The purpose of this section is to examine the theme of women's anger, particularly as illustrated by Willa Cather in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The plan of the section will be to set forth in general terms the life situations in which the women of the story find themselves, and then to discuss how the responses they make have the effect of showing women's anger as a basic expression of the reality of character and of the milieu in which the characters may operate.
The separation of the male and female point of view in Sapphira and the Slave Girl provides a touchstone for the emotional content of the novel as well as a starting point for the placement of women's anger in the scheme of action. Additionally, this separation has the effect, ultimately, of commenting on a few realities of the world regarding women's place in it. This occurs not only in a way that shows that men and women see things differently, but also in a way that offers the author's evident judgment of the things that are seen.
The most obvious way in which Cather explicates the differences between the male and female point of view is in the portrayal of the marriage of Sapphira and Henry Colbert. It is plain from the opening pages of the novel that the Colbert marriage is not one of the great love affairs of the nineteenth century. Aside from the fact that Sapphira Dodderidge appears to have married into a social class beneath her is the even more apparent fact that she has developed a contempt for and resentment of Henry as such. The feeling is returned, with the result that the Colbert relationship is a portrait of a marriage of disappointed lovers. On the instant Sapphira suggests selling Nancy, Henry experiences a flush of anger "deep red up to the roots of his thick hair."1 The story continues:
His eyes seemed to sink farther back under his heavy
brow as he looked directly at his wife. His look seemed
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