47 pages • 1 hour read
Hillary JordanMudbound
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Inequality and Knowing One’s Place
The most obvious example of inequality in Mudbound is racism. The blacks in Mississippi are treated as subhuman by the white racists. There is no way for people like Ronsel and his family to aspire to equal treatment, even after returning from the war, after serving his country as a Sergeant who won medals for military courage. He cannot impress, converse with, or find common ground with people in the delta who already think they know the most important thing about him: the color of his skin.
But the idea of knowing one’s place is not limited to racism in the novel. Pappy often criticizes Henry for letting Laura have too much control, or for speaking too freely. He demands that she do chores for him, and feed him, just to prove that she has to obey his orders. Henry is a caring and dutiful husband, but he makes no secret of the fact that he expects Laura to perform her duties as his wife without investing any time or thought into what might make her happy as an individual. Laura is more open-minded than Henry, but resents the defiance shown to her by Florence, who will not compromise her morals or ethical obligations simply to make life more convenient for Laura.
The roles in Mudbound are clearly delineated: One is either a black, white, husband, wife, drunk, racist, etc., and attempting to step outside of one’s limitations—as dictated by the society at the time—is a major source of the pain and tragedy that befalls the various characters.
Racism and Sub-humanism
Before going to Europe, Ronsel—largely due to the instructions of his father—has taken racism against blacks as an unpleasant fact that will always be part of his life. But when he arrives in Europe, he is not treated as any different from any other man. Indeed, he is only treated as an inferior by whites in the American Army. But in France and Germany, white women dance and fraternize with black men and no one considers it unusual.
Ronsel is himself largely free of racist attitudes, as far as the reader can discern. Even when fighting Axis soldiers who are trying to kill him, he does not hate them until he sees the barbarity of the Dachau concentration camp. Then he recognizes in the Nazis another group of people who have committed to the subjugation and dehumanization of other races. It is at that point that he begins to hate the Austrian soldiers. After the war, when he meets the white, German woman Resl, he recognizes the bond they share: “The two of us had something in common. Her people were conquered and despised, just like mine were. And just like me, Resl was hungry to be treated like a human being” (156).
It is this desire to be treated like a human being—and the refusal on the part of those in power to grant it to the oppressed—that fuels all the racism in Mudbound.
Passion as a Driving Force
Laura describes herself as content with her life as a spinster before being courted by Henry. The characters in Mudbound find themselves in situations that are tolerable, but rarely rise to the level of pleasure or, often, enjoyment. When Jamie arrives, his free-spirited, unattached nature seems to be a result of a boundless passion, but in fact he is using his escapades with booze and women to distract himself from the things he saw in the war, and the failure he believes himself to be.
Henry does not show any passion for Laura or their children, although he loves them. The most vivid description of anything like a passion of his is Florence’s description that he “was as landsick as any man [he] ever seen” (88). When Laura falls in love with Jamie, not only does she feel passion, she realizes that what she had thought was passion was not even close to it. She is unaware of her capacity for ardor and intense sexuality until she feels it for Jamie. His presence expands her limits of what she thought she could feel.
But at the end of the novel, after Jamie leaves, Laura has realized that passion alone is not enough to sustain a relationship for long. She is better suited to a long-term pairing with Henry, her children, and their farm than she is with reckless dalliances. Jamie’s passions do not make him happy. Laura’s passion for him does not make her think that she should abandon Henry and prioritize that passion above all else. Passion is shown in Mudbound to be a force that is sometimes irresistible and is often accompanied by negative consequences.
