Here lies Sarah [---], whom death took from me too soon
Sarah is extremely separated from the family at first, though, and this very much remains the case: they don’t even know her last name, and they seemingly don’t know her first name either before Coalhouse mentions it—the boy, who always notices more, “realized he meant the woman in the attic” (p155). Her rejection of Coalhouse coming to see her is the most that she says to the family, over months and months. Even after she grows closer to them, she doesn’t feel like she can tell any of them about her plan to petition the Vice President on behalf of Coalhouse. Even outside of the family, she is noted to have no connections to the Black community downtown, and to be a “transient element” who came here from out of town. This shows Sarah’s continual isolation, and the lack of knowledge on part of the writer is similar to how Coalhouse is treated with uncertainty.
Coalhouse’s courtship of her is sweet—he is originally what prompts her to speak, he visits her and brings gifts to both her and their child. Her socializing with him also brings her happiness, and improves both her relationship with her son and with the family: earlier, the book notes “melancholy had taken the will out of her muscles. She did not have the strength to hold her baby” (p109) which shows, along with the end of Chapter 11 where the baby thinks of Mother as being his own mother, that Sarah was not able to care for her baby herself before Coalhouse’s arrival. However, after his arrival she starts taking him with her, and when she leaves to go ask the Vice President about Coalhouse’s car, she waits for him to fall asleep before she leaves. This, and her increasing involvement with the family, where she talks with Mother about wedding dresses and shares a generational bond with Mother’s Younger Brother, shows that Coalhouse has brought her out of her shell. This is further exemplified by how she is able to talk to the family somewhat even after being beaten. Her trust of them is also shown in how she is able to tell Mother’s Younger Brother about how Coalhouse has put their wedding on hold.
Sarah is also repeatedly described as beautiful, but that beauty is frequently given caveats before she reconnects with Coalhouse: when she is first introduced, it is said she had a “beautiful guileless face” (p70), but also hair that “looked chopped and uncared for” (p70) although it is important to note that the novel often follows the point of view of the family, who is white, and white people are often racist about Black hair, so it is unclear whether this reflects the actual state of her hair or Mother’s opinion of her hair. Later on, the little boy compares her to a Nubian princess, and Mother’s Younger Brother compares her to an African queen, thinking that “her very awkwardness as she moved would be grace in some other country”. While she is engaged to Coalhouse, her beauty is again noted, and her awkwardness indeed becomes grace: “Grief and anger had been a kind of physical pathology masking her true looks” (p187), but now Mother is awed by her beauty, and her movements are “altogether graceful and lithe” (p187). From this, we can see another way that her and Coalhouse’s relationship has transformed her for the better, granting her the confidence she she deserves to have.
Overall, we can see that Coalhouse is the central figure of Sarah’s life, whose relationship with her transforms her mentally, to the extent of it affecting her physicality and how she bears herself. We can also see that her relationship with him encourages her to become more open to other people, to some extent.
Coalhouse’s courtship of her is sweet—he is originally what prompts her to speak, he visits her and brings gifts to both her and their child. Her socializing with him also brings her happiness, and improves both her relationship with her son and with the family: earlier, the book notes “melancholy had taken the will out of her muscles. She did not have the strength to hold her baby” (p109) which shows, along with the end of Chapter 11 where the baby thinks of Mother as being his own mother, that Sarah was not able to care for her baby herself before Coalhouse’s arrival. However, after his arrival she starts taking him with her, and when she leaves to go ask the Vice President about Coalhouse’s car, she waits for him to fall asleep before she leaves. This, and her increasing involvement with the family, where she talks with Mother about wedding dresses and shares a generational bond with Mother’s Younger Brother, shows that Coalhouse has brought her out of her shell. This is further exemplified by how she is able to talk to the family somewhat even after being beaten. Her trust of them is also shown in how she is able to tell Mother’s Younger Brother about how Coalhouse has put their wedding on hold.
Sarah is also repeatedly described as beautiful, but that beauty is frequently given caveats before she reconnects with Coalhouse: when she is first introduced, it is said she had a “beautiful guileless face” (p70), but also hair that “looked chopped and uncared for” (p70) although it is important to note that the novel often follows the point of view of the family, who is white, and white people are often racist about Black hair, so it is unclear whether this reflects the actual state of her hair or Mother’s opinion of her hair. Later on, the little boy compares her to a Nubian princess, and Mother’s Younger Brother compares her to an African queen, thinking that “her very awkwardness as she moved would be grace in some other country”. While she is engaged to Coalhouse, her beauty is again noted, and her awkwardness indeed becomes grace: “Grief and anger had been a kind of physical pathology masking her true looks” (p187), but now Mother is awed by her beauty, and her movements are “altogether graceful and lithe” (p187). From this, we can see another way that her and Coalhouse’s relationship has transformed her for the better, granting her the confidence she she deserves to have.
Overall, we can see that Coalhouse is the central figure of Sarah’s life, whose relationship with her transforms her mentally, to the extent of it affecting her physicality and how she bears herself. We can also see that her relationship with him encourages her to become more open to other people, to some extent.
Sarah is certainly a unique and puzzling "character" in this novel--and I use the scare quotes here because her presence is so fleeting, it's hard to really consider her a "character" in the conventional sense of the word. I don't know that she actually speaks directly at any point in the narrative--we hear about things she has said, opinions expressed, and especially pleas to the VP to help her husband. But she rarely actually is PRESENT in the narrative during the short interval preceding her untimely death.
ReplyDeleteIt would be possible to conclude from this that the novel doesn't treat her seriously as a character, and that she is just a kind of prop for the family, a diversion, a fun little hobby for Mother to divert herself for a while, planning this wedding and everything. But we do get *accounts* of how she and Mother are getting close: they talk, they plan the wedding together, they try on wedding dresses. Why don't we get to "see" these scenes directly? And why is there so much emphasis on how Mother is seeing Sarah--rather than Sarah herself? Should we get more back-story on the circumstances that led to her desperate but (let's admit it) criminal and deeply troubling act of desperation? Would it change our view of the whole Coalhouse story if Sarah were more of a three-dimensional figure in that story? Or is it sufficient for her to remain the long-suffering, beautiful, guileless young woman who is fated to inspire this armed insurrection? Should she be more than a plot-point in this narrative?
Thank you, Mr Mitchell! When I first read the novel I honestly felt like Sarah had been "fridged," but I think the knowledge that she is based on Michael Kolhaas's wife who died similarly made me re-think this interpretation. I think that her character is somewhat caged by the expectation that she has to die for the narrative, as happens with the material Coalhouse is sourced from, and that her naïveté makes her somewhat similar to Cosette in Les Miserables in in terms of being more of a symbol than a character at times, but she still manages to have some interesting contradictions. Would I be allowed to take what I've written here and expand it for my essay, or am I meant to pick an entirely different subject.
DeleteYes, you are absolutely able and in fact encouraged to use the blog post as a point of departure for the essay--this would be an excellent topic to expand on for an essay, as it's narrowly focused and it engages some important and compelling issues about Doctorow's "appropriation" of the Coalhouse plot from the Kohlhaas story. I look forward to seeing how this analysis evolves!
DeleteIt was so refreshing to hear more about Sarah, a character who I felt we didn't afford enough time to. She is so interesting in her own right and is so often seen as only an accessory or motivation for Coalhouse. I think it is very much worth noting how she is the catalyst for each major aspect of the plot's development yet is still regarded as a background character and not focused on or throughly described. I wonder if this is someone a metaphor or symbolism for the erasure and disrespect of African American culture which especially plagued women.
ReplyDelete