Ellen Foster

Ellen Foster directly approaches racial bias and prejudice, showing how deeply these attitudes are embedded in the rural American South, though not exclusive to the region. Ellen’s whiteness is announced immediately with her fantasy that two “colored boys” (1) from the “rescue squad” come to collect her father’s dead body. Referring to Black people as “colored,” which was thought by most white people to be either an acceptable or neutral term at the time, and using terms like “boys” and “girls” for Black men and women assumes an immature or inferior status, and attests to the systemic racism that Ellen has absorbed.

Though she played in the fields with Starletta, Ellen would no doubt be aware that Starletta was the daughter of workers her parents employed on their farm. Her father’s emphatic instruction that Ellen refrain from eating clay, which she sees Starletta doing, emphasizes the warnings she would have received that she was not to adopt the habits of her Black friend, as different and “better” behavior would be expected from a white girl. Ellen feels comfortable seeking out Starletta’s family for company, even refuge, but is equally comfortable announcing her beliefs that “colored” habits or items are somehow different from “white” habits or items, and her declining to eat or drink anything in their house is at best inhospitable. To her, apparently, such terms of value are established and accepted by everyone.

Even as Ellen relies on Starletta’s friendship, she takes an exasperated approach to her friend, bossing Starletta at play and scoffing at her habits like breaking her crayons. Ellen’s paternalistic attitude is also compelled by Starletta’s difficulties with speech, which Ellen interprets as a disability. Her reassurance to Starletta when searching for the girl’s dollar for the movie that Ellen won’t treat her like the police is a casual acknowledgment of the prevalence of police brutality toward Black people, based on the same acceptance of racist belief that compels Ellen’s mother’s family to use racist slurs in general speech. Ellen’s grandmother is free with this disdain even though the workers supporting her farm and her household are Black; this and her insufficient pay indicate her vitriol as well as her racism.

Mavis’s kindness and Ellen’s observance of the bonds between the workers’ families compel a change in Ellen’s thinking and lead her to conclude that the assumption she’s absorbed that Black people are inferior to white people is, in fact, quite wrong. Not only has Starletta’s family helped Ellen at every turn, but she also has these healthy models of affection, familial bonds, hard work, and generosity of spirit before her. Additionally, Julia and Roy show no concern that Ellen should ask a Black friend to her birthday party. It provides further confirmation to Ellen that she chose her new mama well when her foster mother easily consents to Ellen’s inviting Starletta over for a weekend and embroiders towels with Starletta’s initial, at Ellen’s request.

Ellen’s concluding confession that she feels ashamed for once thinking she was superior to Starletta shows Ellen grappling with inherited bias and systemic racism. Though Ellen’s intentions are good, Starletta, who sleeps through Ellen’s confession, does not demonstrate that her identity has been impacted by Ellen’s racism, nor does she feel compelled to help Ellen with her white guilt. While Ellen shows a protectiveness toward Starletta, her beliefs about equality have not fully matured, for she insists to the bus driver that he must not make an issue of Starletta’s skin color and she tells Starletta that she can’t have a crush on a white boy. Even her insistence that Starletta hear her confession, and that Ellen make up something she “owes”—all while eventually concluding that she, Ellen, still has a more fortunate situation than Starletta—illustrates a lingering paternalistic attitude based on racist beliefs that Ellen will need to dismantle.

Ellen Foster investigates the consequences of abuse and harm in a variety of ways, in which Ellen’s example stands out as distinct.

Ellen’s mother is a fragile woman who never anticipated ill treatment from her husband and is not prepared to handle it. Even as a child, Ellen understands that her father’s demands for attention and care from someone just released from the hospital are inappropriate. Ellen is the one who turns him out of the house when he passes out drunk on the bathroom floor; practical and strong-minded at age 10, she prods him with her toe and tells him to go sleep in his truck. Her mother shows less resilience; Ellen puts her mother to bed after this incident and worries “she will wear herself out crying” (6). Ellen perceives that her mother has been worn out by physical illness and her husband’s emotional abuse. Though he does not physically lay a hand on her, Ellen notes a level of emotional and verbal abuse that she feels compelled to occasionally intervene by demanding to sleep in their bedroom, in her own baby bed, infantilizing herself to divert attention and demand care in an attempt to take stress from her mother. Ellen says later, while bargaining with God, that her mother was “too sad to think straight” (93), implying that Ellen already realizes a healthy response would be to draw boundaries and take steps toward self-protection. This is exactly what Ellen does when confronted with her father’s assaults. She attempts to remove herself from the household or be absent as much as possible, even going out the window when she can. She resolves to lock her door or keep something around to hit him and she explains that she can sometimes shove him off her and run away before he can grab her again.

The counselor’s talk therapy offers little for Ellen, whose coping methods include escaping into books and rides on the pony. She would rather have her own thoughts straight in her head, if she has to think on them, but her preference is not to. She names reading as one strategy to keep her mind occupied from memories. Her other recommendation is to “let the motion in your head wear you out. Never think about it,” she says: “You just make a bigger mess that way” (89). Ellen also resists the counselor’s attempts to define her own experience to her. The counselor tells her that children “who have experienced such a high degree of trauma tend to have identity problems” (87), which is how he explains Ellen signing her name Ellen Foster. For Ellen, this isn’t an identity confusion, but rather a solid declaration in that she is including herself as a member of her foster family, not the birth family that rejected and belittled her.

Ellen is sure of her own identity and resists other people misreading or misrepresenting her, which allows her to respond to and move on from the traumatizing events she experiences. From the very first attack, when she insists on speaking her name to her father to remind him who she is, Ellen exhibits a solid sense of self. She retains this even in the hostile environment of her grandmother’s home when her grandmother insists on casting Ellen in the mold of her father. Ellen, who doesn’t see this in herself, is grateful to balance this assessment with that of Mavis, who compares Ellen to her mother. When her emotions are overwhelming, which Ellen describes in terms of spinning and whirling, her new mama holds her hand and helps Ellen with deep breathing, which she says works to calm her anxiety.

As a third variety of response, Ellen’s father’s abuse of alcohol serves as an example of the effects of the traumas his generation experienced during wartime. The only reference to his service is the flag that his brother tries to give to Ellen after her father’s funeral. A flag is draped on the coffin of a deceased person who died in service to their country or for veterans who were honorably discharged from service. Given the time period, it’s most likely that Ellen’s father fought in the US war on Vietnam, a conflict that posed troubling moral conflicts for some and led to protests that resulted in veterans feeling their sacrifices had little value. It’s possible Ellen’s father has untreated post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his military service and turns to alcohol as a coping mechanism. His wife and child are impacted as causalities of his own untreated trauma.

In contrast to the unhealthy coping mechanisms of her parents and the misdirected anger of her grandmother, Ellen’s self-reliance allows her to weather the emotional storms she experiences. Her achievement of a secure family situation in the end, which she sees as her own doing, gives Ellen the resources she needs to deal appropriately with and heal from her traumatic experiences, making the ending of her story a happy one.