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52 pages 1 hour read

Deborah Spera

Call Your Daughter Home

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Themes

Race and Status in the South

The fictional town of Branchville is defined by its rigid social structure. While the history of slavery in the South has created barriers between white and Black communities, these are not the only divisions that exist. The three women who are the story’s central characters all live in different communities within their stratified society. To some extent, these distinctions are dictated by race and economics, but they are due to family heritage, class, and reputation.

Annie is the wife of a rich plantation owner and part of Branchville’s social elite. This group of people only associates with socially prominent or politically active peers. Other people in the community who are lower on the social scale are viewed as “the help.” Both white and Black citizens of Branchville may fall into this category.

Although Retta is linked to Annie as part of her domestic staff, she lives in the exclusively Black community of Shake Rag. Retta’s willingness to take Gertrude’s family into her home, however briefly, causes quite a stir in the neighborhood because of the potential danger it involves. Mrs. Walker, Retta’s friend, is only tolerated on the outskirts of Shake Rag because she is an outcast among the whites. Her white counterparts don’t want to associate with her, because her husband is in prison for murder. This makes her less respectable to the seemingly upright citizens of Branchville.

Gertrude is an outcast for living in abject poverty. She doesn’t belong to the upper class, and initially, she doesn’t belong to the white working class of Branchville either. Alvin has isolated her in a shack in the swamp. When she first appears in town, her clothing is shabby, and she has a swollen black eye. By the standards of Branchville, Gertrude isn’t respectable or worthy of association. Retta doesn’t even want her to be seen on the front porch of the Coleses’ house.

Gertrude challenges her society’s hypocrisy: “Branchville likes to talk, and my older girls who live here with my brother don’t need any more dirt slung upon them by the sharp tongues of those who think they’ve been deemed by God to lay judgment” (16). This tendency to judge is what separates each of the closed communities of Branchville from the others. The fear of judgment from narrow-minded residents keeps the novel’s three protagonists isolated from one another until they gather the strength to break the barriers of race and status that define their communities.

Secrecy and Maintaining Appearances

Because Branchville is populated by people who watch and judge one another constantly, secrecy becomes essential to preserving the appearance of respectability. At the end of the novel, Annie is painfully aware of this artifice: “Polite make-believe is weary business, and there is no one better at this than Southerners. I am tired already and we’ve just begun” (320). Lonnie echoes her sentiments a few chapters earlier when Gertrude remarks on how happy the people seem at Homecoming Camp, saying, “They’re just p-pretending” (275).

Everyone is attempting to maintain a pleasant façade to conceal some very ugly realities that no one wants to acknowledge. The truth is kept at bay through the twin tactics of fear and shame. Gertrude suffers years of physical abuse from her husband, but she refuses to tell her brother about it. Using the common tactics of an abuser, Alvin has brainwashed her into believing that she deserves to be beaten. He has deliberately isolated her from her family, refuses to allow her to attend her father’s funeral, and burns her brother’s letters when they arrive. He fears that she might tell her relatives about his abuse. His threats of worse punishment keep Gertrude silent for years.

Edwin uses a similar technique of isolation to keep his daughters from speaking about his pedophilia. When they are on the point of alerting Annie to the problem, Edwin throws them out of the house and banishes them. His power and influence in the community represent another threat that keeps his daughters from speaking up. The community itself conspires to avoid any rupture in the social fabric. People would discredit the claims of two teenage girls when balanced against the power and influence of their father.

Even Annie gets a taste of this gaslighting tactic when she tells the governor what Edwin has done. Her husband discredits her testimony, and the governor believes him rather than the woman who dares to speak an unpleasant truth out loud. Retta faces a similar dilemma. She has known about Edwin’s pedophilia for years but fears speaking out. As a Black woman, she occupies a precarious position in society. To speak the truth to a plantation owner might mean her death. The novel implies that failing to break the silence is what allows the predators in society to continue their crimes, but breaking the silence comes at a high price.

Maternal Anger and Strength

The three central characters in the novel seem to be caught in unwinnable situations. They each live in a highly judgmental community that doesn’t want to see the status quo disturbed. This desire for superficial harmony allows evil to flourish because nobody wants to disrupt the appearance of gentility that forms the basis of their identities. Dire consequences, including ostracization, await those who defy these unspoken rules. Under such pressurized circumstances, the novel suggests that only one force is strong enough to break this cycle—maternal rage.

Gertrude, Retta, and Annie come from very different walks of life and different socio-economic classes, but motherhood unites them. Each one understands that the well-being of their children is their paramount concern. Gertrude tells Annie:

My husband used to beat me, Missus [...]. For a long time I tried to think what I done wrong. I figured there must have been something to cause him to be so mad all the time, but no matter how I put my head to it, I couldn’t figure it out. And then he started in on my girls, and that just wasn’t right (311).

Gertrude’s comment echoes the minister’s sermon about the docile chicken who became a fierce mother hen. While Gertrude make excuses for the abuse she receives, the abuse of her children is an entirely different story. Alvin’s day of reckoning comes when Gertrude sees him mistreating his daughters.

Edwin’s day of reckoning comes when Annie finds the evidence of his pedophilia. Like Gertrude, at first she turns her fury inward and blames herself for being a bad mother by allowing her children to suffer at her husband’s hands. And like Gertrude, she follows the socially acceptable route of suffering in silence rather than causing scandal. Though the women occupy different classes, they both face pressure to conform to social standards.

Annie’s need to protect her children pulls her back from her self-imposed suffering. She redirects her rage to a more appropriate object and airs long-held secrets, even though she knows it will destroy her family’s reputation.

Even though Retta isn’t the biological mother of the Coles children, she feels the protective instincts of a mother toward them. Her regret at her inability to save her own daughter also motivates her to speak out against Edwin. This act of bravery costs her life, but it will also cost him his. Gertrude performs an act of justice by killing Edwin, and this time, the community validates her maternal rage. By extension, it validates Annie’s and Retta’s as well.

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