The Invention of Wings

by

Sue Monk Kidd

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Invention of Wings makes teaching easy.
The novel’s other protagonist, based on the real historical figure (1792-1873). The daughter of a wealthy land-owning family in Charleston, Sarah stands out for both her ambition to be a female jurist and her fight against the slavery that gives her family such a privileged life. Sarah becomes friends with her maid, Handful, teaching her to read even though it breaks the law. Sarah promises to help Handful reach freedom, starting a journey that leads Sarah go North and become a Quaker who speaks out against slavery across the nation. Sarah continually chooses her professional and abolitionist ideals above the traditional goals of a high society lady, never marrying Israel Morris in order to focus on becoming a Quaker minister. Despite huge criticism, Sarah never lets go of her principles of equality for both women and slaves. With her sister Nina, Sarah becomes one of the leading abolitionists.

Sarah Grimké Quotes in The Invention of Wings

The The Invention of Wings quotes below are all either spoken by Sarah Grimké or refer to Sarah Grimké. 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:
Friendship Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn’t know for sure whether Miss Sarah’s feelings came from love or guilt. I didn’t know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were Pure as they ever would get.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:

…I remembered the oath I’d made to help Hetty become free, a promise impossible to fulfill and one that continued to cause me no end of guilt, but it suddenly rang clear in me for the first time: Charlotte said I should help Hetty get free any way I could. Turning, I watched her carry the lantern to my dressing table, light swilling about her feet. When she set it down, I said, “Hetty, shall I teach you to read?”

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma)
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition," she said, "even if it’s only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband. I was a girl once, believe it or not."
She seemed a stranger, a woman without all the wounds and armature the years bring... "The truth," she said, "is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Mary Grimké (Mother / Missus) (speaker)
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

Night after night, I endured these grand affairs alone, revolted by what objets d’art we were and contemptuous of how hollow society had turned out to be, and yet inexplicably, I was filled with a yearning to be one of them.
The slaves moved among us... without being seen, and I thought how odd it was that no one ever spoke of them, how the word slavery was not suitable in polite company, but referred to as the peculiar institution.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:

She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism.
I saw then what I hadn’t seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:

With the reverend praying a long, earnest prayer for our souls, I took my leap. I vowed I would not return to society. I would not marry, I would never marry. Let them say what they would, I would give myself to God.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

"Forgive you for what, Sarah? For following your conscience? Do you think I don’t abhor slavery as you do? Do you think I don’t know it was greed that kept me from following my conscience as you have? The plantation, the house, our entire way of life depended on the slaves." His face contorted and he clutched at his side a moment before going on. "Or should I forgive you for wanting to give natural expression to your intellect? You were smarter than even Thomas or John, but you’re female, another cruelty I was helpless to change."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), John Grimké (Father) (speaker)
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:

How does one know the voice is God's? I believed the voice bidding me to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it matter?

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

I drew myself up, glaring at their angry faces. “…What would you have the slaves do?” I cried. “… If we don’t free them, they will free themselves by whatever means.”

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 253-254
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5 Quotes

"Life is arranged against us, Sarah. And it’s brutally worse for Handful and her mother and sister. We're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that’s all."

Related Characters: Lucretia Mott (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké, Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma), Sky
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:

When autumn came, Lucretia and I attended the women’s meeting at Arch Street where we found ourselves standing in a crowded vestibule beside Jane Bettleman, who glared pointedly at the fleur de lis button I'd sewed at the throat of my gray dress. Granted, the button was ornate and expensive, and it was large, the size of a brooch. I'd freshly polished the silver, so there in the bright-lit atrium, it was shining like a small sun.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Lucretia Mott, Jane Bettleman
Related Symbols: Sarah’s Silver Button
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6 Quotes

She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinion of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the other.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:

We'd set down every argument the South made for slavery and refuted them all. I didn’t stutter on the page. It was an ecstasy to write without hesitation, to write everything hidden inside of me, to write with the sort of audacity I wouldn’t have found in person.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 317
Explanation and Analysis:

"How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split…but we can do little for the slave as long as we’re under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we 'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 334
Explanation and Analysis:

Small red wafers splotched along Mary's neck. "God has ordained that we take care of them," she said, flustered now, spluttering.
I took a step toward her, my outrage breaking open. "You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are. Whiteness is not sacred, Mary! It can’t go on defining everything."

Related Characters: Mary Grimké (Little Missus / Mary Jr.) (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Page Number: 351
Explanation and Analysis:

I watched her fold her few belongings on top of the quilt and thought, This ain't the same Sarah who left here. She had a firm look in her eye and her voice didn’t dither and hesitate like it used to. She'd been boiled down to a good, strong broth.
Her hair was loose, dangling along the sides of her neck like silk vines, like the red threads I used to tie round the spirit tree, and I saw it then, the strange thing between us. Not love, is it? What is it? It was always there, a roundness in my chest, a pin cushion. It pricked and fastened.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Related Symbols: Red Thread
Page Number: 355
Explanation and Analysis:

