Libertie

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Pages 45-53 Summary

Libertie struggles with the revelation that she does not want to become a doctor. She cannot tell her mother, as Cathy has always dreamed that her daughter would follow in her footsteps. She keeps the secret to herself while thinking about the woman who lured Ben Daisy to his death. Libertie begins to pay attention to the sounds of water. She also notices how Ben’s death has changed her mother. Cathy is not as assured or as optimistic as she once was, nor does she try to invent her own remedies. Neighbors no longer trust her and instead keep their distance. Hannah, Ben’s sister, blames Cathy for her brother’s death and claims that no unmarried woman can be trusted. Ben’s death continues to haunt Cathy and Libertie until the American Civil War begins in 1861.

Libertie and Cathy are initially confused about the war, but the reality of it arrives in their town after two years. Neighbors leave to join the war while people fleeing the violence pass by the house. One family flees a riot in a nearby town where white people react violently to the idea of fighting for the freedom of African Americans. Cathy tends to the people’s wounds but knows that more casualties will soon arrive, so she enlists the help of everyone in the town, including Hannah. Libertie watches the fleeing people arrive by boat through the smoke of the distant riot. As she helps the people disembark, she notices a blood-soaked girl of her own age carrying a baby. Cathy helps the girl while Libertie carries the baby home. The townspeople take the wounded to the doctor’s surgery and try to figure out a solution.

Part 2, Pages 54-62 Summary

The townspeople gather in fear of violence. Rumors of white gangs burning down African American neighborhoods spread through the community. Few people expect the white governor of New York to do anything other than cheer on the mobs. When Libertie curses the governor, Cathy reminds her daughter that wishing pain on someone is a sin. Libertie then begs for help from the woman beneath the water who took away Ben Daisy. The women of the town band together to form the Ladies’ Intelligence Society, an informal collective that feeds, protects, and provides help to the African Americans in the neighborhood.

The Ladies’ Intelligence Society helps to reunite children and parents who have been separated by the war, including the baby Libertie carried from the river. It also plans for a time after the war; the women hope to build a hospital for African American people. Their meetings provide Libertie with a glimpse of a different, more empowered future. At the end of meetings, the women exchange compliments to keep their spirits up. They compile these anonymous written compliments into books, or “friendship albums,” that function as records of meeting attendance. Libertie notices that her mother seems jealous of the other women’s fuller, overflowing friendship albums. She feels sorry for her mother, who is still reeling from the death of Ben Daisy and its fallout.

One day, Libertie reads her mother’s attempts to compliment the other women. The attempts are always slightly reserved. Cathy catches Libertie examining the drafts and asks for help. Libertie writes a poem on her mother’s behalf and then sings it at the meeting. The women applaud and thank Cathy for the warm praise. For the rest of the war, Libertie works hard to heal and feed the community alongside her mother. She makes her own friendship album, compiled of the questions she would like to ask the woman under the water—”the one who offered something other than this world” (62). The book becomes a way to identify the ways in which African American people are oppressed while helping Libertie to dream of a better future.

Part 2, Pages 63-74 Summary

When the war ends, Libertie celebrates like everyone else, but as the mood of the country changes, she has difficulty feeling sorry for the mourning white people. She has seen the horrors of slavery firsthand: White people do not care for African Americans, so she will not care for them. Instead, she will care for the women around her, the woman under the water, and her mother.

The Ladies’ Intelligence Society buys a building to turn into a hospital for African American people. Cathy and Lenore help many people who have never had access to health care while Libertie works as their assistant. Cathy gradually becomes busier and more successful, though the hospital struggles for funding. With so many African American ventures springing up in the aftermath of the war, donors’ wealth is thinly spread. To raise funds, Cathy opens the hospital to more patients than just African American women.

Even though an African American woman is treating them, Libertie notices that the white women who come to the hospital still fear, resent, and dislike African Americans. Cathy is light-skinned enough that the women permit her to touch them, but they reject Libertie because of her darker skin. When Cathy continues to treat these women, Libertie feels betrayed; she cannot see how the white women’s pain could be the same as her own. Libertie is not alone in this feeling, as the Ladies’ Intelligence Society eventually abandons Cathy.

Libertie worries that her mother has “[given] up co-conspirators for customers” (71). When she confronts her mother, Cathy worries that she has raised her daughter to be spoiled and impractical. The brief argument has a big impact on Libertie but does not seem to affect Cathy until a few weeks later, when she reveals that Libertie has been accepted into a medical school. She believes that she has nothing more to teach Libertie and that her leaving is for the best. Libertie, however, believes that she is being banished.

Part 2 Analysis

The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 reveals the stark contrast between the lives of white people and African American people. Where white people experience the war as unleashing violence for the first time, it merely escalates the existing violence that African Americans have been dealing with in the United States. The war takes years to arrive in Libertie’s hometown, but that does not mean that she does not know about pain and trauma. Instead, the war illustrates the way in which African Americans—even those in supposedly free states—deal with violence throughout their lives. Nevertheless, the war does mark a shift for Black Americans; with the violence official, white America has a “legitimate” reason to beat, torture, and kill African American people. This in turn reveals the lack of institutional support for African Americans, as the governor mocks any idea that he might protect them from gangs of violent white people who are intent on burning down their homes. In the midst of a civil war, Libertie begins to realize that her own country barely regards her as human.

Amid this escalating violence, Libertie also comes to terms with her creative side. She is not like her mother, who is a practical, studious person. Cathy became a doctor through audacity, hard work, and determination. Libertie respects these qualities in her mother but struggles to see them in her own life. Instead, her greatest pleasure comes from creating poems and songs that she either writes in her book or shares with her mother’s friends. She finds this creative process more gratifying and rewarding than anything she has done in the hospital. This realization only reinforces what Libertie has long suspected but has struggled to put into words: She does not want to become a doctor.

Libertie’s discovery of her creative side should be a moment of triumph, but it becomes a source of anxiety. She knows how much her mother wants her to become a doctor, so anything that deviates from this path is a betrayal. However, when her mother seems to abandon her own principles by treating white patients, Libertie feels equally betrayed. As a result, creativity, music, and poetry heighten the contradictions between Libertie and her mother, adding ammunition to a conflict that will soon erupt.

The end of the war is a formality rather than a victory for the African American community. While the victory of the Union over the Confederacy means an end to slavery, the novel’s African American characters know better than to think this means an end to the racist violence they experience. A single military victory cannot end American racism; instead, the Civil War becomes a brief burst of energy amid a much longer, much more difficult battle for equality. Even as a young girl, Libertie recognizes this disconnect and becomes disillusioned with the country in which she lives, realizing that she has no real investment in a country in which most people do not consider her human. Even when she is treating white patients in the hospital and helping them to overcome illnesses, they treat her with contempt. The end of the Civil War is a great victory for most Americans, but for the African American minority it is just another step on a much longer journey.