Sapphira and the Slave Girl (Virago Modern Classics) (original 1940; edition 1986)

Virginia, kurz vor dem Krieg. Im Zentrum stehen Sapphira und ihre Diener. Sapphira hält an den Sitten des Adels fest. Sie lebt mir ihrem Mann und "ihren" Sklaven auf dem Land. Sie herrscht (angeblich mit Güte) im Haus, ist gefürchtet und wird dennoch bewundert. Sapphira ist für das Halten von Sklaven. Im Gegensatz zu ihrer Tochter Rachel.
Die Thema Sklaverei erweist sich als vielschichtig. ( )

Set in 1856, Sapphira and the Slave Girl explores the life of a middle-aged white woman and her relationship with her family and especially her servants. When Nancy, one of the servant disappears, how does her disappearance affect Sapphira and inturn her family members is what the book is all about. Definitely worth a read! ( )

A rare subject for white women authors to write about a novel about the hidden history of slavery as it shows the position of the white woman as an owner of slaves - certainly not Gone With the Wind

1081 Sapphira and the Slave Girl, by Willa Cather (read 21 Sep 1970) This is Cather's last novel, published in 1940. It is laid in Virginia in 1856 and tells of Nancy, a half-white slave girl, who escaped to Canada. It is beautifully written, and moved me greatly. ( )

This was Cather's last published novel and the only one set in her native Virginia. It is an example of a powerless woman's manipulation of her slaves. Sapphira was not the ordinary backwoods miller's wife in the mid-1800's. She came from an arisocratic English family, had her own money, and liked to have her own way. She suffered under the constraints of the time she lived in as well as the debilitating disease of dropsy, which left her confined to a wheelchair.

When she becomes irrationally jealous of her lovely young slave Nancy and is overruled by her husband Henry in her desire to sell her, Sapphira comes up with a plan to ruin the girl. So she invites the womanizing nephew Martin for an extended visit. Helpless in her vulnerability, Nancy turns to Rachel, who demonstrates the compassion that her mother Sapphira lacks.

This was a thought-provoking book, but it did not pack the emotional punch with me that some of Cather's other novels elicited. It gives yet another view of slavery, this time depicting slaves as objects helpless to their master's whims. As Rachel came to believe, "it was the owning that was wrong. no matter how convenient or agreeable it might be for master or servant." ( )