems rushed, incomplete. Cather has the uncanny ability of truly affecting the reader's emotions, and this novel comes close a few times, it just always seems to fall short of closing the deal.
There are some profound undertones to this story, and while the novel may seem simple on its surface, I've read some online literary criticisms that imply there's much more to it. After reading such criticisms (mainly from professors in Nebraska), I found myself thinking, "Ah, sure, I can see that now." But the applications of the posited theories seem somewhat strained...more read into the novel than Cather was truly able to infuse, or at least thoroughly flesh out.
This was Cather's last novel, and I wonder what her personal circumstances were while she wrote it. Was she of failing health, suffering financial strain...? The structure of the story was there, and pleasantly crafted, it just didn't...capture the emotional and psychological essence Cather is known for in her finest works.
May 25, 2012
This book, written in 1940, is a melodrama involving characters in the pre-Civil War South. Sapphira is the wife of a small-town miller. She suffers from dropsy (I used this book as an excuse to finally look up what exactly "dropsy" is--it's edema, the accumulation of fluid in the legs and feet) and is catered to by the slaves she brought with her when she married. She becomes envious of and begins to hate Nancy, the young mixed-race daughter of her maid Till; Nancy tends to the miller's office/bedroom. When Sapphira's rakish nephew Martin comes for a prolonged visit, he begins pursuing Nancy against her wishes. Trouble ensues.
This was a difficult novel to read in 2012. The perspective enjoyed 80 years after slavery is markedly different than the one of 150 years. It is one thing when an author has her racist protagonist refer to the slaves as "darkies" (and worse, of course); it is another when the author herself uses "darky" to describe the children at the mill farm. I found myself enjoying the soapy story and wincing at the attitudes of the characters and author. All the slaves are stereotypes: proud, hard-working women and men who wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they were freed, or lazy, scheming gossips and trouble-makers. There is real shading given to the miller, though, who had always thought of Nancy innocently until he heard of the cousin's crude attempts to seduce her; once Henry realizes Nancy is a sexual being, he can't even look at her for fear he will respond in the same way. That's a nice touch.
It's not Cather's best, but in the context of the time it was written, it's not a bad read.
This was a difficult novel to read in 2012. The perspective enjoyed 80 years after slavery is markedly different than the one of 150 years. It is one thing when an author has her racist protagonist refer to the slaves as "darkies" (and worse, of course); it is another when the author herself uses "darky" to describe the children at the mill farm. I found myself enjoying the soapy story and wincing at the attitudes of the characters and author. All the slaves are stereotypes: proud, hard-working women and men who wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they were freed, or lazy, scheming gossips and trouble-makers. There is real shading given to the miller, though, who had always thought of Nancy innocently until he heard of the cousin's crude attempts to seduce her; once Henry realizes Nancy is a sexual being, he can't even look at her for fear he will respond in the same way. That's a nice touch.
It's not Cather's best, but in the context of the time it was written, it's not a bad read.
January 10, 2017
I was not aware of this novel until I read Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination". Morrison spends quite some time discussing popular literary strategies (still in use today) when portraying black people, particularly of the slave kind. She examines how slave narratives (until very recently) have been continually pushed to the margins of American storytelling in order to better serve the portrayals of white characters, to give depth to white characters for recognizing (or at least indicating recognition) the plight of negroes, or to make white characters' freedom more palpable in contrast to subservient blacks. Morrison writes that this final novel of Cather's has gone as fugitive as Nancy, the titular slave girl. This was back in 1992, but the novel is now back in print, and even available as an audio download from my local library. We get to witness with incredulity the novel's return, just as we witness Nancy's strange homecoming in the conclusion.
For about the first third of the novel, I thought that perhaps Toni Morrison was focusing on a few shortcomings too closely. I'm always amazed at how perfectly Willa Cather writes: accessible but imperceptibly artful. Here she also gets many elements of slave life down -- the second- or third-hand furniture, gourds used as containers, the manners of domestic slaves, daily rhythms. When Cather sticks to the core family of Sapphira's, everything is great. We can see their frustrations and can recognize their racism or at least complicity with slavery. When Cather starts to describe the slaves, however, we see her limitations. We see Bluebell, a shiftless worker but agreeable to white men, and her mother fat Lizzie, source of gossip and trouble. There is Sampson, who is thought of by Henry as an excellent worker, a real man -- that is, until Henry tries to manumit him and he starts blubbering. At several points somebody thinks that freeing the slaves is an injustice to the slaves, who would not know how to work for a living -- hello? that's all they do! Nancy's mother Till is presented as somewhat lacking a mothering gene towards her own daughter (and this could conceivably be due to how Nancy was conceived, which we don't know for sure), though she is very dutiful toward the white women. The story, unfortunately, becomes the story of Sapphira's daughter Rachel's heroism rather than the extreme measure Nancy had to take in order to protect herself. Rachel even has to push Nancy to safety, almost against Nancy's will. All is eventually made right (25 years later) and Rachel's daughter (the author) is able to witness the story's conclusion. Everything that has happened to the black people has made the whites better people. And Sapphira gets brushed off as an old coot rather than a vindictive exploiter of human beings.
