to say: I see through all this, see to the bottom.
She did not meet his glance. She was gazing
thoughtfully at the coffee urn (Cather 7).
Here is a portrait of marital dissociation drawn in the first "breakfast table" story that opens the novel, and it contains the raison d'etre of the entire narrative. Philip Gerber describes Sapphira and the Slave Girl as a "story of a family broken on the wheel of slavery."2 For Sapphira's entire objective is to see that the "high yellow" slave Nancy is gotten away from Back Creek and out of the way of temptation for Henry Colbert. The difference in point of view, and the initial conflict, emerges on an apparently social level but really goes to the emotional level. At the social level, Sapphira seeks to accommodate a friend by supplying him with a new slave, Nancy; this is not the same as heartlessly disposing of familial ties in the household slave population. Being trained as a cosmopolitan lady's maid will be a wonderful opportunity for Nancy, who is now, poor girl, confined to working on a country farm. Henry opposes Sapphira's plan on social grounds as well. If the Colberts sold off a slave, people in the community would gossip and the good name of the Colberts would be in jeopardy. As he puts it, "'This isn't a slave owning neighbourhood. If you sold a good girl like Nancy off to Winchester, people hereabouts would hold it against you. They would say hard things'" (Cather 8).
The emotional subtext is plain to the reader from the first flush of deep red that comes from Henry Colbert. It is easy to infer that he sees Sapphira's attempt to get rid of Nancy as fear of and an tacit accusation that he is sexually attracted to her, as well as an assault on the settled order of things over which he as a country gentleman is in control. At the same time, it becomes clear that Henry is afflicted with a denial of the true nature of his feeling for Nancy, chara...