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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mighty Miss Malone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hope
Talent and Hard Work
Family
The Black Experience in America
The Great Depression
Summary
Analysis
There’s a saying that bad news comes in threes, and Deza wonders if it means three pieces of bad news per family or per family member. It certainly seems like the latter, because bad news just keeps coming for the Malones. After a month, Mr. Malone has neither written nor sent money. The Carsdales decide to move to Europe, leaving Mrs. Malone facing the prospect of sudden unemployment. And then, Mrs. Malone announces that she’s moving the rest of the family to Flint. She thinks she’ll find work with a wealthy White family there thanks to Mrs. Carsdale’s connections, and the family can stay with Mr. Malone’s mother until they get back on their own feet. Deza won’t be starting private tutoring sessions with Mrs. Needham in the fall, after all.
Realistically, Mrs. Malone’s plan to follow Mr. Malone to Flint makes sense and is fairly predictable. But it hits Deza particularly hard because it means that all the things she most looks forward to, all the things she clings to in order to cheer her up in adversity (her friendship with Clarice, her relationship with Mrs. Needham, the possibility of tutoring in the fall) dissolve. It seems that Robert Burns’s warning, delivered by Mrs. Needham in an earlier chapter, is true indeed: the best-laid plans often go awry.
Themes
Deza falls into a depression, retreating to her parents’ bed to sleep away the days after Mrs. Malone goes to the Carsdales’ and Jimmie goes to Dr. Bracy’s for work. Eventually, her mother realizes what’s happening and forbids Deza from going back to bed. But Deza can’t stop—at least not on days when Clarice doesn’t show up to drag her to the library.
When Mrs. Malone comes home from work one day with Mrs. Carsdale’s recommendation letter, she is excited as she puts it in the family’s “filing cabinet”—their couch cushions. She feels hopeful about the future, but Deza is cautious. She wants her mother to read the letter first to make sure it says nice things. But Mrs. Malone says that would be wrong and beneath her dignity. Fortunately, Jimmie isn’t so scrupulous. He helps Deza open the envelope secretly. Deza was right to be worried. Mrs. Carsdale mostly complains about how hard her (incredibly luxurious) life is, then tells her friend Mrs. Nelson to hire Mrs. Malone—who has taken what Mrs. Carsdale feels is an inappropriate amount of time off to tend to her own health and her children’s—only “at [her] own peril.”
The series of calamities the family has so recently suffered has taught Deza caution that she didn’t know before. She and Jimmie read the letter in part to satisfy their own curiosity, but also in part because they’re both stepping up to take on more responsibility for the family’s wellbeing during their father’s absence. Sure enough, when they do, they find that their mother—and by extension their whole family—is the victim of Mrs. Carsdale’s callous racism and prejudice. Her disregard for the Malones’ future and focus on her own so-called suffering emphasizes that, although the Depression affected most Americans in some way, it didn’t affect everyone equally.
Themes
Jimmie and Deza hatch a plan. Mrs. Malone has started taking Jimmie to work with her, where he’s earning some money by packing up their belongings. He steals a few sheets of Mrs. Carsdale’s high-quality writing paper, two envelopes, and a fountain pen. Then, while her mother and brother are at work, Deza practices Mrs. Carsdale’s handwriting and forges a replacement letter praising the “kind and loving” Mrs. Malone in effusive terms and offering her the highest recommendation. She puts this in the envelope and stashes it under the couch cushion.
Deza and Jimmie stick together and the plan to revise Mrs. Carsdale’s letter—and the potential of being reunited with their father in Flint—give Deza hope and thus energy that she hasn’t felt since his departure. Readers even get a glimpse of the old, self-assured Deza here—she’s very confident in her letter even though it is clearly a poorly-rendered forgery unlikely to fool anyone.
Themes
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