53 pages • 1 hour read
Kathleen GrissomThe Kitchen House
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A 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
Enslavement and Race
One of the major themes in the novel is enslavement. Characters like Belle, Mama Mae, and Ben, among others, are slaves on the plantation. They were bought from a slave trade by James’s father, and they are treated like property; they have no rights of their own, and everything they have is at the mercy of the plantation owner, including food, shelter, and even the right to marry other slaves. Lavinia, on the other hand, first comes to the plantation as an indentured servant. She initially lives in the kitchen house with Belle and James expects her to do the chores of a slave. While Lavinia and the slaves share a common experience, the main difference is that slaves never earn their freedom, but indentured servants eventually will.
Race is a determining factor in enslavement. Every slave on the plantation is African American, and the slaves are initially shocked when James has Lavinia live with them as his indentured servant. Eventually, however, the slaves welcome her into their home, and she sees them as her family. While the bond that Lavinia and the slaves share doesn’t coincide with the social expectations of race, it becomes complicated when she marries Marshall, a slave owner with less friendly ideals. Once she lives in the big house, Marshall expects Lavinia to treat the slaves as property rather than family. This is impossible for her because she was raised alongside them as a servant herself, and it’s difficult for her to understand why the slaves should be treated as inferior.
Belle and Jamie are characters who, like Lavinia, complicate the relationship between race and slavery. Both Belle and Jamie had enslaved mothers and white fathers, both have light skin, and both spent part of their childhood living and being educated in the big house; yet both are labeled and treated like slaves because they are half black. This means that they are enslaved by their mothers’ bloodline rather than freed by the privilege of their fathers.
Enslavement of Women
Many of the women in the novel face enslavement in some form. The African American women on the plantation are legally enslaved by the plantation owner, meaning that the law forces them to work, either in the fields or in the kitchen house, without pay. White men also control their sexuality. Rankin, the field overseer, continually rapes women in the quarters without restraint, and eventually Marshall rapes Belle, Beattie, and others. Since they are legally enslaved and considered the property of the plantation, they have no voice to object. Instead, they often go along with the abuse to avoid further physical violence or the threat of Marshall selling them and separating them from their families.
While Lavinia is freed from her servitude, it’s during that freedom, when she marries Marshall, that she feels “as enslaved as all the others” (300). This is because, like the slave women, Marshall physically and sexually abuses her and, like the slave women, she is legally bound to him. Although her situation is technically different from the slave women in that she could leave Marshall, she feels just as trapped because she has nowhere to go. Feeling powerless and without agency over her own life, she comes to feel more like a slave than she did when she was an indentured servant.
Martha is another woman who feels enslaved. She left her family and married James when she was still a teenager, and she was immediately left alone on the plantation. Living in the isolation of the plantation, and having experienced the loss of multiple children, she feels powerless to control her life. She pleads with her husband to stay with her, but he always leaves. Unable to face the futility of her situation, her addiction to laudanum enslaves her again.
The black women of the novel are victims of slavery while the white women are victims of societal constructs. When Lavinia attempts to become an independent governess, she’s told it simply isn’t an option when a woman could be married. She has no family and marriage is the only option for her, leading her into an abusive relationship with Marshall. Belle addresses the difference when Lavinia complains that she’s Marshall’s slave just as much as Beattie, who Marshall has been raping. Belle says that Lavinia picked Marshall and “Beattie don’t get to pick nothing except to figure out how she’s best gonna handle this” (292). Lavinia, confined by societal norms, still has a choice.
History Repeats Itself
Much of the novel deals with the idea that history repeats itself. James, who inherits the plantation and its slaves from his father, has sex with one of his slaves and has Belle. Although he loves her, he eventually makes her live like a slave in the kitchen house because he doesn’t want to publicly go against society’s racial expectations. Later, Marshall rapes Belle and Beattie, causing them to give birth to his children. While it’s implied that he cares about Beattie and her children, he never accepts them as his own because, like his father, he follows society’s expectations.
When Marshall was a child, Mr. Waters raped and physically abused him. Rather than dealing with his trauma, he looks up to Rankin, Mr. Waters’s friend, as a role model. When Marshall becomes an adult, he rapes and physically abuses the women in his life just like what Mr. Waters inflicted on him; thus, perpetuating the cycle of abuse.
Lavinia is another character who demonstrates the perpetuation of a cycle. When Lavinia gets married to Marshall and moves into the big house, she feels powerless to control any aspect of her own life. This is like Martha’s experience when she first moved to the big house; she realized that she was powerless to keep her husband home with her, and she didn’t want to live far away from her family on a lonely and massive plantation. Rather than attempting to take control of their own situations, each woman turns to the escapism offered by laudanum.
Finally, Belle and Jamie are two characters with very similar backgrounds. Belle is the product of the plantation owner, James, having sex with his slave. Jamie results from Marshall raping Belle. Both Belle and Jamie grow up in the big house with their grandmothers, both receive an education, but both become slaves in the end because of their slave bloodline.
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