Sarah put her hand on my arm and left it there while the city heaved away. It was the last square on the quilt… I thought of mauma then, how her bones would always be here. People say don’t look back, the past is past, but I would always look back… When we left the mouth of the harbor, the wind swelled and the veils round us flapped, and I heard the blackbird wings. We rode onto the shining water onto the far distance.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma)
Related Symbols: Charlotte’s Quilt and Black Triangles
Page Number: 359
Explanation and Analysis:
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Sarah Grimké Quotes in The Invention of Wings

The The Invention of Wings quotes below are all either spoken by Sarah Grimké or refer to Sarah Grimké. 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:
Friendship Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn’t know for sure whether Miss Sarah’s feelings came from love or guilt. I didn’t know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were Pure as they ever would get.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:

…I remembered the oath I’d made to help Hetty become free, a promise impossible to fulfill and one that continued to cause me no end of guilt, but it suddenly rang clear in me for the first time: Charlotte said I should help Hetty get free any way I could. Turning, I watched her carry the lantern to my dressing table, light swilling about her feet. When she set it down, I said, “Hetty, shall I teach you to read?”

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma)
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition," she said, "even if it’s only the hope of not belonging body and soul to her husband. I was a girl once, believe it or not."
She seemed a stranger, a woman without all the wounds and armature the years bring... "The truth," she said, "is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Mary Grimké (Mother / Missus) (speaker)
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

Night after night, I endured these grand affairs alone, revolted by what objets d’art we were and contemptuous of how hollow society had turned out to be, and yet inexplicably, I was filled with a yearning to be one of them.
The slaves moved among us... without being seen, and I thought how odd it was that no one ever spoke of them, how the word slavery was not suitable in polite company, but referred to as the peculiar institution.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 92
Explanation and Analysis:

She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism.
I saw then what I hadn’t seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I'd lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:

With the reverend praying a long, earnest prayer for our souls, I took my leap. I vowed I would not return to society. I would not marry, I would never marry. Let them say what they would, I would give myself to God.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3 Quotes

"Forgive you for what, Sarah? For following your conscience? Do you think I don’t abhor slavery as you do? Do you think I don’t know it was greed that kept me from following my conscience as you have? The plantation, the house, our entire way of life depended on the slaves." His face contorted and he clutched at his side a moment before going on. "Or should I forgive you for wanting to give natural expression to your intellect? You were smarter than even Thomas or John, but you’re female, another cruelty I was helpless to change."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), John Grimké (Father) (speaker)
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:

How does one know the voice is God's? I believed the voice bidding me to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it matter?

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4 Quotes

I drew myself up, glaring at their angry faces. “…What would you have the slaves do?” I cried. “… If we don’t free them, they will free themselves by whatever means.”

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker)
Page Number: 253-254
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5 Quotes

"Life is arranged against us, Sarah. And it’s brutally worse for Handful and her mother and sister. We're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that’s all."

Related Characters: Lucretia Mott (speaker), Hetty Handful Grimké, Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma), Sky
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:

When autumn came, Lucretia and I attended the women’s meeting at Arch Street where we found ourselves standing in a crowded vestibule beside Jane Bettleman, who glared pointedly at the fleur de lis button I'd sewed at the throat of my gray dress. Granted, the button was ornate and expensive, and it was large, the size of a brooch. I'd freshly polished the silver, so there in the bright-lit atrium, it was shining like a small sun.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Lucretia Mott, Jane Bettleman
Related Symbols: Sarah’s Silver Button
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 6 Quotes

She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinion of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the other.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 308
Explanation and Analysis:

We'd set down every argument the South made for slavery and refuted them all. I didn’t stutter on the page. It was an ecstasy to write without hesitation, to write everything hidden inside of me, to write with the sort of audacity I wouldn’t have found in person.

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 317
Explanation and Analysis:

"How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split…but we can do little for the slave as long as we’re under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we 'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks."

Related Characters: Sarah Grimké (speaker), Angelina (Nina) Grimké
Page Number: 334
Explanation and Analysis:

Small red wafers splotched along Mary's neck. "God has ordained that we take care of them," she said, flustered now, spluttering.
I took a step toward her, my outrage breaking open. "You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are. Whiteness is not sacred, Mary! It can’t go on defining everything."

Related Characters: Mary Grimké (Little Missus / Mary Jr.) (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Page Number: 351
Explanation and Analysis:

I watched her fold her few belongings on top of the quilt and thought, This ain't the same Sarah who left here. She had a firm look in her eye and her voice didn’t dither and hesitate like it used to. She'd been boiled down to a good, strong broth.
Her hair was loose, dangling along the sides of her neck like silk vines, like the red threads I used to tie round the spirit tree, and I saw it then, the strange thing between us. Not love, is it? What is it? It was always there, a roundness in my chest, a pin cushion. It pricked and fastened.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké
Related Symbols: Red Thread
Page Number: 355
Explanation and Analysis:

Sarah put her hand on my arm and left it there while the city heaved away. It was the last square on the quilt… I thought of mauma then, how her bones would always be here. People say don’t look back, the past is past, but I would always look back… When we left the mouth of the harbor, the wind swelled and the veils round us flapped, and I heard the blackbird wings. We rode onto the shining water onto the far distance.

Related Characters: Hetty Handful Grimké (speaker), Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Grimké (Mauma)
Related Symbols: Charlotte’s Quilt and Black Triangles
Page Number: 359
Explanation and Analysis: