Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Morrison's A Mercy is full of interesting characters that surge the reader through Morrison's effortless tale which takes place before the Revolution and is set in the wilderness near the town of Milton, Maryland. The common thread throughout the story is Jacob, but his character is not the main focus of the novel. Instead the story follows the lives of the four women he brings together on his isolated farm.
This novel mainly follows the life of Florens, a slave girl whose mother gave her to a stranger because Florens had caught the eye of the male masters. Florens' mother offered Florens to the stranger, named Jacob, because he saw Florens "as a human child, not pieces of eight" (166). Jacob sends Florens to live on his farm, where Rebekka, Lina, and Sorrow already live.
Upon her arrival, Florens immediately becomes attached to Lina, a Native American slave. Lina's entire village was wiped out by disease and is the only slave that "had been purchased outright and deliberately, but she was a woman, not a child" (34). Lina was the first one to be brought to Jacob's farm. When Rebekka, Jacob's wife arrived, "the hostility between them was instant" but they eventually became friends (52). Rebekka came from London, agreeing to marry Jacob and move to wild America because "whatever the danger, how could it possibly be worse" (78).
Jacob also brought Sorrow to the farm, a girl who had been found living on a wrecked ship. She gave birth to two children, one who was drowned by Lina. After the birth of her second child, Sorrow's hallucinations stop, making her more reliable, and causing her to announce that her new name is "Complete" (134).
After Jacob died from the fever while building his third hourse, Rebekka came down with the same fever. Florens was sent to the blacksmith, who she had fallen in love with and who could also cure Rebekka. During her journey she made a brief stop for rest at a widow's house for food and shelter. While there, a white child sees her dark skin and becomes hysterical, crying out that "it scares me" (113). Florens escapes and finally makes it to the blacksmith's house, only to discover that he has adopted a little boy named Malaik. Florens and Malaik immediately distrust each other, and Florens agrees to watch Malaik while the blacksmith foes to Rebekka. The blacksmith then rejects Florens and sends her back to Rebekka, who has drastically changed since recovering from her illness. The "tangled strings" connecting the women "had been cut" (133). She put Florens up for sale, and beats both Lina and Sorrow. Rebekka is now described as a "penitent, pure and simple" and that "underneath her piety was something cold if not cruel" (153). The women had thought themselves a family, "but the family they imagined they had become was false" (156).