The frame story of the
novel is that of a history teacher who convinces Miss Jane Pittman, well over a
hundred years old in 1962 when the frame story is set, to tell him the story of
her life. Born into slavery, Miss Pittman
reluctantly tells him her life story, from slavery to the confusion and danger
of Emancipation, to the difficult life on sharecropping plantations, up through
the Civil Rights movement. The
significance of a black woman telling her story to a black man allows her to
speak in a more authentic voice than if she were narrating for a white
audience.
Miss Jane is born into
slavery on a plantation somewhere in Louisiana. Jane is called
"Ticey" during her days as a slave and has no parents; her mother
died as a result of a beating when Jane was a child, and Jane did not know her
father. Until she is around nine, Jane works in the Big House caring for the
white children. One day toward the end of the war, some fleeing confederate
soldiers arrive, followed soon after by some union soldiers. While being served
water by Jane, one Union soldier named Corporal Brown tells Jane that she will
soon be free and can then visit him in Ohio. He tells her to change her name
and offers her that of his daughter, Jane Brown. After the soldiers leave, Jane
refuses to answer when her mistress calls her "Ticey." The mistress
later beats Jane until she bleeds, but Jane insists that her name is now Jane
Brown. Because of her obstinacy, Jane is sent to work in the fields.
On the day of the
Emancipation Proclamation, Jane's master frees them all. On the same day, Jane
leaves the plantation with a group of ex-slaves. They have no idea where they
are going, but a woman named Big Laura leads the way. Jane wants to go to Ohio
to find Corporal Brown. The first morning away, a group of
"Patrollers," local white trash who used to hunt slaves, comes upon
them and kills everyone but Jane and a very young boy Ned, whom they did not
find. Jane and Ned then continue on their own, still headed for Ohio. Jane's
obstinacy persists for a few weeks until she and Ned are completely exhausted
from walking. Finally they catch a ride with a poor white man named Job who lets
them sleep at his house and takes them the next day to a plantation run by Mr.
Bone. Mr. Bone offers Jane a job, but only pays her the reduced rate of six
dollars a month (minus fifty cents for Ned's schooling) because she is so
young. Jane and Ned get a cabin and after one month on the job, Mr. Bone raises
her pay to ten dollars because she is doing as much work as the other women.
Life on Mr. Bone's
plantation initially is good, until the original owner of the plantation,
Colonel Dye, buys it back (with money borrowed from Yankees). Life reverts back
to almost how it was before slavery, with segregation and violence against
blacks who step out of line. The blacks start fleeing north because of the
worsening conditions. Initially the whites do not care, but soon they try to
stop the flight. Ned, who is now almost seventeen, joins a committee that helps
blacks leave. Colonel Dye warns Jane that Ned must stop, but when he will not,
Ku Klux Klan members arrive at Jane's house. Ned is not home when they come and
is able to flee the plantation later that night. He goes to Kansas, gets an
education, and eventually joins the U.S. Army to fight in Cuba. Jane soon
marries Joe Pittman (without an official ceremony). Despite Colonel Dye's
attempts to keep them, Joe and Jane soon move to a ranch near the
Texas-Louisiana border where Joe has found a job breaking horses.
Joe and Jane live at
the new ranch for many years, but as they age Jane becomes increasingly worried
about Joe getting hurt in his work. One of her recurring dreams depicts him
being thrown from a horse. Soon after, Jane sees a black stallion in a corral
that is the horse from her dream. She tries to get Joe not to ride it, even
consulting a Creole voodoo woman, but after the horse escapes (because Jane
frees it), Joe is killed trying to recapture it. After a few more years, Jane
moves to another part of Louisiana with a fisherman, who suddenly leaves, and
she is left all alone. Ned soon moves
back to where Jane is, and he brings his wife, Vivian, and three young
children. He buys a house and starts building a school. At the school, he teaches
ideas about the political rights of blacks as well as basic subjects. The local
whites fear Ned's rhetoric, and therefore they hire a Cajun that Jane knows,
Albert Cluveau, to shoot Ned, which Cluveau does. After Ned's death, Jane tells
Cluveau that the chariot of hell will come for him and Cluveau later dies a
fearful, painful death.
Jane then goes to live
on the Samson plantation. Robert Samson runs the plantation with his wife, Miss
Amma Dean. They have one son, Tee Bob, although Robert Samson had another son,
Timmy, with a black woman on the plantation, Verda. Timmy looks and acts more
like Robert than does Tee Bob, and the two boys are close friends even though
Robert and Miss Amma Dean still expect Timmy to be subservient to his brother
since Timmy is black. After the white overseer, Tom Joe, severely beats Timmy
in response to Timmy's obstinacy, Robert Samson gives Timmy money and tells him
to leave the plantation. Later in life,
Tee Bob falls in love with the Creole schoolteacher, Mary Agnes LeFarbre, who
appears almost white. His friends and family remind him that a white man cannot
love a black woman, but one night he goes to her house and asks her to marry
him anyhow. After she tells him that he is not thinking straight, he returns
home and commits suicide.
In the final chapter of
the book, Jane describes a boy named Jimmy Aaron, whom the whole plantation sees
as the great black hope who will save them all. Eventually, Jimmy gets involved
in the civil rights movement. After several years away from the plantation, he
returns home and plans an act of civil disobedience followed by a protest at
the courthouse. First a young girl is arrested for drinking from a white water
fountain. On the day that they all are to march to the courthouse in protest,
however, Jimmy is shot dead. The crowd who was planning to march had already
gathered when they hear the news. With the assistance of one young black man,
Jane bravely encourages the people to march and takes the lead even though
Jimmy is already dead.
The novel ends with
this encouragement, not returning to the frame narrative of the history
teacher. Nevertheless, the conceit of
Miss Jane as an old woman who has experienced both slavery and the Civil Rights
movement allows Gaines to explore themes within a broad historical span:
repeated themes of exodus, humor, work, and liberation pervade the novel. By addressing head-on the complications of
race and interracial relations within the American South, Gaines highlights the
lack of easy answers to these problems, although he does not allow those responsible
for the suffering of others to escape culpability and shame.
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