For about the first third of the novel, I thought that perhaps Toni Morrison was focusing on a few shortcomings too closely. I'm always amazed at how perfectly Willa Cather writes: accessible but imperceptibly artful. Here she also gets many elements of slave life down -- the second- or third-hand furniture, gourds used as containers, the manners of domestic slaves, daily rhythms. When Cather sticks to the core family of Sapphira's, everything is great. We can see their frustrations and can recognize their racism or at least complicity with slavery. When Cather starts to describe the slaves, however, we see her limitations. We see Bluebell, a shiftless worker but agreeable to white men, and her mother fat Lizzie, source of gossip and trouble. There is Sampson, who is thought of by Henry as an excellent worker, a real man -- that is, until Henry tries to manumit him and he starts blubbering. At several points somebody thinks that freeing the slaves is an injustice to the slaves, who would not know how to work for a living -- hello? that's all they do! Nancy's mother Till is presented as somewhat lacking a mothering gene towards her own daughter (and this could conceivably be due to how Nancy was conceived, which we don't know for sure), though she is very dutiful toward the white women. The story, unfortunately, becomes the story of Sapphira's daughter Rachel's heroism rather than the extreme measure Nancy had to take in order to protect herself. Rachel even has to push Nancy to safety, almost against Nancy's will. All is eventually made right (25 years later) and Rachel's daughter (the author) is able to witness the story's conclusion. Everything that has happened to the black people has made the whites better people. And Sapphira gets brushed off as an old coot rather than a vindictive exploiter of human beings.
December 5, 2015
There are already a lot of good reviews on GoodReads.
I will say this. Cather's ability with short, descriptive sentences and easy flow are all here; her writing is very readable.
Her thoughts on the slave culture that her older relatives in Virginia lived in is hidden. (This book is a fictionalization of a story Cather was told as a child.) Cather uses dated, derogatory language here, because that's the language they would've used in the 1850s. The Southern ethics and thoughts of the time run through the entire story; the way they treat blacks as property is abhorrent to our modern ideas.
I believe what Cather was trying to do - in a very sly way - is to really outline why and how the Southern slave owner acted - what beliefs she had and how that affected her treatment of other humans, and how that system affected black slaves' views on themselves. Cather doesn't moralize - though she does occasionally touch upon the fact that there is opposition to slave owning in the North and even in her area of Virginia. Cather chooses to tell a simple story and lets the reader come to conclusions.
Still, this book feels a little more "dated" than timeless, because even Cather's 1940 ideas seem antiquated now. It's an interesting and very readable curiosity - the last book of one of America's greatest writers. However, if you're just starting to know Cather, start with My Antonia or O Pioneers. After you read her troubling Pulitzer Prize Winner One of Us, if you're still curious, pick up this book.
I will say this. Cather's ability with short, descriptive sentences and easy flow are all here; her writing is very readable.
Her thoughts on the slave culture that her older relatives in Virginia lived in is hidden. (This book is a fictionalization of a story Cather was told as a child.) Cather uses dated, derogatory language here, because that's the language they would've used in the 1850s. The Southern ethics and thoughts of the time run through the entire story; the way they treat blacks as property is abhorrent to our modern ideas.
I believe what Cather was trying to do - in a very sly way - is to really outline why and how the Southern slave owner acted - what beliefs she had and how that affected her treatment of other humans, and how that system affected black slaves' views on themselves. Cather doesn't moralize - though she does occasionally touch upon the fact that there is opposition to slave owning in the North and even in her area of Virginia. Cather chooses to tell a simple story and lets the reader come to conclusions.
Still, this book feels a little more "dated" than timeless, because even Cather's 1940 ideas seem antiquated now. It's an interesting and very readable curiosity - the last book of one of America's greatest writers. However, if you're just starting to know Cather, start with My Antonia or O Pioneers. After you read her troubling Pulitzer Prize Winner One of Us, if you're still curious, pick up this book.
March 27, 2015
Willa Cather has been a favorite since I read MY ANTONIA -the first time- as a teen. I still have some of her lesser known novels to read, such as this one. Other reviewers have done a fine job of summarizing this book so I won't. Cather brings the reader into the Virginia region where she was born, west of Winchester in the back country, in the lyears right before the Civil War. She draws her characters well, allowing the story to unfold as she describes Sapphira, Henry, Nancy, Rachel, Fat Lizzie, and the Colbert men. This is the gift Cather gives us. She allows the reader to live within the community, to know the people, and to confront moral issues from there.
