“Everything I learned about human nature, I learned from me.”
Anton Chekhov
If a scene in the Compromise ends with dialogue, the line probably belongs to Hester Brown, the indomitable cook and reluctant friend. Mariah and Hester bicker and chide while they work. The coworkers have nicknames for one another, Hester Pester and Mariah Milk-Thistle or Miss Prickly. They call each other out and deliver news without embellishment. Their dialogue has been a joy to write, and I’ve watched their devotion grow.
Image: Edmonia Lewis, 19th century artist [PD]
Though Hester is delightfully complex, she is a secondary character in a supporting role. She is kind to many, sometimes cleverly vindictive, but only loyal to one, her man Otis. Out of commitment to their cause, Hester and Otis keep secrets from Mariah, who is regularly reduced to spying. Hester has friends in the neighborhood who are part of the underground, and she keeps her business arrangement with the academy, to exchange labor for her manumission. She leads a double life. These story elements make her very interesting to write, and I imagine, she’d be an outstanding supporting role to play. One cultural resource I use as I draft Hester is Nikki Giovanni’s poem, Ego Tripping. It gives her beauty, strength, and playfulness. In this post, I will look at Hester’s ways in the world of The Compromise.
“That’s right,” said Hester. “Take a stand or find yourself drowning in someone else’s river.”
The Compromise, “Gamble Library 1841”
First, as a character foil, Hester helps me reveal Mariah. As their differences are revealed, Mariah becomes the recessive and curious one, but also naive in her loyalties. Mariah gradually adopts some of Hester’s healthy cynicism. By the time they part ways, Hester and Mariah have argued and recovered many times and changed one another for the better. Robert McKee, author of Story, provides a good metaphor for the lead and supporting roles. Hester and Mariah take turns pulling the tides of the other’s nature.
“Imagine the cast as a kind of solar system with the protagonist as the sun, supporting roles as planets around the sun, bit players as satellites around the planets– all held in orbit by the gravitational pull of the star at the center, each pulling the tides of the others’ natures.”
Robert McKee, Story. p.379
Hester in Control
Their relationship begins in turmoil the night the girls arrive. The Columbian Female Academy is run by secret abolitionists, so the rules change depending on who’s listening. Hester’s debt-enslavement is a contract she depends on and can work around by controlling relationships. When given the chance, Hester lords over the new girls from the country to make an impression. They’ve come to do a “mountain of work” because two other girls left suddenly. She explains the rules of their service in no uncertain terms.
Tears do not receive sympathy from me!
"The Columbian Female Academy’s a clean and courteous school for young ladies. We have a good reputation in this town. No common folk here, none of your country ways, and you will not complain. You do the work while those girls upstairs make a mess and ask for special favors, understand?”... She wagged her head. “You two sillies got a lot to learn. In this place, you walk behind me. You get a ‘miss’ outa me, but only around those that need to hear it. You got one curtsy already, and one only. Don’t be putting on airs or I make it worse for you.”...
“Tears do not receive sympathy from me! And don’t look like that, Miss Mariah, like your blood is chilling. Working here is much better than scratching out a living with hillfolk!”
Hester directed our attention to a low bed in the corner. “That’s where you sleep tonight because Grandma Starr recently passed. You tuck in now, but this is your last night together. Eliza works and sleeps in the attic starting tomorrow night, and you two can start growing up. You'd better hope Old Mother Starr’s not restless as bats in the night.”
Don’t be putting on airs or I make it worse for you.
Eliza resorts to tears and Mariah falls sick for days. It’s Hester who nurses Mariah back to health. In the week and months that follow, Hester trains Mariah while the girls upstairs take Eliza under their wings. This divides and shapes the sisters’ destinies. Mariah respects and needs Hester and moves her own individuation.
Hester had no problem knowing her own self. She did her work well and knew her kitchen. She said what she liked and what she didn’t, which made me follow her lead. She loved Otis more than anything and doing kindness for him was what made her happiest. She could lie to me whenever she wanted to and take time off without a shadow of guilt.
Nobody here’s schooling Negroes.
Though teaching literacy to Blacks is prohibited, Hester has learned to read and write during her years at the academy. When asked about her abilities, Hester’s irrational argument and evasive diction, I expect, signal her mocking tone.
Hester made a shopping list and quickly stuffed it in her apron pocket.
“Hester, can you read and write?” I asked.
“No, Ma’am. No, Miss Mariah. I never learned. Anyone teaching Negroes to read and write in Missouri is fined $500. Nobody here’s schooling Negroes, but I learned the alphabet before we knew it was wrong, and Miss Ada says that moral teachings are different. She says they‘re excluded from the prohibition.”
I saw these “exclusions from the prohibition” on Sunday afternoons.
