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Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The White Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonial Violence
Dignity and Resilience
Loss
Love and Family
Power
Summary
Analysis
When Odette leaves her house early in the morning to catch the early bus into Gatlin, the sky is spangled with stars. She remembers stargazing with Ruben and her father’s promise that no matter how “clever” White people think they are, they will never be able to “touch the stars.”
Despite the indignities she’s experienced and the racism she’s endured, Odette draws strength to survive from the love and teachings of her father. Ruben’s wisdom reminds Odette that all humans are subject to the same natural laws and limitations, making it foolish for some to subjugate and mistreat others.
Themes
On the bus ride, Odette remembers her last visit to Gatlin, in search of Lila. After hours of fruitless looking, she found herself in a church sanctuary hoping for some quiet. Instead, she met Delores Reed, an Aboriginal woman like herself. Delores told Odette that she had been married to an Irishman with whom she had two fair-skinned daughters. The Welfare authorities took the young girls away after Delores’s husband abandoned the family and she ran out of money. Although the authorities sent the girls to Gatlin, far away from their south coast home, Delores managed to find and follow them. She told Odette how she’d found work cooking and cleaning for the priest in exchange for room and board and the chance to visit her daughters once a month (but not for money or any extra visits).
Odette’s desperate search for her daughter testifies to her love of the girl. There are similarities between her story and Delores’s in that they both ended up in Gatlin in search of their daughters. The book offers Delores’s story as representative of the many countless Aboriginal families that were broken up in this way. Her determination to be with her children belies the stories the authorities tell to justify essentially kidnapping children. Odette bristles at the way the priest takes advantage of Delores’s desperation to essentially extort free work from her—but she understands Delores’s maternal instincts.
Themes
When Odette asked if the other children’s parents ever visited, Delores explained that the priest and schoolteachers didn’t consider it beneficial to leave “half-castes” or “quarter-castes” with their families, preferring to “place” them with White families. Odette realized that the same thing would eventually happen to Delores’s daughters. And maybe to Lila or Sissy, if she wasn’t careful. According to Delores, the Welfare authorities at that time were “in love with the fairer ones.”
Euphemisms like the word “placed” make it sound like the children are being adopted but in most cases, they were being educated and trained just enough to serve as servants and domestic laborers for wealthy White families—often, like Delores, paid with room and board rather than with the cash that would give them autonomy. Lighter-skinned children were thought to be more trainable because they were closer to the ideals of White society and because anti-Aboriginal racism made many White people uncomfortable being around people who looked more like Aboriginal individuals than White ones.
Themes
In the present, when Odette arrives at the hospital, Dr. Singer is waiting for her. He’s just as kind, patient, and polite as he was during their initial visit as he talks Odette through the process of taking x-rays. He tells her to return to the hospital at 2:00 p.m. to discuss the results. Unsure how to fill the time, Odette wanders through town window shopping. She’s not impressed by what she sees. She even stumbles upon the shop of the business owner. The woman smiles at her through the window but clearly doesn’t recognize her at all.
Again, Dr. Singer’s actions stand in stark contrast to the way the rest of the White community acts toward Odette and other Aboriginal individuals. As a Jewish person, he has experienced the worst extremes of racism and violent prejudice in the form of the Holocaust. In contrast, the White woman with whom Odette has had a years-long business arrangement clearly can’t differentiate her from any other Aboriginal woman. In line with the way this book presents White society as a whole, she cannot see Odette as a unique and dignified human being.
Themes
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Eventually, Odette goes to the church to check on Delores. A kindly groundskeeper named Robert gives her the bad news that Delores is gone. About eight years earlier, the church moved her daughters to another school. It was too far away for Delores to follow them. She fell into a deep depression and decided to die by suicide. Robert leads Odette to Delores’s old room and gives her photographs of Delores’s daughters, which Odette takes reluctantly, and only because Robert—an orphan himself—is distressed by the idea of them getting thrown away. Odette at least knows the girls’ names.
Note that Delores might have been able to follow her girls elsewhere if the priest had paid her for her labor in money rather than room and board. Her disenfranchisement benefited the church by saving them money and also delivered her ever more fully into the control of her oppressors by depriving her of any opportunity to fight their callous separation of her family. Robert is White, but he has natural empathy for Delores on account of his own orphaned status, suggesting yet again that racism isn’t an inherent part of human nature but a socially designed system of opportunism and oppression.
Themes
Back at the hospital, Dr. Singer shows Odette her x-rays and explains that she has a tumor. While it’s likely benign, it needs to be removed before it causes her further problems. He explains that this will entail an operation in Gatlin, followed by several days in the hospital and several weeks of recovery in bed. Odette balks, worried about who will take care of Sissy. Dr. Singer tells her to take the time she needs to make arrangements for Sissy’s care. But when Odette gets off the bus in Deane to find Sergeant Lowe waiting for her, she knows she cannot do anything that would give the authorities an excuse to take Sissy away from her. She won’t have surgery.
The noncancerous tumor in Odette’s body could not come at a worse time, given Sergeant Lowe’s arrival and dogged interest in Sissy. What would in any other case be a passing health concern takes on epic proportions because of Odette’s indigeneity and her resulting legal and social vulnerability. Racism and White supremacy impact every element of the lives of oppressed and marginalized people, directly or indirectly. Odette is prepared to let her health suffer to protect the only family she has left.
Themes