The reader needs to remind herself that this was published in1940. Cather isn't as explicit in her novel as contemporary writers. I read a critical review of SAPPHIRA by Toni Morrison and I understand the comments. However, reading this in the context of the time in which it was written, I appreciate the boldness of the novel. Once again Cather has allowed me to live for awhile in a different place, in a different time and my imagination still remains there due to her beautiful writing and characterizations.
The reader needs to remind herself that this was published in1940. Cather isn't as explicit in her novel as contemporary writers. I read a critical review of SAPPHIRA by Toni Morrison and I understand the comments. However, reading this in the context of the time in which it was written, I appreciate the boldness of the novel. Once again Cather has allowed me to live for awhile in a different place, in a different time and my imagination still remains there due to her beautiful writing and characterizations.
Read
December 12, 2023I’ve been putting off writing about this, for some reason. It’s not at all like most of Cather’s other work: not set in the US West, not much landscape description, considerably shorter (from what I can tell, given that my editions of her other works are from a different publisher), and a novel set in a further historical period than even her other historical novels, like Death Comes For the Archbishop. It was the last novel she wrote before she died, and has distinct autobiographical elements. Set in Back Creek Valley, southwestern Virginia, where Cather was born and lived til the age of nine, it also has characters with names that were, she explains, familiar to her from her parents’ talk about the old place, and features a child character in its final chapter who is clearly a Cather-analogue.
But the two primary characters are the ones in the title: Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a white woman from more respectable parts of Virginia who married a mill owner considerably below her in social station, and Nancy, her enslaved maid and the daughter of her enslaved housekeeper. Sapphira, middle-aged, has become severely physically disabled, suffering from dropsy (oedema) that makes her feet and legs swell painfully. Nancy, nineteen, is a light-skinned beauty, and also has a gentleness and sensitivity about her that has made her the favourite of her mistress—until now. Sapphira’s jealousy is aroused by rumours about Nancy’s paternity and about her husband’s obvious fondness for the girl, and as the novel opens, she has “taken against” her for several months. The book’s overarching plot is to do with Sapphira’s increasingly horrifying complicity in Nancy’s persecution by her rakish nephew Martin, and the rescue that is achieved by the Colberts’ adult daughter, Rachel, with her father’s knowledge and passive assistance.
Rachel is a reader extension, in a way; she recognises the things about the way her family lives that the other characters cannot. She is an abolitionist at heart and secretly receives radical newspapers from the like-minded postmistress, which she burns after reading. Her position in the novel is technically a white saviour one: Nancy’s salvation is entirely down to her activity. And yet she also sees the nasty complexity of the social situation, the way most of her mother’s enslaved servants believe in the system just as her mother does. (The Colberts are unusual for being slaveowners; southwestern Virginia has long been, and still is, a poor, remote and mountainous area, where white people tended to have enough difficulty farming smallholdings, lacking the resources or the status-seeking desire to purchase or keep enslaved people.) The oldest of the enslaved people on the Colbert property, Old Jezebel, remembers her capture in west Africa and the Middle Passage, and her difficulties in learning to speak English, but she dies partway through the book: the physical brutalities of the trade are mentioned but not dwelt upon. Rachel disapproves of her mother’s slaveholding, and rescues Nancy because she knows it’s the right thing to do, but she never openly challenges the status quo.
And yet, within the moral universe of the novel, the warping effect of slaveholding is made very clear. Sapphira, without ever acknowledging to herself or anyone else what she is doing, attempts to orchestrate the rape of a teenager whom she owns. More than once, she puts Nancy, alone, in Martin Colbert’s path, sometimes in a geographically isolated location such as the woods, knowing that he has a history of “dishonouring” young women. All of the little kindnesses we have seen her show to dying Jezebel, her affection for the old houseman Washington and her beloved housekeeper, Nancy’s mother, Till, evaporate when the reader is faced with that understanding. It reminded me strongly of Valerie Martin’s Property, a much later exploration (by a white woman) of the corruption of a white woman’s soul by the institution of slavery. Nancy herself is not deeply characterised and lacks agency—she is young, sweet, thoughtful, profoundly un-flirtatious, a “good girl”—but when she returns at the novel’s end, post-emancipation, dressed in silks and furs and with a well-paying job as a housekeeper in Montreal, she has a dignity and authority that implies greater complexity. In 1940 and from a white author, Sapphira and the Slave Girl is probably as explicit an acknowledgment of the material and moral devastation of race-based slavery as we were ever going to get.
