In A Mercy, Morrison creates a world in which women yielding power is illusionary under a patriarchal society. By using multiple perspectives of characters, Morrison showcases the various “choices” women make in the same circumstance. Each woman, having gone through the same major conflict showcases the limited influence women have over their own lives through their shared experience. More importantly, it shows how much power they perceive they have under the paternal guise of protection. Rebekka, Florens’ Mistress, and Florens, a slave narrator, are two polarizing characters, but one that decides to gain a semblance of freedom in a world that gives none by letting off the reins of safety or patriarchy. But letting go of those rains still restrict Florens. In no circumstance, regardless of their race, do any women in A Mercy gain control over their life, even when their male Master Jacob passes away.
Jacob’s death inevitably sends a flurry of repercussions that strip away the bare bones of the security each woman was given. Whether it be by name, their general treatment, or simply by being given acts of mercy from even harsher conditions, He gives them security in the world they were born into. Although he made their situation better, even he realizes how dependent women in his life are on his name, it’s the women in the novel that don’t realize the slightest bit of power he gives them by assuming their safety till it’s gone. Jacob Vaark inevitably is the male “paternal” form of security. Him sympathizing with orphans was meant to characterize an extent of his belief that they need protection, an ideology the entirety of society carries. He did realize that women held no power and therefore gave them an act of mercy, but he inevitably did not give them power. He was considerably a great step up from these women’s past situations, however, ensuring even the slightest hint of protection to these women suddenly granted them some ability to have a choice in their life.
Either between friendship or relationships, Morrison creates the bonds of women and those around them. Because these bonds are created within a greater system of servitude, they are weak and disintegrate as the realities of the class structure after Jacob’s death take precedence on their lives; by denying the full possibility of owning their identity through allowing their existence to depend upon another person, the women who participate in bonds of affection experience a coping mechanism that gives a false sense of security. Women in the novel have the inherent reliance on male protection as something stable, and something that enabled them to keep parts of their identity even if it risked their life. And with him gone, they each quickly realized how fast that protection is being stripped of them, and how their ideology of having any influence on their own life was gone. Morrison shows that even without physical ownership, women had no power when they were in the larger ownership of society. To assume that they did, was an illusion to how much women were unable to change a society they did not agree with. Their lives are almost always controlled by external factors they could not change because they were directly influenced by the men.
With Jacob, Rebekka yields some influence by choosing to not conform to religious practices as everyone else in society. But even then she quickly realized after Jacob was dead that she had no choice without Jacob to alienate herself. A large part of her identity is her separation between the Anabaptist community. For her, security in her life was ties to Jacob’s name through marriage. When that protection is gone, she conforms for it when she realizes she doesn’t have influence to control her safety in a world that grants her none. To survive, women must perform under their norm opposed to running the risk of alienation and no more protection. When describing what Jacob wants in a women he describes “a certain kind of mate: an unchurched women of childbearing age” (Morrison 23). Had she not fit that male standard, she wouldn’t have been given that act of mercy or protection. Women are given the choice to either succumb to what has been placed upon them, instead of receiving influence over themselves and who they are, in order to survive. And taking that choice to not resign to their fate and break out of that norm means nothing in a world controlled by men. Morrison shows that even then women will be put in a position where it becomes a question of their safety, and undeniably death.
It’s either the death of their identity or their protection. Florens believes she wields choice in her life by embracing freedom as an independent women, but she is naive to the world by choosing to alienate herself from protection needed to survive. Will and Scully, indentured servants. describe, “The docile creature they knew had turned feral” (Morrison 171). The loss of docility is a choice that she makes to break out of the stereotypical norm of slaves. Although gaining freedom is meant to be something freeing, she might claim to harness her freedom but in reality, she only has broken away from the bonds of protection. She is now outside societies norms, as a self-proclaimed free women, feral and still naive to the harsh world that doesn’t acknowledge more than her gender. She gets a little influence in her life at the cost of safety and alienation from the community. At the end of the novel, she possesses the little freedom she can in her life, this newfound freedom being literary freedom. But in response, she casts herself away from the protection she got as a submissive black women born into slavery and never truly is free. Even when making the choice to exert influence, women are making “choices” that only lead to their inevitable downfall.
The little influence women have is the choice to either conform to their situation in order to gain protection or wield minimal power at the expense of cruelty of the world. Characters in the novel had to question the security they had, one that they didn’t need to necessarily question beforehand. There is an inherent benefit to conforming and giving your identity up, and Morrison shows that not all women take it, even one’s that are given the privilege of that choice. Even then, that choice of taking away the protection doesn't allow any control of women's lives, instead it places them in a position where they have even less under the ignorance that they have even a little part of themselves.
All three women were free of direct male protection, but not the general patriarchal society. Morrison makes that clear by the paths each woman takes to secure what little they have. In the end, women were unable to change their circumstance even marginally to something more stable than what they had under men. Morrison makes the argument that freedom may come but women are not free. Being free is not realistic for women in society. Florens makes the choice to claim her freedom when she resigned her fate as a women simply by her gender. Even after her choice to wield power, she will still resign her fate to being sold, or being unprotected. Morrison doesn’t end the novel with a heartfelt ending by Florens herself. Rather it is her Mother who ends the novel entailing, “To be a female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal” (Morrison 191). Women were constantly subjugated as inferiors no matter their class or privilege, simply by the gender placed upon them. There is no power to protect themselves, to heal themselves, and they are never given the choice to do so. That “choice” given is an act of mercy often granted by the same people who create those wounds in a patriarchal structure, and it affected the fate of all women in A Mercy.