“Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggs to her husband’s high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose–a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men–the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase.”
The passage that i picked is in chapter one where Paul D is remembering when Sethe first came to live with Mr. and Mrs. Garner after Baby Suggs has passed away.
The passage talks about how Sethe first came to live in the farm with the Garner family after Baby Suggs has passed away. The passage also talks about how the five men that also lived with the Garner which included Paul D first though of Sethe when they saw her for the first time. Since those five lived without the presence of any other female beside Mrs.Garner they did not know how to act towards Sethe, so they just let her do what she wanted. The five men also did not want to fight over who would fight over Sethe but instead waited till Sethe picked one of them on her own.
The passage is important in that it lets us know what Sethe went through after Baby Suggs passed away and how she lived in her early teen years. It also introduces some important characters like Mr. and Mrs. Garner, Paul D and the other 4 men who lived with her which one becomes her husband later on.