This is my final American Classics book—I’ve done it, I’ve read one a month for a whole year! Stay tuned for a roundup and reflections post later this month.
But the two primary characters are the ones in the title: Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a white woman from more respectable parts of Virginia who married a mill owner considerably below her in social station, and Nancy, her enslaved maid and the daughter of her enslaved housekeeper. Sapphira, middle-aged, has become severely physically disabled, suffering from dropsy (oedema) that makes her feet and legs swell painfully. Nancy, nineteen, is a light-skinned beauty, and also has a gentleness and sensitivity about her that has made her the favourite of her mistress—until now. Sapphira’s jealousy is aroused by rumours about Nancy’s paternity and about her husband’s obvious fondness for the girl, and as the novel opens, she has “taken against” her for several months. The book’s overarching plot is to do with Sapphira’s increasingly horrifying complicity in Nancy’s persecution by her rakish nephew Martin, and the rescue that is achieved by the Colberts’ adult daughter, Rachel, with her father’s knowledge and passive assistance.
Rachel is a reader extension, in a way; she recognises the things about the way her family lives that the other characters cannot. She is an abolitionist at heart and secretly receives radical newspapers from the like-minded postmistress, which she burns after reading. Her position in the novel is technically a white saviour one: Nancy’s salvation is entirely down to her activity. And yet she also sees the nasty complexity of the social situation, the way most of her mother’s enslaved servants believe in the system just as her mother does. (The Colberts are unusual for being slaveowners; southwestern Virginia has long been, and still is, a poor, remote and mountainous area, where white people tended to have enough difficulty farming smallholdings, lacking the resources or the status-seeking desire to purchase or keep enslaved people.) The oldest of the enslaved people on the Colbert property, Old Jezebel, remembers her capture in west Africa and the Middle Passage, and her difficulties in learning to speak English, but she dies partway through the book: the physical brutalities of the trade are mentioned but not dwelt upon. Rachel disapproves of her mother’s slaveholding, and rescues Nancy because she knows it’s the right thing to do, but she never openly challenges the status quo.
And yet, within the moral universe of the novel, the warping effect of slaveholding is made very clear. Sapphira, without ever acknowledging to herself or anyone else what she is doing, attempts to orchestrate the rape of a teenager whom she owns. More than once, she puts Nancy, alone, in Martin Colbert’s path, sometimes in a geographically isolated location such as the woods, knowing that he has a history of “dishonouring” young women. All of the little kindnesses we have seen her show to dying Jezebel, her affection for the old houseman Washington and her beloved housekeeper, Nancy’s mother, Till, evaporate when the reader is faced with that understanding. It reminded me strongly of Valerie Martin’s Property, a much later exploration (by a white woman) of the corruption of a white woman’s soul by the institution of slavery. Nancy herself is not deeply characterised and lacks agency—she is young, sweet, thoughtful, profoundly un-flirtatious, a “good girl”—but when she returns at the novel’s end, post-emancipation, dressed in silks and furs and with a well-paying job as a housekeeper in Montreal, she has a dignity and authority that implies greater complexity. In 1940 and from a white author, Sapphira and the Slave Girl is probably as explicit an acknowledgment of the material and moral devastation of race-based slavery as we were ever going to get.
This is my final American Classics book—I’ve done it, I’ve read one a month for a whole year! Stay tuned for a roundup and reflections post later this month.
July 4, 2020
I think that this only leaves me with 2 more novels, and the collected short stories, to read in Cather's oevre. It's going to be a bittersweet ending - she is one of my favorite authors of all time.
Happily, though, she's one of those authors that I can read again and again and get something out of the experience each time.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl isn't acknowledged as one of her best books. I have to admit that it is really uncomfortable to read a book that includes slavery as an element. She doesn't glorify it, and Cather's sentiments are very obviously abolitionist in nature, but there are many times that the "n" word is used by the characters, and this is extremely uncomfortable to read, so, even though I liked the book, "enjoyed" doesn't seem to be the right word to use to describe the experience of reading it.
It had a really intriguing ending, though, that included a final chapter self-insert by the author as a small child. The novel itself is apparently based on an incident in which a young woman is assisted in escaping from slavery by the daughter of the slaveholder (who is a woman, by the way, which is pretty interesting). The young woman - her name in the book is Nancy - escapes to Canada, where she becomes the maid of a very wealthy family and gains a measure of affluence and independence that, at the end of the day, almost outstrips that of the slaveholder she left behind. This is apparently based on a real event in Cather's history, when she was a child, and the freed slave returns to the county she ran from after the Civil War so she can visit her very elderly mother.
