A Mercy

“To get to you I must leave the only home, the only people I know. Lina says from the state of my teeth I am maybe seven or eight when I am brought here.”

Florens directly addresses the Blacksmith numerous times throughout the novel. The above quotation is an example of this address. Florens is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything and everyone she knows to be with the Blacksmith.

“Take the girl, she says, my daughter, she says. Me. Me. Sir agrees and changes the balance due.” 

This moment is the catalyst for most of the events and conflicts within the novel. The impact that this abandonment has on Florens and her characterization cannot be understated. This quote also foreshadows future conflict between Florens and the Blacksmith. 

“But I have a worry. Not because our work is more, but because mothers nursing greedy babies scare me. I know how their eyes go when they choose. How they raise them to look at me hard, saying something I cannot hear. Saying something important to me, but holding the little boy’s hand.” 

Florens is still stuck in this moment of trauma and abandonment. Instead of growing into an adult, she remains as fearful as a young child, understandably terrified at the prospect of separation from her mother.

“D’Ortega’s wife was a chattering magpie, asking pointless questions—How do you manage living in snow?—and making sense-defying observations, as though her political judgment were equal to a man’s.” 

This quotation offers some insight into the commonly held attitudes towards women at the time. Despite the fact that almost all of the work on the Vaark farm is done by women, Jacob continues to hold misogynistic views about them as inherently lesser.

“Jacob winced. Flesh was not his commodity.” 

This instance makes evident that most of Vaark’s protest against slavery seems to stem from a sense of moral superiority over men like D’Ortega, rather than from any true ethical qualms against the practice.

“And there was a profound difference between the intimacy of slave bodies at Jublio and a remote labor force in Barbados. Right? Right, he thought, looking at a sky vulgar with stars.” 

This passage displays how quickly Jacob Vaark is willing to compromise his morals in order to increase his wealth and standing in the community. Despite the excuses, the reader is well aware how complicit Jacob is in the cruel institution. 

“Will and Scully are gone and when we women each holding a corner of a blanket carry him into the house he is sleeping with his mouth wide open and never wakes. Neither Mistress nor we know if he is alive for even one minute to smell the new cherrywood floors he lies on. We are alone. No one to shroud or mourn Sir but us.” 

Jacob meets his end in the entryway of the new house that was built from wealth accumulated through the exploitation of slaves. Jacob’s greed and hypocrisy leads to his end, with only an empty house for a legacy. 

“She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one.”

The above quote once again demonstrates how obsessed Florens is with the Blacksmith. She has equated the man with her entire life, underscoring themes of possession and Florens’s lack of selfhood. 

‘“Trading and traveling fill his pockets,’ she’d said, ‘but he had been content to be a farmer when we married. Now…’ Her voice trailed off as she yanked out the swan’s feathers.” 

Rebekka recognizes the profound change that has occurred in her husband. Jacob has grown greedy during his travels; he wants to have the wealth and status that a farmer cannot attain through regular means. 

“The last few years he seemed moody, less gentle, but when he decided to kill the trees and replace them with a profane monument to himself, he was cheerful every waking moment.” 

Lina likewise recognizes the change in Jacob. She sees his change as yet another claim he places on the land and its people, another act of colonialism. 

“Learning from Mistress that he was a free man doubled her anxiety. He had rights, then, and privileges, like Sir. He could marry, own things, travel, sell his own labor. She should have seen the danger immediately because his arrogance was clear. When Mistress returned, rubbing her hands on her apron, he removed his hat once more, then did something Lina had never seen an African do: he looked directly at Mistress, lowering his glance, for he was very tall, never blinking those eyes slanted and yellow as a ram’s.” 

Slavery has not always been entirely equated with race. This is clear in the novel as Morrison depicts people from all different races as victims of enslavement. However, this does not mean that racism does not exist within the novel. Rebekka’s primary contact with Black people would have been with those who were enslaved. As a result, she immediately takes on a racist mindset of fear and distrust against the Blacksmith. 

“She watched while Mistress trained Sorrow to sewing, the one task she liked and was good at, and said nothing when, to stop her roaming, he said, Sir made the girl sleep by the fireplace all seasons. A comfort Lina was suspicious of but did not envy even in bad weather.” 

