Slavery: Conflict and Reconciliation in Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl

Abstract

Willa Cather, a mainstream American novelist, in herSapphira and the Slave Girlhas interpreted nature of slavery in a fictional form as we observe in the usual writings of the Afro-American authors. The plot of the novel is organized with a couple ofAnglo-Americans, the owner of the farm, along with a number of African slaves to assist the couple. Nancy Till, the protagonist, who is the slave girl, cannot bear the suppression of the mistress, and ultimately, escapes to Canada and lives there. After twenty-five years, she returns to the United States and visits the Back Creek, where she was born and grown up, and meets her former owners as the trip of reconciliation. In this context, this research observes Cather neither siding to the Afro- American authors who aggressively think that the abolition of slavery is possible only through violence and destruction, nor the Anglo-Americans who accept slavery as a curse and incurable. The present research first explores the very message of the text and proves howthe abolition of slavery is possible through reconciliation or mutual understanding rather than subversive and revolutionary acts.