Blog Post 3: Following a “Forbidden” character

(I imagine that there should be an eyebrow wiggle at the end of the title. Cause I wanted to add in some personal humor and say that the title almost sounds naughty, but many that's just me?)

How to begin, who follows the societal rules, and who doesn’t and how does that help or hinder that person? I wanted to pick a secondary character for this, because not only can they sometimes be the greatest characters written unintentionally but because they sometimes give more insight to the true nature of the people of the time. Take Sylvie for example. A strong woman of color who was married, and refuses to get married again throughout the book to prove that she can be faithful to her husband with her second chance. She now owns the boardinghouse, and runs it with grace and precision that I don’t think she would have had were she a man, or were she a white woman. She takes her own path even though she is a woman of color, which is something that Jenkins characters seem to have. Well, the characters we like anyhow. Mind you, it’s not easy for her, but she wants to prove a point, plus when her husband dies in the mines, she doesn’t have very many options. Sylvie still makes her own way in the world though, and stays her strong, independent self the whole book. I think that she only agrees to marry Doc because she realizes that it is okay for her to be happy even without her husband, and that her husband would want her to forgive herself for the things that she did in the past.

I guess she fits pretty well into the social construction of gender, because she acts as a woman is thought to ask, be her more stubborn that the average woman. She doesn’t do anything too outlandish, and she wears dresses as expected of the time. All that seems to suit her just fine though, whereas Eddy for example doesn’t want to give up her dream just to be a quiet mother, and wife. On the other hand, Sylvie’s ability to scare off both Jim, and Rhine from disobeying her is a pretty awesome feat that takes a lot of guts and passion it takes “hutzpah”. Both Eddy and Sylvie both seem to have this trait, as well as some of the other women of color in the community. I would say that Sylvie is treated as any other woman of color in the community, and treated with at least some with a large measure of respect for taking her own path through her life. Her denial of the obvious affection she has for Doc do get in the way of her being happy, but in the end, she accepts it and can be herself. She too has an H.E.A. ending to her story. The way that her own story mirrors Eddy's in some ways is a cool dynamic too.