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Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tar Baby, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Systemic Racism and Power
Expectations of Womanhood
Colonialism and Enslavement
Toxic Masculinity
Innocence and Guilt
Summary
Analysis
In her room the following day, Margaret longs for the trailer where she grew up. Back then, luxury had meant the house in Bangor full of antiques that belonged to wealthy families. But Margaret always liked her trailer, and she would prefer to be there than in the lavishly designed room in L’Arbe de la Croix. She can’t believe that after they found the man in the closet, Valerian asked him to dinner. She’s not sure where the man went after eating last night. If Michael weren’t coming for Christmas, Margaret would leave the island immediately.
Margaret raises questions about the trappings of wealth by wondering if she is actually better off now than when she was younger and lived in a trailer. The passage also highlights Valerian’s role as a God-like figure at L’Arbe de la Croix. He decides who comes and goes and who stays for dinner. He is the ultimate arbiter of every decision, and Margaret, at least, feels powerless to impact his decisions.
Themes
Literary Devices
Meanwhile, Jadine receives a Christmas gift in the mail from Ryk. It’s a sealskin coat. She eagerly shows the gift to Ondine. Ondine asks if it means Jadine is going to marry Ryk, but Jadine says it’s just a Christmas present. Meanwhile, Ondine can’t understand why Valerian has acted so hospitably to the man they found in Margaret’s closet. Valerian even let him stay the night in the guest room. Ondine hopes they’ll get rid of him soon. When Ondine leaves the room, Jadine wraps Christmas gifts. She wonders if she should get something for Michael, but she’s not sure if it's appropriate for a social secretary to buy a gift for the son of her “employer/patron.” Either way, Michael’s a socialist, so it would have to be something down to earth. Maybe a loaf of bread? Jadine thinks and smiles to herself.
Jadine’s excitement about the sealskin coat signals how much wealth and materialism mean to her. The sealskin coat then comes to represent Jadine’s complicity in systems of oppression. Through her association with Ryk—a white, wealthy European man—she gains more power and status. Ryk, in this sense, fills a similar role to Valerian in Jadine’s life, granting her access to a level of power and status she might not otherwise receive as a Black woman.
Themes
Jadine is struck by how her relationship with Sydney and Ondine has changed. They’ve been her parents since she was 12, but recently it seems like they’ve been coming to her in hopes that she’ll be able to solve their problems. For instance, she’s had to try to diminish their fears about the man they found in Margaret’s closet the night before. She explained to Sydney and Ondine that the whimsy and grace of inviting the man to dinner was Valerian’s one-of-a-kind style. And Jadine found Valerian’s tact wondrous. At dinner, the man had said he’d been in the house for five days. Before that, he’d been in the swamp. He also said he was from the U.S. and had jumped off a ship headed for Dominique and ended up on the Isle des Chevaliers.
In the kitchen, Ondine hears Yardman knock on the door. He’s killed a hen, as Ondine asked him to, but he didn’t pluck any feathers, and Ondine is annoyed that now she’ll have to do it. When Sydney comes into the kitchen, they talk about the man they found the night before. Sydney is especially upset. He can’t figure out why Valerian invited the man to stay for dinner. Ondine says Valerian had a lot to drink the night before. Sydney says there’s not enough whiskey in the world that lets someone sleep with a dangerous person in their house. Ondine replies that maybe the man isn’t dangerous—he’d been in the house long enough to kill or rob them and didn’t do either. She’s convinced that Valerian will make the man leave by the end of the day.
Themes
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Sydney says the man is capable of anything and that the guest room he slept in is right next to Jadine’s room. He doesn’t want to see her put in danger. Sydney considers leaving the Streets. Ondine says that Valerian is generous, and she doesn’t want to go look for other work. After Sydney leaves the kitchen, Ondine is surprised at the reassurances she’s offered him, when just moments before she was as nervous as he is now.
Themes
Elsewhere, Thérèse, who works at L’Arbe de la Croix, starts the laundry. Thérèse first saw traces of the man they found in Margaret’s closet 12 days ago, when she found a trail of discarded chocolate wrappers outside. She told Gideon (who others call Yardman) what she saw, and the two talked about who it might be. When Thérèse sees Gideon today, his shirt is covered in blood, and she asks if he slaughtered the hen or if it slaughtered him. Gideon tells her that the man they’ve been tracking—the one who’s been eating the chocolate—is inside the house. He saw her in Jadine’s room covered only with a sheet. Thérèse wonders if the man might be Jadine’s boyfriend—the one who sent the sealskin coat.
Themes
Gideon left Dominique when he was younger. He traveled to Canada and then to the U.S., where he became a citizen. But he returned to Dominique without the fortune he had planned to find, and now he has to try and find odd jobs to make ends meet. Gideon tells Thérèse that to make sense of the man in the house, she has to take into account the two white people who own the house and decide what happens there. Previously, Thérèse has done her best to ignore them.
Themes
Jadine takes a shower. When she comes out, she gets dressed and puts on the sealskin coat before posing in the mirror. The man appears in the mirror behind her, dressed in silk pajamas. She takes off the coat and puts it on the bed. Jadine is afraid but thinks it’s best not to do anything that might cause the man alarm. She ends up showing him the magazine that she was on the cover of. He asks her to translate what the magazine says, and she tells him that it says she graduated from the Sorbonne and recently played a small but brilliantly acted role in a film. The man asks about the jewelry in the cover photo, and Jadine says the earrings belonged to Catherine the Great and were worth at least half a million dollars. The man expresses his amazement, and Jadine genuinely laughs.
Jadine tells the man that the Streets are her patrons—they paid for her education, her clothes, and her lodging after her mom died. The man asks Jadine what sexual favors she had to do to get that kind of treatment, and Jadine calls him ignorant. She punches him and tries to spit in his face. The man holds Jadine’s wrists and tells Jadine to calm down and stop acting like a white woman. Jadine says that once he lets her go, she’s going to kill him. The man presses himself into Jadine and smells her. Jadine tells him to let her go, and she’s surprised when he listens. She says that she’ll have to tell Valerian what happened, and the man says she should.
Themes
Jadine leaves the room and feels fear and shame. She plans to tell Valerian what happened, and then the man will be gone by the afternoon. But Jadine starts to ruminate and begins to doubt herself. She wonders if it was a story that she would be able to laugh about later or if it was a real danger. She’s afraid of appearing foolish and overly sensitive, but she also thinks that the man might rape her and maybe Margaret, too. When Jadine arrives at the greenhouse, she sees two figures through the translucent exterior. When she peers in, she sees Valerian and the man laughing together.
