She had been patient and gentle in all their impatience and irritability. She had watched them by night and by day through the diseases of childhood. Mammy had knit herself into the hearts of the children.

She had taken care of all her children, from her firstborn to the youngling of the flock-the present little pet and idol of the house. Of this servant, the novel explains:Ĭlara had lived with Mrs. It may come as no surprise that the servant most idealized in the world of the 1837 novel was a Black woman, who is described as perfectly benevolent, tolerant, and self-sacrificing. The didactic novel, treated by literary historians as an agenda-setting text, was intended to teach mistresses to treat their servants with compassion, and servants to adopt the “self-denying benevolence” the job required. The protagonist, a young white girl whose family has fallen on hard times, is “sent out to service,” where she encounters a variety of employers and coworkers, both good and bad. Perhaps because they share a name, I was reminded of Clara Lane, a Mammy character in the 19th-century “servant’s tale” novel Live and Let Live, Or, Domestic Service Illustrated by Catharine Maria Sedgwick. As I was reading the novel’s conclusion, I couldn’t help but think of Klara’s literary historical predecessors-those caregivers, domestic servants, nannies, and even “Mammies” (racist caricatures of Black women who work as caregivers for white families) who, in fiction, have often been represented as lesser, sometimes even less than human. The memories which comprise the novel’s pages assure her that she fulfilled her commitment to serve the family well.īut what at first glance appears a bittersweet, perhaps even sentimental ending has darker implications. In the end, although Josie has grown up and moved away, the AF is contented by her decisions. Though she faces trials which threaten to corrupt her, Klara stays true to her mission: to learn about her teenage companion, Josie, and protect her from loneliness.

Pollution blocks the Sun, which solar-powered AFs, and perhaps even humans, need to survive increased automation and robotic technology have resulted in mass unemployment and extreme wealth inequalities many of the “postemployed” form fascist communities that stand in antagonistic relation to both racialized “others” and the elite, the “high ranking” men and women who have genetically edited, or “lifted,” their children to a dangerous level of super intelligence. Klara, an especially observant “girl AF,” discovers a world beset by existential threats and torn asunder by violence.

Klara and the sun sparknotes