Lina’s distrust of men is an inherent part of her character. This is later explained by her own negative and traumatic experience with a past lover. As a result, Lina is more protective of Florens when she falls in love with the Blacksmith. 

“She knew he did not object to lying with Willard when sleep was not the point. No wonder Sir, without kin or sons to count on, had no males on his property. It made good sense, except when it didn’t.”

The intimate relationship between Willard and Scully is clearly alluded to in this moment. The above section also explicates the difficulty of being women in a predominantly patriarchal society.

“Don’t die, Miss. Don’t. Herself, Sorrow, a newborn and maybe Florens—three unmastered women and an infant out here, alone, belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone. None of them could inherit; none was attached to a church or recorded in its books. Female and illegal, they would be interlopers, squatters, if they stayed on after Mistress died, subject to purchase, hire, assault, abduction, exile.” 

The above passage goes into detail about the difficulties of being a woman, let alone an enslaved woman, in the society of the novel.

“The traveler laughs at the beauty saying, ‘This is perfect. This is mine.’ And the word swells, booming like thunder into valleys, over acres of primrose and mallow. Creatures come out of caves wondering what it means. Mine. Mine. Mine. The shells of the eagle’s eggs quiver and one even cracks.” 

This passage details the story that Lina tells Florens as a child. There are many parallels here to the character of Jacob Vaark, as well as to the institution of slavery and European colonialism writ large. 

“Then Florens would whisper, ‘Where is she now?’ ‘Still falling,’ Lina would answer, ‘she is falling forever.”’

The eagle’s endless fall speaks to the condition of women of color within the text, specifically that of Indigenous women. After the initial acts of violent colonialism, the state of indigenous communities only continues to plummet.

“I worry as the boy steps closer to you. How you offer and he owns your forefinger. As if he is your future. Not me.” 

Florens is not only jealous of Malaik but also extremely afraid of him. His presence immediately seems to imply her own distancing from the Blacksmith. The Blacksmith is everything to Florens and she wants to be the same for him. 

“Your head is empty and your body is wild […] Own yourself, woman, and leave us be […] You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.” 

The Blacksmith rebukes Florens after he finds her hurting Malaik. This scolding calls out Florens’s inability to look past her fears, to follow her logical mind instead of her gut instinct to lash out from fear. This wildness is equated to animality, but the Blacksmith likewise fails to understand that Florens’s reaction comes from being broken by her enslavement. 

“Other than a voyeur’s obsession with Lina’s body, Scully had no carnal interest in females. Long ago the world of men and only men had stamped him and from the first moment he saw him he never had any doubt what effect the blacksmith would have on Florens. Thus her change from ‘have me always’ to ‘don’t touch me ever’ seemed to him as predictable as it was marked.” 

Scully recognizes the change in Florens as he too was hurt by a former lover. This empathy is something that no other character seems to allow to Florens and her first love. 

“Perhaps their wages were not as much as the blacksmith’s, but for Scully and Mr. Bond it was enough to imagine a future.” 

The future exists for Scully and Willard in a way that it does not seem to for most of the other characters. They have begun to collect wages to try and buy their freedoms; everyone but Complete and her child seem impossibly far from liberation.

“I am nothing to you. You say I am wilderness. I am. Is that a tremble on your mouth, in your eye? Are you afraid? You should be.” 

Florens flips the script on the Blacksmith and also on the reader. She retracts her first sentence of the novel, now telling the Blacksmith that he should fear her. Florens has changed in her telling of the story as well. 

“See? You are correct. A minha mãe too. I am become wilderness but I am also Florens. In full. Unforgiven. Unforgiving. No ruth, my love. None. Hear me? Slave. Free. I last.” 

Florens finally claims herself. She, like Complete, insists on her wholeness without her mother or her lover. 

“What I know is there is magic in learning.”

Minha mãe believes that education is the way forward. She believes that by learning how to read and write, Florens will hopefully one day be able to free herself. In some sense, Minha mãe’s wish eventually comes true. Through her writing, Florens is able to find herself and her identity.