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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lyddie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bravery, Endurance, and Hope
Labor, Enslavement, and Racial Prejudice
Biological Family vs. Found Family
Written Language and Power
Gender Inequality
Summary
Analysis
Lyddie turns with dread to the big, imposing tavern gate. “Once I walk in that gate, I ain’t free anymore,” she realizes. “I’m a servant girl—no more than a black slave.” Suddenly, Lyddie is almost run over by a stagecoach. An elegant, smiling young lady in pink silk gets out. But before Lyddie can talk to the woman, she is whisked away by Mistress Cutler, the tavern owner, who scolds Lyddie for her messy appearance.
As Lyddie prepares to start her tenure as an indentured servant, she conflates her temporary employment with the brutal, lifelong atrocity of racial slavery. This conflation reflects Lyddie’s own prejudice (“no more than a black slave” is a particularly denigrating phrase), but it also reflects a historically inaccurate conflation that the novel itself seems to make. This young lady in pink is Lyddie’s first image of a wealthy lifestyle far beyond the meager circumstances she was raised in.
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Mistress Cutler immediately sends Lyddie to work in the kitchen with the cook, Triphena. The kitchen alone is three times the size of the Worthen home, and Lyddie wonders what her father would think if he could see her, forced to work as a servant in this big house. Lyddie’s pondering is cut short as Triphena rushes to stir the stew. “Lucky you’re so plain,” Triphena scoffs, “guests couldn’t leave the last girl be.”
Lyddie’s love of her father (and her pain at his absence) is evident in the way she constantly calls him to mind; indeed, Lyddie might have inherited her own sense of personal pride from her dad. Triphena’s harsh comment about Lyddie’s looks also gestures to the dark reality of sexual harassment, as it seems that guests frequently prey on the young women who work at the tavern (“guests couldn’t leave the last girl be”).
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Lyddie, who works harder than any boy she knows, has always resented being a girl. Even before her father left, Lyddie felt that her gender made her take on nearly all of her mother’s responsibilities, cooking and cleaning instead of doing more interesting farm work. And now that she has started to go through puberty, Lyddie feels even more trapped by her femininity.
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Though Mistress Cutler provides Lyddie with hearty meals and a new outfit, Lyddie still resents her new employment terribly. Mistress Cutler seems determined to catch Lyddie slacking or stealing food, though Lyddie never does, and Lyddie is forced to work late and wake before dawn. Her only solace comes when she counts her 25 dollars, or when she imagines reuniting with Charlie. Lyddie considers writing to her brother, but she is embarrassed by her rough spelling and poor penmanship.
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A few months later, in September, the pink silk lady returns to the inn. This time, she talks to Lyddie, having noticed Lyddie’s constant toiling. The lady tells Lyddie that she works at one of the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, and she encourages Lyddie to do the same. The work is hard, but the lady makes at least two dollars a week. After the lady leaves, Lyddie wonders, “how had a farmer’s daughter bought a silk dress?”
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