The Keepers of the House: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Keepers of the House" delves into the complexities of family legacy, racial identity, and personal resilience through its major characters, primarily focusing on Abigail Howland Mason Tolliver. As the wealthy heiress and protagonist, Abigail grapples with her family's tumultuous past marked by racial strife in the Southern United States. Raised by her grandfather, William Howland, and his mulatto housekeeper, Margaret, Abigail’s life intertwines with themes of abandonment, reconciliation, and social upheaval. William, a strong yet reserved figure, serves as a guiding force in her life, while his unconventional marriage to Margaret highlights the intersection of race and familial bonds in their community.
Margaret, characterized by her grace and connection to nature, profoundly impacts both Abigail and the household's dynamic, although her life ends tragically. Abigail's estranged husband, John Tolliver, embodies the era's racial tensions through his political ambitions and affiliations with segregationist groups, creating conflict that culminates in a dramatic revelation about their family’s heritage. Robert Carmichael Howland, their quadroon son, acts as a catalyst for this tension, seeking to expose John's racism while navigating his own mixed-race identity. Together, these characters encapsulate the broader themes of heritage, societal expectations, and the struggle for personal autonomy in a racially divided landscape.
The Keepers of the House: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Shirley Ann Grau
First published: 1964
Genre: Novel
Locale: Mississippi and its environs
Plot: Mythic
Time: The 1960's, with flashbacks to earlier times
Abigail Howland Mason Tolliver, the narrator and protagonist, a wealthy heiress of modest beauty and intelligence. She tries to understand her family's turbulent past and present, which recapitulate anxieties of the modern South, torn by racial strife and family disintegration. Abandoned by her father and soon orphaned by her mother's death, Abigail is reared by her grandfather, William Howland, and his mulatto housekeeper, Margaret, whose light-skinned children, she learns later, are his as well. After finishing college in the East, she returns with her husband, John, to rear their children in the ancestral home. There she is reconciled with her heritage through conversations with Margaret and the spirit of her departed grandfather. She lacks rapport with Margaret's children and becomes estranged from her ambitious husband. Abigail's life reaches its climax when Margaret's son tries to ruin John's political career by revealing the secret interracial marriage in their family tree. While John is away, a mob of angry whites attacks the place. Abigail cleverly sets fire to their cars while they are busy burning her barn, and she scatters them with a few bursts of gunfire, thus keeping the house and her children safe. In the process of divorcing her husband, she learns that she has inherited most of the property in the town, and she takes revenge by using her leverage to shut down the town's economy.
William Howland, Abigail's grandfather, a strong but undemonstrative man. After the early death of his first wife, he goes into a swamp on a bet that he can find Calvin Robert-son's moonshine still. He finds it but gets lost on his way back, until he comes upon a tall black woman washing clothes by the river. A strange bond immediately develops between them. He invites her to come to work for him as a housekeeper, and they live together as man and wife for thirty years, rearing three quadroon children. He is also the guiding force in Abigail's life. After she is expelled for helping two friends elope, he pulls strings to get her back into college, where he introduces her to a family friend, the young law student whom she marries.
Margaret Carmichael Howland, William's second wife, a tall, strong, and graceful woman with negroid features inherited from her mother, though her father was white. Abandoned in childhood, she is reared by her grandfather, Abner Carmichael, in a house peculiarly built to float like a boat during floods. Her lithe, free, and easy manner of speaking and moving suggests a powerful affinity with the earth, water, and nature itself. She brings life and warmth to the Howland home. Although her relationship with William is an open secret, even family members do not discover while William and Margaret are alive that they were legally married in Cleveland two months before the birth of their first child. William's death empties her life of meaning, though she lives for four more years in a new house he had bought her. She apparently takes her own life by drowning.
John Tolliver, Abigail's husband and the father of their children. His successful law practice and political career keep him away from home, and the marriage grows cold. A member of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, he courts segregationist votes as a candidate for governor. To the disgust of his family, he claims in a campaign speech that black people have smaller brains and thicker skulls than whites. A newspaper story about the speech spurs Margaret's son to ruin his political career by exposing the interracial marriage.
Robert Carmichael Howland, the quadroon son of William and Margaret, red-haired and fair-skinned. Like his sisters Nina and Chrissy, he was sent north to school to escape racial prejudice. He returns home to ruin Tolliver's political career by exposing his parents' interracial marriage. Abigail acknowledges him but vows to take ironic revenge on Robert by informing his white wife of his black ancestry.
Oliver, William's black servant, the only person to stay with Abigail when the Howland buildings are attacked.