“Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy.” The Invention of Wings Sue Monk Kidd

“Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy.”  The Invention of Wings Sue Monk Kidd

It was by pure chance that I got to read this book after an intriguing narrative by my young friend Radha. My interest piqued, I actually went to the store and bought it putting away the Pulitzer Prize winner “All the Light We Cannot See.” There are two stories here; one about the book and one my own shame and after you read this, they may not seem so different except they happened about two hundred years apart. But then how much does prejudice and bigotry change or is it simply couched in more palatable demonstration?

Handful is headstrong, courageous and bright. Following the practice of slave tradition she is named after her owner’s last name, Hetty Grimke. Her mother is opinionated and daring even though she didn’t get any reading and writing. “Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy.”  

The Grimke family is Christian, devout and well respected in the Southern city of Charleston. It is a large household of ten children and eleven slaves to run the establishment. It is not a particularly affectionate household but a comfortable one. Mr Grimke is a justice so there is much debate between the father and boys in which the ladies of the family are not expected to participate. Sarah Grimke the middle child and the odd one is slyly encouraged by her father to read, discuss and air her opinions. She shows a sharp intellect.

On Sarah’s eleventh birthday her mother gifts her Handful all tied up in lavender ribbon as her own waiting maid. Aghast, Sarah creates a scene refusing the gift in the presence of the invited guests causing her mother deep mortification. Handful soils the carpet adding to the dreadful scene and the birthday party ends in disaster.

Sure of her father’s sense of justice, Sarah signs a release note for Handful and leaves it on the Judges desk in his study, only to find it torn up the next morning. She thinks it’s her mother’s spite and years later realises it is her trusted father who turned his back. 

 Decades later when he is dying he confesses, “Do you think I don’t abhor slavery as you do? Do you think I don’t know it was greed that stopped me from following my conscience as you have?”

It takes Sarah forty years to take a decisive step, acting in the faith of her conscience.

That is the crux of what I need to address. Are my gestures of empathy towards poverty, sympathy for the house help working tirelessly, my dismissal of caste and religious prejudices, any better or different from those who take advantage of theses divides. Is it really a case where empathy is one end of the spectrum and exploitation the other end? The Invention of Wings suggests that both empathy and intolerance are on the same side separated by micro calibrations. To refute these situations, mere empathy is not enough, there has to be a radical change in my belief system.