It's a very uncomfortable read, and I would have a hard time recommending it because the subject matter is so difficult. The fact that it was written by a white woman in 1940 makes it even more uncomfortable to read. It's not apologia for slavery - there are several characters who are openly abolitionist and, as I said above, Cather is not defending slavery, but it is told primarily from the perspective of the white characters, some of whom believed that slaveholding wasn't wrong.
And, when Cather uses the voices of the slaves as narrators, I was left to wonder how accurate she could possibly be - how can a free white woman, almost 100 years later, create realistic slave characters given that she has no experience from which to draw in understanding the life and thoughts of an enslaved person pre-Civil War? And isn't it presumptuous of her to even try? And, of course, isn't it presumptuous for me to even ask the question of myself? I also have no real understanding of this part of history from the perspective of the enslaved. Just writing this has made me uncomfortable.
Anyway, I think that I need to read 12 Years a Slave: A Slave Narrative and some additional slave narratives in order to put history into a more accurate perspective.
Happily, though, she's one of those authors that I can read again and again and get something out of the experience each time.
Sapphira and the Slave Girl isn't acknowledged as one of her best books. I have to admit that it is really uncomfortable to read a book that includes slavery as an element. She doesn't glorify it, and Cather's sentiments are very obviously abolitionist in nature, but there are many times that the "n" word is used by the characters, and this is extremely uncomfortable to read, so, even though I liked the book, "enjoyed" doesn't seem to be the right word to use to describe the experience of reading it.
It had a really intriguing ending, though, that included a final chapter self-insert by the author as a small child. The novel itself is apparently based on an incident in which a young woman is assisted in escaping from slavery by the daughter of the slaveholder (who is a woman, by the way, which is pretty interesting). The young woman - her name in the book is Nancy - escapes to Canada, where she becomes the maid of a very wealthy family and gains a measure of affluence and independence that, at the end of the day, almost outstrips that of the slaveholder she left behind. This is apparently based on a real event in Cather's history, when she was a child, and the freed slave returns to the county she ran from after the Civil War so she can visit her very elderly mother.
It's a very uncomfortable read, and I would have a hard time recommending it because the subject matter is so difficult. The fact that it was written by a white woman in 1940 makes it even more uncomfortable to read. It's not apologia for slavery - there are several characters who are openly abolitionist and, as I said above, Cather is not defending slavery, but it is told primarily from the perspective of the white characters, some of whom believed that slaveholding wasn't wrong.
And, when Cather uses the voices of the slaves as narrators, I was left to wonder how accurate she could possibly be - how can a free white woman, almost 100 years later, create realistic slave characters given that she has no experience from which to draw in understanding the life and thoughts of an enslaved person pre-Civil War? And isn't it presumptuous of her to even try? And, of course, isn't it presumptuous for me to even ask the question of myself? I also have no real understanding of this part of history from the perspective of the enslaved. Just writing this has made me uncomfortable.
Anyway, I think that I need to read 12 Years a Slave: A Slave Narrative and some additional slave narratives in order to put history into a more accurate perspective.
June 16, 2019
I read this for 2 reasons: the second part of the read along with the Book Cougars and Reading Envy podcasts (the first part was Gone with the Wind), and this is the July selection for the quarterly Willa Cather book club. This is Cather's final novel and she has chosen to place it in Virginia in 1856. Sapphira is a slave owner, married to a miller. Henry, Sapphira's husband lives with and uses slaves in the mill, but is very conflicted about the concept of slavery, humans owning other humans. His wife is not conflicted at all and is a very vile person. Disabled, she decides that her extremely faithful husband is too attached to the young slave, Nancy who cleans his room at the mill and does his laundry. He rarely sleeps in the big house with Sapphira and she is left to read bad intentions and activities into innocent situations. Sapphira's manipulations made her unlikable and difficult to read about at times. She is a completely different slave owner than Scarlett O'Hara as she is much older and worldly than Scarlett, but neither Willa Cather nor Margaret Mitchell made slave owning attractive, although at times, the slaves were depicted as a little too happy in their lives of service.
October 8, 2017
Willa Cather . . . one of the few novelists that I read as a child, a high-school student, a university student, and now as an elder citizen. I remember all of the books vividly. Willa Cather's novels seem to reach into human nature and tell her stories with few embellishiments, just weaving a good true-to-life story. "Sapphira and the Slave Girl" was the author's last novel, written when she was in her 70's, and retold from a story told to her as a child (she was born and lived in Virginia till she was about 10).
Story of slavery in the 1850's, and may be offensive to some as it's written in the descriptive dialogue used in that time. This book brought that time totally to life for me, (having lived in the south in my earlier life, there were still vestiges of that language remaining). A lovely story, beautifully told. I thoroughly was engrossed and loved it.
