The Invention of Wings

These chapters introduce the pattern of the novel, with chapters alternating between Hetty Handful Grimké and Sarah Grimké. This part opens and closes with chapters narrated by Handful, beginning on Sarah’s 11th birthday, November 26, 1803, and ending over a year later.

The novel opens as Handful Grimké retells a story her mother told her about when her people still lived in Africa and could fly. Handful is skeptical, but her mother insists that someday Handful will learn to fly again. It is a long time before Handful understands what her mother meant.

Handful describes living as a slave in Charleston, South Carolina with her mother, Charlotte—whom she calls Mauma—in the Grimké household. Handful, or Hetty, spends as much time as possible with her mother, including the precious time they spend together making quilts. Mauma is an expert seamstress, responsible for making all of the household’s clothing, including Missus’ finery. Missus is a strict mistress, with many rules for the slaves, including obedience and quiet. Handful describes some of the other slaves: Aunt-Sister, the cook; Tomfry, the butler; and Binah, the nursery maid.

On Sarah’s 11th birthday she moves from the nursery into a grownup bedroom and receives Handful as a gift. Highly intelligent with dreams of becoming a lawyer, Sarah takes great pride her studies, which include reading, Latin lessons with her brother Thomas, and discussions and arguments with her brothers and father. Sarah’s father, John, is a judge on South Carolina’s highest court, and her wealthy family forms part of the elite in Charleston society.

Sarah hates slavery, and she attempts to refuse the gift and give Handful her freedom. Her father tears up the manumission document she copies from one of his law books. She is powerless to free Handful. Sarah recounts her earliest memory, at age four, copying out letters under a tree in the back yard. She is under the tree, hidden from sight, when she witnesses the whipping of Rosetta, a family slave. Sarah loses the ability to speak as a result of this traumatic event, and when she regains speech, she speaks with a pronounced stammer. She is afflicted with a halting and stuttering speech impediment, on and off, for the rest of her life. Mauma, Handful’s mother, extracts a promise from Sarah that she will help Handful gain her freedom. Once she gives her word, even though she is only 11 years old, Sarah takes this promise to heart.

Handful is supposed to sleep every night on the floor outside Sarah’s room, but she keeps sneaking back to her mother’s room instead. Charlotte forces Handful to return to the house, and they accidentally wake up the master and mistress. Charlotte is forced to admit that she took some silk cloth that had gone missing earlier, covering up for Handful’s disobedience.

Charlotte is given a hideous penalty for her theft—the “one-legged punishment”—instead of a whipping, where “they wind a leather tie round the slaves’ ankle, then pull that foot up behind him and hitch the tie round his neck. If he lets his ankle drop, the tie chokes his throat” (43). Charlotte is never the same after this punishment; she begins to act out in more brazen and dangerous ways.

The night of the one-legged punishment, Mauma tells Handful her family’s story: Her grandmother came from Africa; they are descendants of the Fon people who quilt using an appliqué technique. Mauma uses this technique in her quilts, just as her mother taught her, and Mauma teaches Handful. Mauma explains that her mother, also a seamstress, was purchased by Mr. Grimké, and that Mauma’s father was their previous master’s brother. She tells Handful that Handful’s father was a fieldhand on the Grimké’s plantation. His name was Shanney, and he died when Handful was a year old. Shanney never saw Handful, because Charlotte and Shanney were separated when Missus brought Charlotte to Charleston as her seamstress. Sarah takes medicine to Mauma, and she overhears the entire story.

In pursuit of her own studies, Sarah reads constantly. Most significantly, she secretly and illegally teaches Handful how to read. As the girls celebrate Handful’s reading progress in a tea party up on the roof, they share their secrets and life stories. Sarah tells Handful she wants to be a lawyer, revealing that she keeps hidden a unique button from her birthday dress to remind her of this dream. Handful tells her mother’s story of her family, and that her real name is Handful.

From the day of her punishment, Mauma defies the rules any way she can, including “forgetting” to sew sleeves in properly so that they come apart, breaking dishes “accidentally,” and spitting or dropping pieces of lint into the tea. She moves on to more serious rebellions, including asking Handful to forge a pass for her, so that she can secretly sneak out of the house and work for money to buy their freedom.

Handful writes out some words including her name in the dirt, and they are caught. Sarah and Handful receive terrible punishments: Sarah is banished from her father’s library and any more studies, and Handful is whipped. Handful insists that she and Mauma create a spirit tree, like the one Mauma told her that her own mother had in Africa. Mauma humors Handful and participates in the ritual, even though she doesn’t believe in it. They give their spirits to the protection of the tree.

Sarah’s hopes of becoming a lawyer are dashed by her punishment and her family’s derision when she reveals her dream to them. She finds out that her mother is having another baby, and she asks to be the baby’s godmother. Her mother agrees.