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 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Pages 76-89 Summary

The letter from medical school creates a division between Libertie and Cathy. They barely speak until the morning of Libertie’s departure, when Cathy makes her daughter promise to write to her. Libertie agrees and begins her first letter as soon as she arrives at Cunningham College in Ohio. Though Libertie resolves to put the memory of her mother behind her, everything in the college triggers her recollections. She stays with a friend of her mother named Franklin Grady who teaches law. Her first encounters with the family are awkward, and Libertie remembers a piece of gossip that her mother and Franklin had been romantically linked before Cathy met her late husband.

Libertie learns more about Franklin through his wife, Madeline. Madeline is illiterate but has no interest in learning to read. Her lack of curiosity confuses Libertie, while Franklin’s warmth toward his children saddens the girl who grew up without a father. The contrast between the busy, noisy Franklin house and Libertie’s quiet home makes her anxious, leaving her without the privacy she needs to write notes to the woman under the water. Gradually, she comes to appreciate Madeline’s warmth and good humor, which make her seem freer than anyone Libertie has known.

Cathy writes to Libertie, explaining that the hospital is thriving. The letter infuriates Libertie, who believes that her mother is once again passing as white. She responds to her mother’s letter with a passive-aggressive description of the successful African American college that has not abandoned its racial identity. Her letter also mentions the college’s custom that students carry out all chores and labor in silence. When Cathy responds, she praises the silence that her daughter dislikes. Eventually Libertie stops writing to her mother. She begins to resent the mostly male students and desires female companionship, though she finds making friends to be hard.

Part 3, Pages 90-104 Summary

Libertie begins to feel as though she is at the “perimeter of this world” (91), suspecting that her loneliness is due to the darkness of her skin. She wants to turn her anger into drive and determination, but she worries that she is not strong enough to overcome society’s bias against her skin color. This fear turns into self-loathing, and her loneliness increases until she happens across a music recital one evening on campus. She is entranced by two female students singing, seeing their musicality as a form of escape. Afterward, she compliments the two women, Experience and Louisa, and learns that they are studying to be music teachers.

Libertie joins the women’s practice sessions and finds out that Louisa is charismatic and outgoing, but Experience is more reserved and distant. Both were born as slaves, but Libertie knows better than to ask about this. Libertie learns to sing, and doing so allows her to exchange her painful memories and anxiety about the future for a meaningful present. Libertie decides that she is wasting her time studying medicine, but she does not dare to tell anyone and continues with her studies.

When Libertie eventually writes to her mother about Experience and Louisa, Cathy’s replies only consist of medical questions and quizzes. Libertie worries that she is not a good daughter. Madeline Grady comforts her, but Louisa and Experience suggest that Libertie should find somewhere else to live; they do not respect Madeline because she is a dark-skinned woman from a disreputable background who derailed the career of “the best colored legal mind of his generation” (104).

Part 3, Pages 105-119 Summary

Libertie studies a poem that hangs in a college hall. The poem depicts men as strong, confident, scientific beings, while casting women as deferential, sensible, and quiet. The poem does not correlate with Libertie’s understanding of men and women. She returns to her room one day to find Madeline Grady worried about finances. Madeline deals with the situation better than her husband, which Libertie sees as more evidence the poem is incorrect. Libertie begins to question everything she has been taught about traditional gender roles.

Libertie does not return home for winter or send her terrible grades to her mother. Her mother writes constantly about her new student. His name is Emmanuel, he is from Haiti, and he has light-colored skin. Libertie is shocked by her mother’s apparent warmth to this new arrival, who sleeps in Libertie’s old bedroom. She feels jealous, noticing that her mother praises Emmanuel in a way that she never praises Libertie.

By spring of the following year, Libertie spends more time on music than on her studies. Louisa and Experience argue about whether they should adhere to the school’s request that they perform traditional songs to help raise money. They do not want to sing “the slave songs” (111), but Louisa wonders whether they could further their careers by doing so. Libertie tries to repair the women’s relationship by convincing Experience to sing the songs that remind her of her painful past.

Libertie meets with the dean to discuss her poor grades. She claims to have been distracted by her friends’ disagreement and suggests organizing a trip for Louisa and Experience to sing for African American audiences on the East Coast. The dean appreciates the idea but informs Libertie that the college will not allow her to return the following year. Libertie begins to plan her friends’ concert in New York and keeps the pain of her academic failure to herself.

Part 3 Analysis

While studying at college, Libertie lives with the Grady family. The family is poor, and their home is smaller and more cramped than her own. Furthermore, Madeline Grady is a dark-skinned woman who can’t read and performs physical labor for very little money. In many ways, Grady is a foil to Cathy, a light-skinned woman whose education elevates her in her community. Libertie’s experiences with Madeline teach her to interpret freedom differently. While Madeline may lack Cathy’s intelligence or financial means, she has a force of personality and a determination that few women can match. Libertie comes to admire Madeline for her strength and her self-sacrifice, observing Madeline as she works long, hard hours for the benefit of her young family and her studious husband. Though Madeline does not explicitly try to teach Libertie any lessons, her existence is a lesson in its own right. Madeline Grady shows Libertie that honesty and sacrifice can be important parts of freedom, which can take many forms.

Libertie is now a young woman, and her adolescence has given her a more informed view of herself in a gendered society. At college, she observes the way in which society segregates genders in a very explicit way. Certain parts of the college and certain parts of an education are only available to men, and the dining hall has a large poem that delineates the gender roles expected of all the students; men are active and rational beings, while women are emotional and subservient. Based on her experiences around women such as Madeline and Cathy, Libertie cannot accept such explicit, limited definitions of how gender should operate in society. As a dark-skinned African American woman, Libertie is beginning to learn that the ways in which society marginalizes her intersect. Her gender, her race, and her skin color combine to make her life more difficult in a society that does not value any of them.

It is not only societal expectations that Libertie must contend with, however. The most important lesson Libertie learns at college does not concern medicine. While her grades slip and she loses interest in medicine, she furthers her interest in music and poetry. She is not as skilled a singer as Louisa or Experience, and she lacks the emotional heft that the former slaves add to their songs, but she gains a tremendous sense of satisfaction from performing with them. Singing and self-expression are more rewarding than medicine ever was, so Libertie begins to realize how ill-suited she is for the life her mother planned for her. The more time Libertie spends at the college, the more she realizes that she does not want to be there. Libertie does not know what she wants to do with her life, but the college teaches her that she does not want to be a doctor. However, she does not learn how to explain this realization to her mother.