Story of slavery in the 1850's, and may be offensive to some as it's written in the descriptive dialogue used in that time. This book brought that time totally to life for me, (having lived in the south in my earlier life, there were still vestiges of that language remaining). A lovely story, beautifully told. I thoroughly was engrossed and loved it.
July 17, 2019
A lovely novel, set in a slave-owning household in Virginia just before the Civil War. Not as sweeping and moving as her others that I’ve read. The ending is abrupt. I enjoyed reading the descriptions of the countryside in northwestern Virginia, close to where I have lived.
June 5, 2025
⭐️ 3,5/5
January 26, 2025
A strength of this book is its sense of place and time. I was fascinated with the descriptions of life, scenery, and society in Black Creek, Virginia, in the 1850s.
Another review described this book as nostalgic and a non-critical exploration of a well-run Virginia plantation house with twenty slaves. I disagree with this take--I think a careful read reveals the horrors of ante-bellum slavery, both for the people enslaved and in the slow rot in the souls of those doing the enslaving.
However, I winced at offensive terms and stereotypes that seemed to go beyond what was necessary for an historically accurate depiction of attitudes of the time. There were times when it seemed like Willa Cather's racist views were showing through in her stereotypical portrayals of some of the black characters.
Another review described this book as nostalgic and a non-critical exploration of a well-run Virginia plantation house with twenty slaves. I disagree with this take--I think a careful read reveals the horrors of ante-bellum slavery, both for the people enslaved and in the slow rot in the souls of those doing the enslaving.
However, I winced at offensive terms and stereotypes that seemed to go beyond what was necessary for an historically accurate depiction of attitudes of the time. There were times when it seemed like Willa Cather's racist views were showing through in her stereotypical portrayals of some of the black characters.
September 3, 2020
I love Willa Cather. I had never heard of Sapphira and the Slave Girl, but it interested me after discovering it in a collection of Cather's best novels. Because I have been very concerned about racial issues lately, I chose to read Sapphira and the Slave Girl because since it was written by Willa Cather, I knew it would shed a fresh light on racism in America, and it did. It tells a meaningful story with many well-developed characters, particularly a female slave holder named Sapphira and Nancy, the slave girl.
I think many Americans like to think slaves were happy in their situation. This novel brings out a little of that, but the following passage from the book expresses the most important idea that we must never forget:
"Sapphira's darkies were better cared for, better fed and better clothed, than the poor whites in the mountains. Yet what ragged, shag-haired, squirrel-shooting mountain man would change places with Sampson, his trusted head miller?"
I think many Americans like to think slaves were happy in their situation. This novel brings out a little of that, but the following passage from the book expresses the most important idea that we must never forget:
"Sapphira's darkies were better cared for, better fed and better clothed, than the poor whites in the mountains. Yet what ragged, shag-haired, squirrel-shooting mountain man would change places with Sampson, his trusted head miller?"
December 9, 2014
The only of Cather's that could be considered a "page-turner." And pretty gripping, if complicated by the racism that may or may not be there. Her last finished novel.
July 7, 2022
En Black Creek Saphira y Henry Colbert son los propietarios de la Granja del Molino.
Saphira es una mujer severa, caprichosa y con mucho temperamento, uno de los pocos propietarios de esclavos de la zona que dirige la propiedad duramente desde su silla de ruedas, mientras que Henry, trabajador, transigente y tolerante se dedica a llevar el molino y a intentar entender la práctica de la esclavitud,sin conseguirlo pero sin enfrentarse a Saphira.
Tienen una hija, Rachel, viuda, con dos hijas, una triste posición económica y un relación compleja con su madre.
Aunque el tema de la esclavitud es duro no está tratado con crudeza. Aunque habla de esclavitud y deseo de libertad no detalla ni las condiciones ni el maltrato físico que recibían por parte de los amos. Aquí nos muestra otros aspectos como los celos, la venganza o que la crueldad no está solo en el látigo.
Así, Saphira cuya mano derecha es Till ve con asombro como la hija de esta, Nancy, parece tener una relación especial con su marido. Y es entonces cuando aparecen los celos y el deseo de vengarse y la vida de Nancy que había sido de cierto privilegio en la casa pasa a convertirse poco a poco y de manera sutil en una vida insoportable.
Leer a Willa es conocer a unos personajes, algunos inolvidables, que muestran la dureza de la vida, de la esclavitud,de la enfermedad, de la soledad... Y que muestran la complejidad de la naturaleza humana y las contradicciones internas que todos tenemos.
