Ellen Foster

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Chapters 11-13

Chapters 14-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary

After the funeral director brings them home, Ellen’s daddy takes off and Ellen eats the food that neighbors left. Ellen goes through her mother’s clothes and decides to wear something of hers to school the next day. She does not like her teachers expressing curiosity about how her mother died. She walks home with Starletta and tries to stay out of her father’s way. He does nothing but eat and sleep.

Her father signs over their farm to his brothers Rudolph and Ellis, and each month one of the brothers delivers some cash in an envelope. Ellen makes sure to retrieve it first, setting aside money for the electric and gas bills, food, and extras. In attempting to feed herself, Ellen decides she prefers frozen meals. Each week, the bus driver drops her off at the grocery store and Ellen finds someone to take her home. Starletta’s daddy takes Ellen to buy a winter coat.

When she doesn’t have Starletta to play with, Ellen plays “catalog” by creating a family and then picking out things for them. She joins the Girl Scouts and buys herself the uniform. Starletta has a fit that she cannot have a uniform because, Ellen says, “[T]hey do not have a colored troop in my county. They might in town” (27). Ellen forges her father’s signature to earn badges.

Ellen knows there is no Santa Claus, but on Christmas Eve, she goes with Starletta to the “colored store” to buy presents and wrapping. She buys Starletta’s family a spoon rest. Ellen buys herself “two variety packs of construction paper, a plastic microscope complete with slides, a diary with a lock and key, an alarm clock, and some shoes” (28). She wraps her presents and hides them around the house so she can find them the next morning for Christmas. She is not invited to mama’s mama’s turkey dinner. She wonders if she should wrap something around the house for her father, but he does not come home.

Chapter 6 Summary

Ellen visits Starletta’s family with her gift and sees Starletta’s parents teasing each other, unlike the serious way they behave when they are headed to pick cotton. People say of Starletta’s parents that “they do not try to be white” (29). Ellen says, as fond as she is of Starletta, she would not use Starletta’s glass for fear of germs. Their house is one room, with an outhouse and no TV. Starletta is the only one who can read. Starletta’s mother makes quilts and sells them to white women in town, who turn around and resell them for a “pretty penny.” Starletta’s daddy is the only Black man in town who does not buy liquor from Ellen’s father.

Ellen plays with Starletta’s new toys and tells her where to put all the people in her small toy town. Starletta’s parents invite her to eat with them, but Ellen says she will just wait until they finish. Starletta offers her a biscuit, but Ellen thinks, “no matter how good it looks to you it is still a colored biscuit” (32). They have a gift for Ellen, a sweater, which Ellen says does not look “colored” at all. She thinks she might cry a little. Starletta’s daddy says that if Ellen’s daddy is at home, she can come back to their place. Her father is not home, and Ellen fantasizes that he might turn up frozen in a ditch.

She can no longer dress in her mama’s clothes because one of mama’s mama’s girls came and took all of Ellen’s mother’s things, with the message that mama’s mama would rather Black people have Ellen’s mama’s things than those who drink and carry on like trash. The bookmobile does not run on holidays, so Ellen looks through the encyclopedias. She likes the two poems under P, one by Shakespeare and the other about flinging a scarf over the arc.

Back in the present, after her picnic, Ellen decides it is time to head back with Dolphin. New mama plans things for the girls to do together, and today they are making a terrarium. Ellen participates, telling others how to add the dirt. The last thing they made, Ellen says, was a fish tank. Everybody was in charge of a fish. Ellen named hers John. New mama washes her hair, which Ellen enjoys. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she looks like a stranger to herself.

Back in the past, on New Year’s Eve, Ellen’s daddy brought a group of men home. They eat her food, and Ellen wishes they would choke and die, and she could set fire to the house. She cannot leave out the window as she sometimes does, as it is frozen shut. The men ask how old Ellen is and her father says nine or 10. A friend says that is “about ripe” and that his wife was 13 when he married her. Ellen tries to sneak out when they are passed out on the floor, but her father stops her. He puts his hands on her and calls her by her mother’s name. Ellen insists she is Ellen, and then she runs.

Chapter 7 Summary

Ellen offers Starletta’s parents a dollar to let her stay there. She claims she locked herself out of her house. Starletta’s mama says Ellen is welcome and does not have to pay. Ellen sleeps in her coat atop the covers and is surprised, when she wakes, that it did not feel like she slept in a Black person’s house.

