A Mercy

by

Toni Morrison

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Florens is a slave of the Vaarks’ farm, a surrogate daughter to Lina, and the Blacksmith’s lover. Desperate for affection and eager to please, Florens is a hardworking, naïve teenage girl. Florens grew up on D’Ortega’s plantation in Maryland. On the plantation, the local Reverend taught Florens and her family how to read and write. When Jacob comes to the plantation, Florens’s mother begs for Jacob to take Florens away with him instead of herself. Florens thinks this is because Florens’s mother cared more about her brother than about her (though this turns out not to be the case). Florens then moves to the Vaark farm where she meets Rebekka and their other servants. Lina adopts Florens as a surrogate child, sewing her soft skin shoes and telling her stories. When the Blacksmith comes into town to make a fence for Jacob, Florens falls madly in love with him. Florens and the Blacksmith strike up a romantic relationship that ends when the Blacksmith finishes his work and leaves. When Rebekka falls ill, Florens goes on a journey to find the Blacksmith to heal her, all the while hoping the Blacksmith will let her live with him. Florens finds the Blacksmith, who leaves her with the orphan he is caring for, Malaik, while he goes to heal Rebekka. Florens becomes jealous of Malaik and accidentally breaks the boy’s arm. When the Blacksmith returns, he hits Florens for hurting Malaik. Florens, feeling abandoned, strikes the Blacksmith with a pair of tongs and runs away. Florens returns to the Vaark farm, where she spends every night carving her narrative in words into the wooden walls of one of the rooms of the house.

Florens Quotes in A Mercy

The A Mercy quotes below are all either spoken by Florens or refer to Florens. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Human Bondage, Wealth, and Humanity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? …Other signs need more time to understand. Often there are too many signs, or a bright omen clouds up too fast. I sort them and try to recall, yet I know I am missing much, like not reading the garden snake crawling up the door saddle to die.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

A woman comes to me and says stand up. I do and she takes my cloak from my shoulders. Then my wooden shoes. She walks away. Reverend Father turns a pale red color when he returns and learns what happens…Finally he takes rags, strips of sailcloth lying about and wraps my feet. Now I am knowing that unlike with Senhor, priests are unlove here. A sailor spits into the sea when Reverend Father asks him for help. Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Reverend Father
Related Symbols: Florens’s Shoes
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

They are certain their years of debt are over but the master says no. He sends them away, north, to another place, a tannery, for more years. I don’t understand why they are sad. Everyone has to work. I ask are you leaving someone dear behind?...Daft, a man says. A woman across from me says, young.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker)
Page Number: 46-47
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

The traveler laughs at the beauty saying, “This is perfect. This is mine.” And the word swells, booming like thunder into the valleys, over acres of primrose and mallow…Mine. Mine. Mine. The shells of the eagle’s eggs quiver and one even cracks…Spotting the traveler, [the eagle] swoops down to claw away his laugh…the traveler…raises his stick and strikes her…screaming she falls and falls.

…”Where is she now?”
“Still falling…”
“And the eggs…do they live?”
“We have.”

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Lina (speaker)
Page Number: 72-73
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I don’t know the feeling of or what it means, free and not free. But I have a memory…I walk sometimes to search you… I hear something behind me and turn to see a stag… Standing there…I wonder what else the world may show me. It is as though I am loose to do what I choose, the stag, the wall of flowers. I am a little scare of this looseness. Is that how free feels? I don’t like it. I don’t want to be free of you because I am live only with you.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:

Sir steps out. Mistress stands up and rushes to him. Her naked skin is aslide with wintergreen. Lina and I looked at each other. What is she fearing, I ask. Nothing, says Lina. Why then does she run to Sir? Because she can, Lina answers. We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Lina (speaker), Rebekka Vaark, Jacob Vaark
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

They frown at the candle burn on my palm, the one you kissed to cool. They look under my arms, between my legs. They circle me, lean down to inspect my feet. Naked under their examination I watch for what is in their eyes. No hate is there or scare or disgust but they are looking at me my body across distances without recognition. Swine look at me with more connection.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:

Are you a demon I ask her. Her wayward eye is steady. She smiles. Yes, she says. Oh, yes.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Daughter Jane
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

The blacksmith and Florens were rocking and, unlike female farm animals in heat, she was not standing quietly under the weight and thrust of the male. What Sorrow saw yonder in the grass…was not the silent submission…that Sorrow knew…It was a dancing…It all ended when the blacksmith grabbed Florens’ hair, yanked her head back to put his mouth on hers…It amazed her to see that. In all of the goings she knew, no one had ever kissed her mouth. Ever.

