Essay Questions

Deconstruct Ivy’s assessment of Baby William’s blackness.

Ivy recounts, “Sometimes I just liked to stare at that boy, he was so beautiful. Black curls like satin when you ran your fingers through them. Black eyelashes, long and thick. Eyes so dark they was nearly black, too. Mary Ella’s hair was even lighter than mine. I didn’t like to think where Baby William might of got all that black from.” Ivy’s tone demonstrates that she is uncomfortable with William’s blackness; hence, would not be willing to contemplate about its origin. Therefore, she considers blackness to be emblematic of inferiority and strives to overlook it.

Summarize a Psychoanalytic interpretation of Ivy’s feelings when holding Baby William.

Ivy confesses, “I just loved holding him and he crabbed less on my lap. Sometimes when I held Baby William like that, I thought I could remember my own mama holding me that way.” Holding William enables Ivy to experience a Regression which relates to the childhood experience of being held by her mother.

How does Ivy’s pregnancy expose her unconscious body-image fears?

Ivy reflects, “Three weeks since he wrote me anything and six weeks since we got to be alone. Last time was when I told him I was having a baby. He’d seen me around the farm since then, but not up close. I wondered what he’d think of how fat I was now. All of it baby fat, though. His baby. I thought of him going to school every day, seeing the other girls there, and I felt right jealous. It was like the whole world was moving forward, taking Henry Allen with it, while I was holding still.” Here, Ivy is worried that her fatness would be unappealing which would prompt Henry Allen to find another girlfriend. Ivy believes that fatness is a signal of ugliness. Accordingly, she is not absolutely thrilled by her impending motherhood.