Yellow Wife

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-15

Part 2, Chapters 16-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-26

Part 3, Chapters 27-32

Part 3, Chapters 33-36

Part 3, Chapter 37-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Red Dress

Pheby’s mother was a tailor, known for her beauty and elegance. The clothes she wore were different from those of the other enslaved workers on the plantation. She took great care in her clothing, evidence of her mantra that—while her body may be enslaved—her mind was free. Ruth felt it was important that her daughter respect herself and know that she deserved more than slavery. After Ruth’s death, Pheby spots her mother’s red dress hanging on a hook behind the door. Pheby alters the dress and wears it to her mother’s funeral. The first time she puts it on, she is overwhelmed with the smell of her mother and her own grief.

When she is taken away to Lapier’s jail and sold, Pheby refuses to put on a different dress, even though the red calico is stained and tattered from the eight-day march. She watches as other enslaved individuals are sold and forced to remove their clothing, but Pheby plants her feet and refuses to remove the dress—a reflection of how she holds on to her identity. Later, she carefully folds the dress and puts it in her closet. For Pheby, this is the last remaining connection to her mother, the person she loved most in the world. The dress symbolizes her connection to her mother and the lessons Ruth instilled throughout her childhood.

Straw

At the beginning of the book, Pheby meets with Essex at the barn behind a haystack. It is there that they make their plans of escape and conceive their son Monroe. The straw symbolizes their secret resistance and how they use what they have available to survive. It also serves as a reminder that Monroe is Essex’s son and Pheby’s last remaining connection to the love of her life.

From his birth, Pheby is struck by the similarities between her son and his father. When Rubin has Monroe sent from the main house to work in the stables, Pheby struggles to spend time with him. Monroe gives her a bracelet made of straw, recalling the time Essex gave Pheby a necklace in their secret hiding place in the barn. Like his father, Monroe walks around with straw dangling from his mouth. She meets with her son behind the haystack in the barn at Lapier’s jail, just as she used to meet Essex in the barn at the plantation.

Journal

When Pheby was a young girl, she was cherished by Jacob Bell’s sister, affectionately referred to by Pheby as Aunt Sally. Before Aunt Sally passed away, she educated Pheby and taught her how to read, write, and play piano. The narrative reveals that enslaved persons were not allowed to read or write. Concerned that enslaved Black workers might rebel if they learned the tools of independence, many white lawmakers instituted policies that prohibited the education of Black people. The South Carolina Act of 1740 stated:

Whereas, the having slaves taught to write, or suffering them to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconveniences; Be it enacted, that all and every person and persons whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach or cause any slave or slaves to be taught to write, or shall use or employ any slave as a scribe, in any manner of writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write, every such person or persons shall, for every such offense, forfeit the sum of one hundred pounds, current money (“Acts against the education of slaves South Carolina, 1740 and Virginia, 1819.” Thirteen.org).

In Virginia, the setting of Yellow Wife, assembly of Black men and women was punished by public lashing. Limiting access to information was a way for white enslavers to maintain power. Pheby knew the risk of carrying a journal in the pocket of her dress, as well as its profound meaning.

Pheby’s journal-writing is an assertion of autonomy. When Pheby first begins to write in her journal, she details everything she learned from her mother. She sews a hidden pocket into her dress and keeps it with her always. When she is abducted from her mother’s funeral and taken to Lapier’s jail, Pheby continues to add to the journal. She records the names of the men and women who pass through the jail, including the young women she dresses to be sold into sex trafficking. When the women share details about their lives, Pheby records that as well. Although she cannot help the women, writing down their stories is her own act of defiance. When Ruth was alive, she repeatedly reminded her daughter that, while her body might be enslaved, her mind could never belong to another. The journal symbolizes Pheby’s resistance and resilience when all other power has been taken from her.