51 pages • 1 hour read
Marlon JamesThe Book of Night Women
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Cycle of Violence
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to enslavement, sexual violence, torture, and murder.
The text is primarily occupied with the never-ending violence of slavery and its far-reaching repercussions. Five chapters of the book begin with the words “[e]very negro walk in a circle. Take that and make of it what you will” (33, 120, 223, 313, 421). It is important in the discussion of a cycle of violence to distinguish between the violence that white people inflict as enslavers and the violence that Black people use as a form of coping and resistance. After the initial refrain in Chapter 25, the narrator explains that sometimes enslaved people are forced to walk the white man’s circle. The difference is that white men choose their circle: “Plenty have choice to walk straight and away, yet plenty come back to where them start. Others never leave” (313). Enslavers have the power, at any given moment, to end the cycle. Enslaved people can only operate within the confines of their enslavement.
The cycle begins with enslavement: Without a chance to choose, Black people are doomed to the cycle of slavery that requires violence. Only after getting revenge does anyone have the chance to learn what Lilith learned: that killing another person also kills a part of the person who kills. Part of the reason white people are so evil is that they live with that every day. Lilith tries to explain the futility of revenge to the six night women, but revenge is wrapped up in the rebellion that has long been fated to commence. The Fire for the rebellion at Montpelier was sparked long ago and they have all been waiting for the inevitable “fire next time” (266). Within the confines of slavery, enslaved people are trapped in an impossible situation where they must either be complicit in their subjugation or continue The Cycle of Violence in hopes that one day when they have freedom, they can choose another path.
The Cycle of Violence is further complicated when Lilith admits that she felt a kind of elation unlike anything she has ever felt while killing. She says that she understands why God kept it for himself, implying that the elation is inherent to humanity if they only discover it. Yet she turns away from it. Lilith chooses not to partake in the killing that the rebellion invites. She still kills people during the chaos, but instead of getting revenge on those who have hurt her, she protects those who are weak, even if that person is white.
Within The Cycle of Violence that is slavery, the novel also discusses the cyclical nature of life as a Black person at this time. Lilith lives almost as a free woman just like Circe did. Lovey sets out to write a book about herself and instead, she writes one about the women who came before her, who put her on this path, and she wonders what circle she’s on. Violence, the novel suggests, is only one cycle among others, but it is the most oppressive one.
The Search for Autonomy Under Slavery
Starting from when she is a young child, Lilith struggles to understand her identity. People tell her who she is, but she does not understand how they know. They say she is a woman now, they say she is Black, they say she is spirited, but all of those things are only true in the context of the world she lives in. Lilith’s search for autonomy begins with deconstructing her identity and building it back on her own. Toward the end of the novel, when Homer asks, “[y]ou think you is a woman?” she responds, “[m]e think me is Lilith” (350). Lilith denies the aspects of identity that people put on her and finds autonomy in the fact that she does not have to adhere to what others want of her.
Lilith searches for love everywhere as a child. She looks at a picture of a prince and princess, she reads Joseph Andrews, and she begins to see men differently and try to get their attention. When she is still a child, several men rape her and for a long time, she thinks that all sex is rape. The novel thereby highlights how enslavers use rape as a tool of oppression, another means to strip away any source of autonomy, memory, and happiness. Homer’s story proves to Lilith that love is possible and sex can be pleasurable, but even so, Homer’s story ends in rape, the murder of her children, and a loss of hope. In taking one step toward autonomy, every source of joy is stripped from Homer.
When Lilith realizes that sex can make her feel pleasure and happiness, she grasps it with a constant fear of what is to come. Lilith enjoys sex with Quinn, yet the infringement of her autonomy complicates her agency: She could not deny him sex if she wanted to. Slavery takes away the enslaved person’s right to be autonomous in any aspect of a relationship with an enslaver, but it also raises the question of whether it is possible to truly take this away from someone. For Lilith, the love she finds under the confines of slavery is a source of autonomy, since it gives her a sense of self-determination in a world where other people try to define Lilith’s identity for her.
Lilith also finds autonomy in violence and, eventually, her refusal of violence. At Coulibre, as she is tortured by all she cannot have in Joseph Andrews, she imagines the power of inflicting violence on others. When she does this, she feels an elation unlike anything she has ever felt, but she is later haunted both by this feeling and the people she killed. The night women bring her into their planning of the rebellion, but she refuses to act on the desire for revenge. Lilith exercises her autonomy to turn away from revenge. In contrast, the night women use their autonomy to plan a rebellion and get revenge. Even in her final days, as she slowly dies in the gibbet, Gorgon sings instead of screaming, showing ownership of and commitment to the decisions that landed her there. Even when they end in death, each woman’s fate is evidence that enslavers cannot take away a person’s autonomy. Under the most brutal captivity, they find a way to decide their future.
Darkness, Womanness, and Freedom
The recurring concepts of Darkness, Womanness, and Freedom are intertwined in the book. Women throughout the text use different forms of resistance to find freedom in darkness. Lilith grapples with her relationship to darkness and womanness from a young age. She tries to find her own womanness and feels jealous of Homer for seemingly being able to see in the dark. After burning down Coulibre, though, Lilith thinks, “if this be true womanness, then she don’t want it no more,” and she wonders if true womanness is “to be free to be as terrible as you wish” (241). Lilith fears that true darkness and true womanness only lead to blood, which is a result she no longer has an interest in. In the freedom that darkness provides, Lilith instead says the first name of the white man she loves (343).
Lilith is never granted freedom, even after she is spared from the mass murders after the rebellion, but she finds sources of freedom by naming her daughter and teaching her to read and write. Lovey Quinn, in turn, finds freedom in writing. This story is an ode to the importance of Darkness, Womanness, and Freedom. Lovey explains that in the darkness she can transcend her skin color and write a story about women who can be free, even if she is not. Lovey learns the lesson that Homer tries to teach about the power of reading: They cannot change the white man, but they can change themselves and resist in other ways. Their minds—their words, their beliefs, their knowledge—are the only thing the enslavers cannot take. Lilith uses darkness and womanness to find a source of freedom in love.
Other women also use darkness to find freedom. At night Isobel rides to Kingston, using her freedom to further her misery. The night women use the guise of darkness to plan a rebellion that changes the course of history. Homer, who Lilith has always known to be friends with the night, appears to Lovey as the dark, skinny woman who smells like mint and lemongrass to tell her story. The night represents the darkness that gives the night women coverage and safety. While in the daylight the women’s darkness is used against them, in the night their darkness becomes a gift that offers them freedom.
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By Marlon James
