Why didn't Miss Millie let Sofia see her children for so long?
What kind of monster of a woman disallows another woman from seeing her children?
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After Sophia got out of jail, she was Miss Millie's maid obviously, and as you can see she was just learning how to drive. I'm guessing the distance from Ms. Millie's neighborhood and Sophia's old neighborhood, where her kids reside, was too great to travel without car. So with Ms. Millie learning how to drive, she thought it would be nice of her to drive Sophia to see her kids for the day. So basically, the distance and no way to travel was the reason why Sophia didn't see her kids.
shareTo be honest, I think it is partly a contrivance on Walker's part to make the situation more unfair to Sofia than really it would have been. Plus, Celie visits her during her time at the house as the maid so why wouldn't the children have visited in the same way? Because Walker simply decided to do it that way for the purposes of the story, disregarding internal consistency.
shareMiss Millie liked to think she was very opened minded towards those poor black people by taking up a collection during Christmas and offering Sophia a job as a maid. But in truth, she was a bigot. She probably wasn't a KKK sheet wearing bigot. But she was a bigot.
When Miss Millie could not get in her car into proper gear and the other men tried to help her, she feared they were going to rape and abuse her as those "nasty black people" were stereotyped to do. This is more evidence of her bigoted behavior.
Then when Sophia offered to have one of her male relatives drive her home, a whole new level of bigotry took over. A white woman being driven around by a black man who isn't wearing a driver's uniform? Oh the scandal!!! So Sophia offers to have a femalle relative come along. But, that won't work either. It's one thing to drive your black maid around town to run errands. But to be seen in a car with two black people who don't work for you? No way, no way, no way!
Miss Millie's racist point of view totally came fruition to her and everyone else on that day. I think she was crushed because she realized she wasn't as open minded as she thought. Taking up a Christmas collection for poor black children doesn't make you an enlighted person. Offering to drive your maid to see her kids doesn't either.
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Another post here said Sophia got 13 years. When Ms. Millie took her home for Christmas, Sophia said she hadn't seen her kids for 8 years. This means that Miss. Millie intervene and had Sophia's 13 year sentence reduced in exchange for being her maid. Even if she did the entire 5 years as a maid, it would be much better than jail, where back then.... they would put her big black ass in the chain-gang doing hard labor.
What is said in the quote above. It is elaborated into more debth in the book, but is cut from the book. Ms. Millie and the Mayor let Sofia go early from prison, in exchange for her being their maid. The prison was bad indeed, filled with rats, poor hygiene, poor sleeping arangements, poor food and a workload that would send Sofia to an early death. Being ms. Millies maid was far from good, but it was still better than prison. However, Sofia was barley let out of Millies sight, and never far. So she was never able to visit, unless ms. Millie agreed "out of the goodness of her heart".
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<<"Miss Millie did have good intentions, just poor delivery. She genuinely had affections for Black children when she kissed them on the face. You wouldn't see such a person of high society doing this back then, even now. Her husband the Mayor obviously didn't need the Black vote, since Blacks couldn't even vote yet.">>
Not sure I see Miss Millie in quite such a bright light. A shrill and unpleasant creature, in her position as the Mayor's wife she massages her already dangerously inflated ego by playing Lady Bountiful with "the coloreds," but in the scene where she brings Sofia home for Christmas her true colors, so to speak, come to the surface all too quickly and in all their ugliness.
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