44 pages • 1-hour read
The Invention of Wings
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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5 Summary: “November 1826–November 1829”
Charlotte reappears with her daughter, Sky, after 14 years’ absence. Charlotte has aged terribly; she is very thin and weak. They have been living on a rice plantation near Beaufort. Handful learns from Sky that they have attempted to escape three times before. Mauma’s back is covered with the scars from whipping, a brand, and her front teeth have been knocked out with a hammer for trying to escape. This time, they walked for three weeks to get to Charleston. Handful and Mauma struggle to find work for Sky to do, so that she will not be sold. They turn the garden over to her, and she works miracles in the overgrown, neglected yard.
Handful realizes that her mother is on the mend from her trials when she begins working on another quilt square, taking up her story again. Handful takes Sky to see where Denmark Vesey used to live, and she tells Sky about her brave, rebellious father.
In Philadelphia, Sarah lives with Lucretia Mott’s family. Lucretia is a Quaker minister and Sarah’s friend. Israel Morris visits Sarah twice a week, and they remain friends. Through her conversations with Lucretia, Sarah comes to the realization that she wants to become a Quaker minister and that she was born to fight for the abolition of slavery. That is her newly dedicated life purpose.
Israel Morris proposes marriage, but he asks Sarah to give up the idea of becoming a minister and working for the abolitionist movement. She turns him down without much hesitation. She cannot give up on her ambitions in order to become his wife and mother to his children. Her answer would have been different, if he had allowed her to do both.
Nina writes that she is to be expelled from the Presbyterian Church for her demands that the clergy and members denounce slavery and give up their slaves. She has decided to become a Quaker, like Sarah. Nina arrives in Philadelphia to join the abolitionist cause.
Part 5 Analysis
At the beginning of this section, Handful is 33 and Sarah is 34; the section ends three years later. Sarah and Handful spend this section apart from one another, though they exchange letters and get news of each other through Nina. Overjoyed to be reunited with her mother and sister Sky, Handful learns about her mother’s experiences during the years they spent apart:
The truth was Sky would tell more tales than mauma ever knew. Before the week was out, she’d tell me how mauma set loose mischief on the plantation every chance she got. The more they whipped mauma, the more holes she’d cut in the rice sacks. She broke things, stole things, hid things. Buried the threshing sickles in the woods, chopped down fences, one time set fire to the overseer’s privy house (271).
Handful reports on Mauma’s continued insurgency against slavery, during her 14 years away on another plantation. Mauma’s example and life story encourage and support Handful’s own rebellion against slavery. Meanwhile, Sarah is living in Philadelphia, where she meets and moves in with Lucretia Mott (a real historical figure who was a Quaker and abolitionist, as well as an activist for women’s rights), who clarifies Sarah’s purpose in life:
Life is arranged against us, Sarah. And it’s brutally worse for Handful and her mother and sister. We’re all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren’t we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we’ll at least try and change the course of things. We just try, that’s all (275).
Lucretia helps Sarah realize that she must keep trying to fulfill her yearnings, no matter what the cost and no matter if she fails. At this moment, Sarah realizes that she needs to strive for more and to do more, and she recognizes that she was born to undertake the abolition of slavery.
This section ends with Nina and Sarah joined in Philadelphia, dedicated to their work in the abolitionist cause. Sarah explains her refusal to marry Israel Morris, realizing that many life choices contain mixed blessings and regrets. However, she chooses the course that brings the least regret. Kidd is emphasizing that, at times, the best a person can do is to simply choose a life path based on what she knows she will come to regret the least: I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all. I’d chosen the life I belonged to (295).
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