About this story
The city obliges: teaching posts want accomplishments you lack, sewing you won't attempt, and Mrs. Flint finally places you as a maid in the fashionable Stuart household, where you're expected to answer to "Jane" like every servant before you. There you meet Hepsey Johnson, who escaped slavery five years ago and still has parents and eight siblings waiting in bondage.
How it opens
At twenty-one, you announced independence while kneading bread in Aunt Betsey's kitchen.
Aunt BetseyA new declaration sounds grand, Christie; what does yours require?
The farm offered safety, repetition, and an uncle who treated your presence as expense.
Uncle EnosIf the girl wants wages, the world has methods for correcting notions.
Aunt BetseyToo much rising can spoil bread as surely as too little yeast.
Choose
Contentment cannot be useful if it turns every wish into ingratitude.
If I were a boy, earning my own life would already be expected.