Ellen boxes up some clothes, her microscope, and some personal hygiene items and practices using the telephone. She calls her Aunt Betsy, who is recently widowed, and asks to come stay with her. Betsy says it will be nice to have a girl around, which Ellen thinks is music to her ears. Aunt Betsy lives in a different town. She takes Ellen shopping and buys her a dress. She tells Ellen to make herself at home, which Ellen does, investigating all of her aunt’s things. On Sunday, Betsy asks who is coming to take her back. She laughs when Ellen said she thought she could stay and takes Ellen home.

Ellen likes to go shopping with her new mama and is amazed by all the food at the store. New mama does not like frozen foods but prefers to make things from scratch. Ellen is also amazed that she never runs out of money at the store. Ellen prefers fried chicken.

After Ellen’s Aunt Betsy takes her home, Ellen decides to lock herself in her room away from her father. She says, “I forgot sometimes and he got to me but I got him away from me pretty soon. If you push him down you have some time to run before he can get his ugly self up. He might grab and swat but that is all he can do if you are quick” (43).

When school resumes, a teacher notices a bruise on Ellen’s arm. She asks if there is anywhere Ellen can stay that is not Starletta’s. The art teacher speaks to the teacher and principal, and then says they have decided what to do with Ellen. Ellen’s response is “It is about time I thought. Yes Lord it is about time” (45).Ellen offers Starletta’s parents a dollar to let her stay there. She claims she locked herself out of her house. Starletta’s mama says Ellen is welcome and does not have to pay. Ellen sleeps in her coat atop the covers and is surprised, when she wakes, that it did not feel like she slept in a Black person’s house.

Chapters 5-7 Analysis

Ellen’s tenacity, resourcefulness, and resilience of character emerge in these chapters as she describes her father’s neglect, abandonment, and sexual abuse. Ellen’s longing to have her mother close, and the comfort she takes in wearing her clothes, is denied her when her grandmother—who does not come herself but sends one of her employees—takes away her mother’s things. The act deprives Ellen of any maternal presence in her life.

Ellen’s isolation at Christmas is a stark sign of her deprivation of basic care and affection. Characteristically, she does not feel sorry for herself but simply provides for herself as best she can. Ellen’s matter-of-fact reporting eschews pity but invokes pathos, a sense of sorrow and loss for her situation. Though her father’s absence is a relief, Ellen expresses her longing for a nurturing family and comfortable home by looking in a catalog of clothing and household items. Her only model for a functional family is Starletta’s, but Ellen has been taught to consider Black people inferior, a prejudice she has absorbed from her culture. Despite their lack of literacy or conveniences such as indoor plumbing, Starletta’s parents are playful and loving to one another and toward Starletta, a sign of their own resilience within a toxic environment of systemic Racial Prejudice and Discrimination.

Ellen’s Christmas gift for them illustrates that she regards Starletta’s family as friends, unlike her father, but is also a sign that she feels that their care toward her must be repaid. She offers to pay to stay at Starletta’s, as if at a hotel rather than a welcoming friend’s home. She does not offer her Aunt Betsy money, but rather hopes that, as her aunt is recently widowed and childless, Betsy might adopt her. That her friend’s family offers her refuge while her maternal aunt returns Ellen to a situation where she is vulnerable and threatened plays to the novel’s message about The Bonds of Family.

That her father appears to be confusing Ellen with his dead wife when he assaults her demonstrates his expectation for Ellen to take her mother’s place. Ellen relates repeated attacks with her usual stoic deflection, as if she is giving advice to another, the way she instructed Starletta how to play with her miniature town. After her experience with Aunt Betsy, Ellen does not trust that adults will protect her, so her surprise as well as relief when her teachers intervene is palpable. Privacy and reserve are elemental to Ellen’s nature. Just as she did not wish to speak of her mother’s death, Ellen is reluctant to inform adults about what is happening to her, and she instead behaves as if her father’s abuse is simply her responsibility to evade to the best of her ability.

Initially, Ellen accepts her ingrained prejudices against Starletta’s family as just another example of how things are, including her acceptance of the racist myth that melanin is a kind of “germ” that can be transferred by contact, thus “infecting” white children. Notably, Ellen considers the term “colored” an acceptable reference to Black people. Ellen’s use of “colored” carries the connotation of segregation held over from the Jim Crow era, even after the civil rights movement.