Leer a Willa es viajar al Sur de EEUU de mediados del siglo XIX. Un Sur en el que la esclavitud todavía está presente, un Sur agrario y precario que se contrapone al Norte industrializado y floreciente y un Sur en el que se luchaba por la libertad.
Leer a Willa es ver la crítica a las diferentes clases sociales, a la moralidad, a la falta de humanidad, al abuso y a las cuestiones raciales.
Leer a Willa es ver los paisajes, oler las flores y sentir el paso de las estaciones.
Leer a Willa es leer sobre ejemplos de esperanza y de dignidad, es un refugio para el alma y es un acierto seguro.
Imprescindible Willa.
Saphira es una mujer severa, caprichosa y con mucho temperamento, uno de los pocos propietarios de esclavos de la zona que dirige la propiedad duramente desde su silla de ruedas, mientras que Henry, trabajador, transigente y tolerante se dedica a llevar el molino y a intentar entender la práctica de la esclavitud,sin conseguirlo pero sin enfrentarse a Saphira.
Tienen una hija, Rachel, viuda, con dos hijas, una triste posición económica y un relación compleja con su madre.
Aunque el tema de la esclavitud es duro no está tratado con crudeza. Aunque habla de esclavitud y deseo de libertad no detalla ni las condiciones ni el maltrato físico que recibían por parte de los amos. Aquí nos muestra otros aspectos como los celos, la venganza o que la crueldad no está solo en el látigo.
Así, Saphira cuya mano derecha es Till ve con asombro como la hija de esta, Nancy, parece tener una relación especial con su marido. Y es entonces cuando aparecen los celos y el deseo de vengarse y la vida de Nancy que había sido de cierto privilegio en la casa pasa a convertirse poco a poco y de manera sutil en una vida insoportable.
Leer a Willa es conocer a unos personajes, algunos inolvidables, que muestran la dureza de la vida, de la esclavitud,de la enfermedad, de la soledad... Y que muestran la complejidad de la naturaleza humana y las contradicciones internas que todos tenemos.
Leer a Willa es viajar al Sur de EEUU de mediados del siglo XIX. Un Sur en el que la esclavitud todavía está presente, un Sur agrario y precario que se contrapone al Norte industrializado y floreciente y un Sur en el que se luchaba por la libertad.
Leer a Willa es ver la crítica a las diferentes clases sociales, a la moralidad, a la falta de humanidad, al abuso y a las cuestiones raciales.
Leer a Willa es ver los paisajes, oler las flores y sentir el paso de las estaciones.
Leer a Willa es leer sobre ejemplos de esperanza y de dignidad, es un refugio para el alma y es un acierto seguro.
Imprescindible Willa.
September 26, 2018
This is a lesser known book of Willa Cather's. On reading it, I am impressed at her range. She not only wrote about the Southwest, Nebraska, the Midwest, and Quebec, but also the Antebellum South. I've read a number of her books, at this one is as good as the others. In her case, that's high praise.
Cather wrote this book because she wanted to write about racism at the time when Hitler was taking over Europe. Because she's trying to portray the time accurately, African American characters talk in dialect and white characters use words like "darkies." But Cather makes a good effort at depicting how enslaved people felt.
Sapphira is a wealthy, white slaveowner. Her behavior to her slaves fluctuates wildly. One moment she is loving an old woman who took care of her when she was a child, and another she is patronizing and cruel to other people whom she "owns." She is ill and can no longer walk, and that affects her behavior. However, she must always have been imperious and inconsistent.
Sapphira gets the idea that Nancy, a modest young woman, might become her husband's mistress. Her husband has no such thought, but Sapphira becomes obsessed with her worry and treats Nancy horribly. Sapphira even invites a young white man with a reputation for womanizing to come to stay at the mansion so he can seduce or force Nancy. Nancy is distraught.
Some of the other enslaved people on the plantation are not as dignified as Nancy, while others are. Some resent her and others try to help her. Sapphira's husband, who lacks Sapphira's wealth and does not own any of the people on the plantation, is portrayed as decent regarding sex but insupportable in his passivity. Sapphira's daughter disapproves of slavery.
Cather's portrayal may not be perfect, but it is a good-faith effort. Langston Hughes wrote her a letter thanking her for the book.
Cather wrote this book because she wanted to write about racism at the time when Hitler was taking over Europe. Because she's trying to portray the time accurately, African American characters talk in dialect and white characters use words like "darkies." But Cather makes a good effort at depicting how enslaved people felt.
Sapphira is a wealthy, white slaveowner. Her behavior to her slaves fluctuates wildly. One moment she is loving an old woman who took care of her when she was a child, and another she is patronizing and cruel to other people whom she "owns." She is ill and can no longer walk, and that affects her behavior. However, she must always have been imperious and inconsistent.
