54 pages • 1 hour read
Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed.The Bondwoman's Narrative
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Linden Tree
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, violence, enslavement, torture, and abuse.
At the enslaver’s house, there is a linden tree. The tree was the site of a terrible event and, as a result, it has a curse on it. At numerous points during Hannah’s time at the home, she hears the wind moving through the leaves of the tree and hears the branches creaking. These sounds always pre-figure awful events. The tree represents the horrible history of slavery, which haunts the enslavers and comes back time and time again to punish them for their sins.
The story of the tree is a narrative aside, taking place many years before Hannah was born. Even in a novel packed with horrific anecdotes, the story is particularly brutal and results in every future inhabitant’s tragic ends. The enslaver, for example, kills himself when learning the truth about his wife’s race. Mr. Cosgrove tries to keep a secret harem of enslaved women and his wife dies as a result. The curse punishes each enslaver for their involvement in the institution of slavery, and the tree is always nearby, functioning as a timely reminder of the true brutality of slavery.
In a literary sense, the tree is an important motif. While it represents the horrors of slavery, its presence is a literary device used by the author to make the audience wary and uneasy. Whenever Hannah hears the branches creak or the leaves rustle, it creates a sense of foreboding. Thus, the motif of the linden tree is a useful tool for building suspense and signaling to the reader that a tragic event is about to occur. The sound haunts Hannah, and she passes along this fear to the audience, turning a natural, relaxing sound into the harbinger of doom.
Speech
Speech is a useful tool for denoting social standing. Hannah recognizes the differences between the speech patterns of enslavers, enslaved people in the house, and enslaved people in the field, and uses this to help expand upon the social structures that she describes in the novel. The speech of the enslaving class is neat and tidy, conforming to the standard rules, and reflects the quality of education available to white people. Hannah does describe a difference between working and middle-class white people, in that the few working-class whites she meets, like Saddler and the hunters, tend to speak much less formally than their middle-class counterparts.
Hannah and the other enslaved people in the house seem to benefit from being around middle-class white people in terms of their speech. They are more prone to take pride in their manner of speaking; this is sometimes self-motivated, such as when Hannah wants to demonstrate her level of education, or is sometimes compelled by the enslavers who wish to show off the quality of their enslaved people. Indeed, given that the enslaved people in the house are often instrumental in raising white children and frequently serve as confidants to the enslaver’s wives, their speech must reflect their proximity to the center of white civil life. The similarity between the speech of the white characters and the speech of the enslaved people in the house is noticeable, as are the differences.
Hannah emphasizes the differences between the speech of the enslaved people in the field and enslaved people in the house. Characters such as Joe and Bill often speak without traditional grammar or by using dialect and slang. They tend to speak in fractured and scattered sentences with frequent repetition. This distinguishes these characters from those who have received an education or who are closer to the house. The enslavers keep the enslaved people in the field at a distance; they work outside and live in squalid conditions. Their speech reflects this distance, being further from the ‘idealized’ version of speech as used by the white slave-owning class. The distance between the living arrangements appears in the difference in speech, and speech patterns become metaphors for social standing.
Storms
Storms are a Gothic motif in the novel that represent The Effects of Slavery. Each time there is a storm, there is a sense of foreboding, yet crucially, the storm affects both enslaved people and enslavers. This suggests that the institution of slavery damages everyone: the lives of the enslaved and the consciences of the enslavers.
This is evident early in the text when the old woman who is being tortured is awoken by a storm before she dies. The storm makes her suffer, but it also rouses her enough to curse her enslaver. Later, while Hannah ponders the story during the wedding, another storm whips up, making not just her but all the people at the wedding uneasy.
There is a storm at the other wedding in the text between the enslaved people, suggesting that slavery interrupts the peace of a happy union. Hannah ponders whether it is an ominous sign, representing her understanding of the dangers of slavery even when she is experiencing a happy moment.