Otis reads the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, aloud during their sessions with Miss Ada. Hester’s critical consciousness comes through.
Hester pushed her chair back and spoke in a tone of voice I knew. “For Pete's sake, why do they protest in letters to newspapers? Letters to newspapers are never going to change the law.”
Hester the Abolitionist
“For blessed work, the liberation of our people,” said Hester.
That evening, the group reads a call for stories in The Liberator. William Lloyd Garrison asks for more men like Frederick Douglass to come forward. Hester, his lover and advocate, helps Otis begin his major writing project.
Otis straightened the paper. “Listen to this. Mr. Garrison says he wants escaped slaves to tell their true stories, it says ‘from the brutality of bondage to the song of liberation.’“
Miss Ada said sweetly, “That’s you, Otis.”
“Listen to them words,” said Hester. “Don’t they sound good?” It was a rare tone of joy she reserved for Otis.
Otis continued, “Garrison says he met a man suitable for this duty named Frederick Douglass. They want men, it says here, ‘needing but a small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race.’”
Miss Ada and Hester hummed with interest.
“‘From the brutality of bondange to the song of liberation.’” repeated Otis. “It does sound good!”
“For blessed work, the liberation of our people,” said Hester with a rising tone of happiness.
Mariah, however, worries about the risks to her brother, who is hired out in a slave state, not an escaped slave in a free state, and the risks to the academy for defying the prohibition. I let my readers decide which risks are worth taking. I expect some will agree with Hester.
I could smell trouble from where I was. Somebody needed to think things through. Otis might act like a gentleman, and with wax on his hair, might even pass for a white man, but he was a slave hired out and subject to the Black Code of Missouri. Hester was dark-skinned and bonded to old women who said one thing and did another, and they were doing exactly what was prohibited, promoting northern abolitionist doctrine.
Hester the Realist
“Nothing here cleans a pot.”
The Compromise, “The Gamble Library 1841”
Later, when Mariah is drawn by curiosity into the Gamble Library, Hester reins her in. They look at illustrated books on alchemy and navigation, but there is proper work to be done according the Hester the Realist.
We looked at a comical illustration of a bearded man in a long dress leaning over his desk.
“Tell me what it says.”
Hester pointed and spelled it out. “A-L-C-H-E-M-Y. I think that’s how to make gold.”
“That’s useful,” I said.
“It's not as useful in the kitchen as vinegar and salt,” Hester grumbled.
“And these dots over here with lines connecting them, you think they’re stars or fence posts?”
“Fence posts? No, they’re stars. Uh-huh. This one says, P-O-L-A-R-I-S. I’ve never heard of naming a fencepost, have you?”
“Maybe one of those is the North Star and you can get someplace with this like a map,” I said.
“Nothing here cleans a pot. You copy these words a few more times; then come with your scullery salt.” said Hester. “We still have work to do.”
Mariah learns to read and forms a friendship of the mind with a white woman, Margaret Mott. Hester gives Mariah time to study, but their friendship excluded Hester. Mariah is devastated when Margaret leaves, but Hester the Realist does not hold back an opinion that modern readers should recognize and admire.
She said, “You probably think the potatoes Margaret planted are sweeter than yours or mine. Half of them will rot just the same, you’ll see. And don’t waste more time reading what’s inside your pocket about the righteousness of labor. It slows you down and don’t raise your pay none.”
Hester the Woman
“What’s Hester’s problem?” asked one of my sensitivity readers. “Is she bitter for having her ambition snuffed out?” In fact, Hester is ambitions, critically insightful, and droll. I’ve given her the best laughs and an ironic tone that is also wise.
“A small light will burn forever, Miss Mariah, not the whole fire. Grown women know that.”
The Compromise, “Waking the Nation”
If the Compromise is a comedy, Hester receives what she has worked for, her freedom from slavery with Otis beside her. They could enjoy a life of shared goals and family, however long it endures. If tragedy takes over my new ending, Hester will have only one, freedom without the love of her life. That is a chilling compromise no one wants but many have made. Great stories with planetary rhythms and mythic arcs help us endure the push and pull of being alive. The politics of life might keep us orbiting other suns, or we find stories, like true friends, opening what is possible to see one another’s brightness.
“One of the sad truths of life is that there’s only one person in this vale of tears that we ever really know, and that’s ourselves. We’re essentially and forever alone. Yet, although others remain at a distance, changing and unknowable in a definitive final sense, and despite the obvious distinctions of age, sex, background, and culture, despite all the clear differences among people, the truth is we are far more alike than we are different. We are all human.”
Robert McKee, Story p.386
The politics of life might keep us orbiting other suns, or we find stories, like true friends, opening what is possible, to see one another’s brightness.