Sapphira gets the idea that Nancy, a modest young woman, might become her husband's mistress. Her husband has no such thought, but Sapphira becomes obsessed with her worry and treats Nancy horribly. Sapphira even invites a young white man with a reputation for womanizing to come to stay at the mansion so he can seduce or force Nancy. Nancy is distraught.
Some of the other enslaved people on the plantation are not as dignified as Nancy, while others are. Some resent her and others try to help her. Sapphira's husband, who lacks Sapphira's wealth and does not own any of the people on the plantation, is portrayed as decent regarding sex but insupportable in his passivity. Sapphira's daughter disapproves of slavery.
Cather's portrayal may not be perfect, but it is a good-faith effort. Langston Hughes wrote her a letter thanking her for the book.
April 12, 2022
NOTA FINAL: 3'5/5
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Tratándose de la última novela que Willa Cather escribió antes de su fallecimiento, Sapphira y la joven esclava es una historia de esclavitud y libertad asentada en Virginia allá por la época de 1856. En esta historia de primeras contamos con un matrimonio infeliz. Él, Henry Colbert. Un hombre callado, pero extremadamente honesto y justo. Ella, la señorita Sapphy. Mujer autoritaria, implacable y en la que podemos apreciar un gran afán de venganza debido a la presencia de una joven mulata: Nancy. Y es que Sapphira aún mantiene dentro de su servicio a un importante número de esclavos cuando el asunto en sí empieza a "escandalizar".
La trama gira en torno al duro tema de la esclavitud, pero tratado de manera muy sutil. Sin entrar en grandes penurias. La autora va pasando de un personaje a otro (dándonos siempre a conocer su forma de vida) haciendo una crítica de lo vivido durante su propia infancia. Tratando temas como el abuso, la posición social y la decadencia de un estilo de vida que estaba abocado a la desaparición. Diversos temas tratados de forma muy evocadora. Creando reflejos de una sociedad. Consiguiendo que los silencios digan más que las palabras.
En definitiva... Sapphira y la joven esclava es una historia detallista, íntima y con un final de lo más emotivo y enternecedor.
Posdata: la voz del epílogo me ha emocionado enormemente ❤
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Esgrimía cualquier pretexto para evadir la culpa o el castigo durante una hora, durante un minuto aunque fuera. Y no es que contara falsedades de forma deliberada con el propósito de obtener algo; cuando lo hacía, era siempre para rehuir algo.
Tratándose de la última novela que Willa Cather escribió antes de su fallecimiento, Sapphira y la joven esclava es una historia de esclavitud y libertad asentada en Virginia allá por la época de 1856. En esta historia de primeras contamos con un matrimonio infeliz. Él, Henry Colbert. Un hombre callado, pero extremadamente honesto y justo. Ella, la señorita Sapphy. Mujer autoritaria, implacable y en la que podemos apreciar un gran afán de venganza debido a la presencia de una joven mulata: Nancy. Y es que Sapphira aún mantiene dentro de su servicio a un importante número de esclavos cuando el asunto en sí empieza a "escandalizar".
La trama gira en torno al duro tema de la esclavitud, pero tratado de manera muy sutil. Sin entrar en grandes penurias. La autora va pasando de un personaje a otro (dándonos siempre a conocer su forma de vida) haciendo una crítica de lo vivido durante su propia infancia. Tratando temas como el abuso, la posición social y la decadencia de un estilo de vida que estaba abocado a la desaparición. Diversos temas tratados de forma muy evocadora. Creando reflejos de una sociedad. Consiguiendo que los silencios digan más que las palabras.
En definitiva... Sapphira y la joven esclava es una historia detallista, íntima y con un final de lo más emotivo y enternecedor.
Posdata: la voz del epílogo me ha emocionado enormemente ❤
April 1, 2021
This is Cather’s last novel and it’s set in western Virginia, her home before her family moved to Nebraska. The plot revolves around a somewhat snobbish woman with a serious illness who contrives to have her pretty young slave seduced by a white nephew in order to divert her away from her husband who lives apart from her, but who she believes fancies the slave girl. It’s all in her mind, however, but the slave girl is nevertheless helped to escape to Canada by the woman’s abolitionist daughter.
The writing is not as romantic as Cather’s prairie novels, and the ending switches voice abruptly from third to first person when Cather inserts herself as a child into her own story. It’s almost like she’s telling us goodbye. It’s a pretty good book overall, but definitely not up to her earlier work.
The writing is not as romantic as Cather’s prairie novels, and the ending switches voice abruptly from third to first person when Cather inserts herself as a child into her own story. It’s almost like she’s telling us goodbye. It’s a pretty good book overall, but definitely not up to her earlier work.
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