Overview Of The Invention Of Wings, By Sue Monk Kidd

“The Invention of Wings,” written by Sue Monk Kidd may seem like a light-hearted novel based on the title. Perhaps a fantasy or fiction book, but when you open up and turn the pages you will find that The Invention of Wings is not a mystical fantasy, or a fun silly fiction, but a powerful and moving historical novel on slavery and women empowerment. The book follows two main characters from childhood to adulthood and shares with us their incredible journey during the early 1800’s. Hetty (Handful), and Sarah Grimké had a close bond from the start of the novel. When Handful is gifted to Sarah for her birthday she despises owning another human being from the beginning, which only grows to more extreme heights throughout the novel. Sarah bends

The novel is historically based and based on true events and figures. Kidd examined and sifted through and endless amount of research, documents, facts, letters, and articles to put together a fictionalized account of a true story in American history. The story of Sarah Grimké is almost entirely accurate while the story of Handful is more fictionalized and fabricated. While Handful was in fact real, there is not much known about her. The story of the Grimké’s is already exceedingly compelling, but Kidd expands and adds in Handful to help unfold and enliven the story. Although she is mainly a product of imagination, Handful is an important aspect of the story and is given a truly incredible story. The author incorporates several documents, newspapers, diaries, and letters into the novel to make the story more believable and

A major strong point was how Kidd switched back and fourth each chapter from Sarah’s point of view to Handful’s point of view. It made the story easy to read, much more interesting, and didn’t allow either character to take over. You saw the slave’s side and the slave owner’s side which helped the reader get a better understanding of all that was going on at the time. The book does an incredible job of showing some of the awful things that slavery did to people, and some of the terrible things being an abolitionist did to you at the time. “Being an abolitionist could get you attacked right on the streets — heckled, flogged, stoned, killed,” Sarah Grimké says which shows how unbelievably brave she was for standing against it; especially being a woman. Another strong point was how well Kidd developed the characters. It was hard not to feel a sort of attachment to the characters and feel what they were going through as they came to life throughout the story. A shortcoming of the book was that I believe there was too much time spent on non-important events. A large chunk of the novel was spent on Sarah Grimke’s childhood and her love life, which weren’t necessary components of the book. The last section of the book talking about Sarah and Angelina’s journey speaking about abolition and women's rights was very vague while it was perhaps the most important part of the characters lives and of