Related Characters: Florens, The Blacksmith, Sorrow
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Right away I take fright when I see my face is not there. Where my face should be is nothing…I put my mouth close enough to drink or kiss but I am not even a shadow there. Where is it hiding? Why is it? Soon Daughter Jane is kneeling next to me…Oh, Precious, don’t fret, she is saying, you will find it. Where I ask, where is my face…When I wake a minha mãe is standing by your cot and this time her baby boy is Malaik. He is holding her hand.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith, Daughter Jane, Malaik
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:

I want you to go…because you are a slave…
What is your meaning? I am a slave because Sir trades for me.
No. You have become one.
How?
Your head is empty and your body is wild.
I am adoring you.
And a slave to that too.
You alone own me.
Own yourself, woman, and leave us be. You could have killed this child…You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.
You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith (speaker), Jacob Vaark, Malaik
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Thus her change from “have me always” to “don’t touch me ever” seemed to him as predictable as it was marked.

Related Characters: Florens, Scully
Page Number: 179
Explanation and Analysis:

They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation. But the family they imagined they had become was false. Whatever each one loved, sought or escaped, their futures were separate and anyone’s guess.

Related Characters: Florens, Lina, Sorrow, Rebekka Vaark, Jacob Vaark, Willard, Scully
Page Number: 183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

You say you see slaves freer than free men. One is a lion in the skin of an ass. The other is an ass in the skin of a lion. That it is the withering inside that enslaves and opens the door for what is wild. I know my withering is born in the Widow’s closet…I cannot stop…wanting to tear you open the way you tear me. Still, there is another thing. A lion who thinks his mane is all. A she-lion who does not. I learn this from Daughter Jane…She risks. Risks all to save the slave you throw out.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith, Daughter Jane
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:

I will keep one sadness. That all this time I cannot know what my mother is telling me. Nor can she know what I am wanting to tell her. Mãe, you can have pleasure now because the soles of my feet are hard as cypress.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Florens’s Mother
Related Symbols: Florens’s Shoes
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.

Related Characters: Florens’s Mother (speaker), Florens, D’Ortega
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.

Related Characters: Florens’s Mother (speaker), Florens, Jacob Vaark
Page Number: 195-196
Explanation and Analysis:
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A Mercy PDF

Florens Quotes in A Mercy

The A Mercy quotes below are all either spoken by Florens or refer to Florens. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Human Bondage, Wealth, and Humanity Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? …Other signs need more time to understand. Often there are too many signs, or a bright omen clouds up too fast. I sort them and try to recall, yet I know I am missing much, like not reading the garden snake crawling up the door saddle to die.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

A woman comes to me and says stand up. I do and she takes my cloak from my shoulders. Then my wooden shoes. She walks away. Reverend Father turns a pale red color when he returns and learns what happens…Finally he takes rags, strips of sailcloth lying about and wraps my feet. Now I am knowing that unlike with Senhor, priests are unlove here. A sailor spits into the sea when Reverend Father asks him for help. Reverend Father is the only kind man I ever see.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Reverend Father
Related Symbols: Florens’s Shoes
Page Number: 8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

They are certain their years of debt are over but the master says no. He sends them away, north, to another place, a tannery, for more years. I don’t understand why they are sad. Everyone has to work. I ask are you leaving someone dear behind?...Daft, a man says. A woman across from me says, young.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker)
Page Number: 46-47
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

The traveler laughs at the beauty saying, “This is perfect. This is mine.” And the word swells, booming like thunder into the valleys, over acres of primrose and mallow…Mine. Mine. Mine. The shells of the eagle’s eggs quiver and one even cracks…Spotting the traveler, [the eagle] swoops down to claw away his laugh…the traveler…raises his stick and strikes her…screaming she falls and falls.

