Corn Husk Dolls & Play Amidst Oppression
Recently, I thought about Twelve Years a Slave and how it was the most painful movie experience I’ve ever sat through. This is not a negative thing, of course. Any remotely realistic movie about slavery should be painful. At any rate, I finally worked up the nerve to watch it again, and I was struck by the scene in which Patsey takes a break from the grueling labor of cotton-picking to make corn husk dolls. On the surface, this scene appears to be a respite from the horrors we’ve witnessed so far. We see Patsey enjoying a moment of solitude, humming to herself as she creates a family of dolls. But even this serene moment is marred – Patsey’s cruel, jealous, violent mistress, Mrs. Epps, watches her from a window of the big house.
For enslaved people, leisure is wrought with complication. If one’s time does not belong to oneself, what does it mean to “play” or to have a moment to relax? What does it mean for Patsey to momentarily escape the abuse from her owners, not just to sleep or eat, but to imagine and create?
I was intrigued by the choice to incorporate corn husk dolls into the film. (1) In the book, Solomon Northup describes Patsey as a “slim and straight” 23-year-old who had “an air of loftiness in her movement that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy…Naturally, she was a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl…” (2) Her natural disposition lies in agonizing contrast to the treatment she receives at the hands of her sadistic owners. This scene, with Lupita peacefully crafting dolls while the barbarous Mrs. Epps watches from behind, captures this contrast. The woman is determined to break Patsey physically and mentally. That Patsey has the audacity to relish a moment of humanity despite continued degradation undoubtedly infuriates her.
It is Patsey’s audacity that remains with me. The gut-wrenching soap scene and subsequent flaying also result from Patsey’s audacity to grasp a sliver of humanity for herself. Lupita Nyong’o’s addition of the corn husk dolls to this narrative not only contributes to the film, but it also raises questions about what it means to play in the midst of oppression. There are occasional scenes in which we see enslaved children playing in the background. I assume Patsey makes these dolls for them, which points to her relationships with other slaves on the Epps plantation. Patsey is not just a workhorse, but a member of the extended family of her local slave community.
Aside from demonstrating an important side of Patsey’s character, corn husk dolls also call into play another aspect of American slavery: Its connection to Native Americans. In the film, Northup and his peers encounter a group of Native Americans in the woods, reminding the audience of the precarious social position of both groups in the mid-1800s. Throughout US history, Native Americans were both victims and perpetrators of chattel slavery. (3) Native Americans fashioned corn husk dolls for countless generations before Europeans arrived. Eventually, the continued interactions between Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans (4 and 5) led to the craft’s adaptation amongst children of colonial settlers and enslaved people. On plantations where corn was grown, it would not have been uncommon for slaves to use the husks for dolls or hats.
When and where did Patsey learn to make corn husk dolls? According to Northup, she “glories in the fact that she is the offspring of a ‘Guinea nigger,’ brought over to Cuba in a slave ship.” (6) One of the astounding facets of American slavery is that the daughter of an African woman who was traded in Cuba learns a craft mastered by Native Americans and practices it in rural Louisiana. Patsey’s life does not exist in a vacuum. Her sitting in that field making those dolls is the product of centuries of cultural interaction amidst duplicitous land deals and genocide. Her dolls symbolize the uniquely American nature of the brand of slavery that condemned her to the Epps plantation.
Corn husk dolls have long been a part of American toy and craft culture. Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, magazines and newspapers touted the dolls as an affordable means of amusement suitable for proper girls. “A doll made of corn husks and dressed in the same material is a novelty, and so dainty a creature that she cannot fail to please the most fastidious little lady in the land,” wrote a contributor for The Golden Rule in 1889. (7) Decades later, the dolls were central to the Craft Revival of the 20th century. (8) Today, corn husk dolls are commonplace in elementary school art projects and Etsy shops. Their history as an object of amusement for Black children and adults in slavery has been subsumed under their status an an autumn novelty.
Since the film’s release, people have attempted to find out what happened to Patsey after Northup was rescued from Master Epps. (9) I congratulate Lupita Nyong’o for her portrayal of Patsey and her addition of the dolls to Patsey’s narrative. Leisure time and creativity were central to everyday acts of resistance during slavery. By creating, by stealing moments for themselves, enslaved people refuted claims of Black people as subhuman creatures. We needed to see Patsey play. We needed to see her as more than an abused figure. Like Patsey, our enslaved grandmothers were full human beings. They did not simply wither and break under their oppression, but they lived and created and tried their best to make lives for themselves under deplorable circumstances.