…”Where is she now?”
“Still falling…”
“And the eggs…do they live?”
“We have.”

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Lina (speaker)
Page Number: 72-73
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I don’t know the feeling of or what it means, free and not free. But I have a memory…I walk sometimes to search you… I hear something behind me and turn to see a stag… Standing there…I wonder what else the world may show me. It is as though I am loose to do what I choose, the stag, the wall of flowers. I am a little scare of this looseness. Is that how free feels? I don’t like it. I don’t want to be free of you because I am live only with you.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:

Sir steps out. Mistress stands up and rushes to him. Her naked skin is aslide with wintergreen. Lina and I looked at each other. What is she fearing, I ask. Nothing, says Lina. Why then does she run to Sir? Because she can, Lina answers. We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Lina (speaker), Rebekka Vaark, Jacob Vaark
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

They frown at the candle burn on my palm, the one you kissed to cool. They look under my arms, between my legs. They circle me, lean down to inspect my feet. Naked under their examination I watch for what is in their eyes. No hate is there or scare or disgust but they are looking at me my body across distances without recognition. Swine look at me with more connection.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:

Are you a demon I ask her. Her wayward eye is steady. She smiles. Yes, she says. Oh, yes.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Daughter Jane
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

The blacksmith and Florens were rocking and, unlike female farm animals in heat, she was not standing quietly under the weight and thrust of the male. What Sorrow saw yonder in the grass…was not the silent submission…that Sorrow knew…It was a dancing…It all ended when the blacksmith grabbed Florens’ hair, yanked her head back to put his mouth on hers…It amazed her to see that. In all of the goings she knew, no one had ever kissed her mouth. Ever.

Related Characters: Florens, The Blacksmith, Sorrow
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

Right away I take fright when I see my face is not there. Where my face should be is nothing…I put my mouth close enough to drink or kiss but I am not even a shadow there. Where is it hiding? Why is it? Soon Daughter Jane is kneeling next to me…Oh, Precious, don’t fret, she is saying, you will find it. Where I ask, where is my face…When I wake a minha mãe is standing by your cot and this time her baby boy is Malaik. He is holding her hand.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith, Daughter Jane, Malaik
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:

I want you to go…because you are a slave…
What is your meaning? I am a slave because Sir trades for me.
No. You have become one.
How?
Your head is empty and your body is wild.
I am adoring you.
And a slave to that too.
You alone own me.
Own yourself, woman, and leave us be. You could have killed this child…You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.
You shout the word—mind, mind, mind—over and over and then you laugh, saying as I live and breathe, a slave by choice.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith (speaker), Jacob Vaark, Malaik
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

Thus her change from “have me always” to “don’t touch me ever” seemed to him as predictable as it was marked.

Related Characters: Florens, Scully
Page Number: 179
Explanation and Analysis:

They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation. But the family they imagined they had become was false. Whatever each one loved, sought or escaped, their futures were separate and anyone’s guess.

Related Characters: Florens, Lina, Sorrow, Rebekka Vaark, Jacob Vaark, Willard, Scully
Page Number: 183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

You say you see slaves freer than free men. One is a lion in the skin of an ass. The other is an ass in the skin of a lion. That it is the withering inside that enslaves and opens the door for what is wild. I know my withering is born in the Widow’s closet…I cannot stop…wanting to tear you open the way you tear me. Still, there is another thing. A lion who thinks his mane is all. A she-lion who does not. I learn this from Daughter Jane…She risks. Risks all to save the slave you throw out.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), The Blacksmith, Daughter Jane
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:

I will keep one sadness. That all this time I cannot know what my mother is telling me. Nor can she know what I am wanting to tell her. Mãe, you can have pleasure now because the soles of my feet are hard as cypress.

Related Characters: Florens (speaker), Florens’s Mother
Related Symbols: Florens’s Shoes
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.

Related Characters: Florens’s Mother (speaker), Florens, D’Ortega
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing.

Related Characters: Florens’s Mother (speaker), Florens, Jacob Vaark
Page Number: 195-196
Explanation and Analysis: