Jacob Have I Loved is a children's novel by Katherine Paterson. It was published by Crowell in 1980 and it won the annual Newbery Medal next year. The title refers to the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau in the Jewish and Christian Bible, and comes directly from Romans 9:13: "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."
The novel follows the story of the Bradshaws, a family who depends on the father, Truitt Bradshaw, and his crabbing/fishing business on his boat, the Portia Sue. Truitt's two daughters, Sara Louise and Caroline, are twins, and Caroline has always been the favorite. She is prettier and more talented, and better at receiving more attention not only from their parents but also from others in the community.
The book traces Louise's attempts to free herself from Caroline's shadow, even as she grows into adulthood.
Video Jacob Have I Loved
Setting
This story takes place during the early 1940s on the small, fictional island of Rass in the Chesapeake Bay.
Maps Jacob Have I Loved
Plot summary
Left forgotten in a basket as her twin is rushed to the hospital, Sara Louise "Wheeze" Bradshaw is overlooked from the hour of her birth, a neglect which stretches out for the first few months of her life and then continues as she ages.
Imaginative, emotionally sensitive, and hard working, Sara Louise, a young girl growing up on an isolated fishing island off the coast of Maryland during WWII, is made to feel second-best for most of her life. Her impoverished family consists of her rough but gentle father, always absent due to his working class job on his oyster boat, her ladylike and intelligent mother, who had arrived on the island as a school teacher and stayed after falling in love, her grandmother, a bitter and nasty woman with a religious bent to her growing dementia, and Caroline, Sara Louise's younger twin sister who is the main impediment of Sara Louise's struggle to distinguish herself and obtain the affection she craves. Caroline is fragile, beautiful, and musically talented--everything Sara Louise is not. As the chosen favorite of the island and Sara Louise's family, Caroline absorbs all of the attention, time, and love Sara Louise is desperate for.
Blessed with a rare and angelic voice, Caroline is offered a scholarship to a mainland school for voice lessons, and the rest of the family, mainly Sara Louise, must sacrifice to make this happen. To raise the money for Caroline's transportation costs and be as helpful to her family as she can be, Sara Louise catches crabs with her only friend, McCall "Call" Purnell, a dumpy, short-sighted boy who does not understand Sara Louise's humor and who only hangs out with her because he lacks a father to take him on his own skiff. Crabbing is a traditionally male task, which isolates Sara Louise from social norms, and the physically hard work increases the differences between the twins: Sara Louise is strong, tan, and has ragged hands, which sets her far apart from her golden-pale, slight, and feminine sister, who frequently mocks her for being dirty or smelling.
One day, Hiram Wallace, the only islander to leave to go to college in fifty years, returns to the island. Call and Sara Louise grow close to the old gentleman after Sara Louise boldly demands an introduction and Call volunteers the pair to help him restore his house. Hiram, whom they call "the Captain", quickly bonds with Call over their shared sense of humor, becoming a father figure for the boy. The Captain tells the young friends stories of his many adventures abroad and treats Sara Louise with brusque attention.
After Sara Louise finds a local spinster from Hiram's generation (Trudy) suffering from a stroke that necessitates sending her to the inland hospital, Call, Sara Louise, and Hiram work together to clear Trudy's house for her return. Hiram tells the children how Trudy may have a fortune hidden somewhere in the building, which is filthy and overrun by a starving feral cat colony. Unable to keep the cats, Hiram determines the most humane thing would be to capture and drown them. This horrifies Sara Louise, who protests vigorously, but her friends overrule her. Unable to go through with it, Sara Louise jumps from the rowboat on the way to perform the deed and swims to the shore, crying over the deaths of the cats, where Caroline finds her mourning. Call and Hiram reveal they could not bring themselves to kill the cats after Sara Louise's display and Caroline steps in to introduce herself. Going door to door and charming the locals who adore her into taking in the mangy cats, Caroline is lauded by Call and Hiram as the cats' savior, while Sara Louise is deeply ashamed to have cried so much and resentful that Caroline has met her friends, especially since Call now prefers Caroline over her.
The island is struck by a ravaging hurricane. Sara Louise's father sends her alone into the storm to fetch the Captain, who lives on the island's edge, and bring him to their home in the center of town for safety. This act saves Hiram's life; his entire home is demolished and gone by the end of the hurricane. Meanwhile, Caroline is allowed to sleep through the entire storm.
Hiram, now homeless, temporarily moves into Sara Louise's home, which sets her grandmother into a tizzy of religious furor at having to give up her room. A 14 year old Sara Louise realizes she is in love with Hiram, despite his being older than her grandmother and completely oblivious to her feelings, since he is the only adult on the island who pays her attention and calls her by her real name instead of the much-hated nickname Caroline gave her: "Wheeze". Caroline mocks Sara Louise for her crush, and her grandmother begins accusing her of being a harlot and quoting scriptures at her. The tiny hope for this affection is snuffed out nearly immediately when Caroline suggests the homeless Hiram enter into a marriage of convenience with Trudy, exchanging a place to live with living assistance, and Hiram again lauds Caroline for saving the day.
Cackling, Sara Louise's vitriolic grandmother gleefully informs Sara Louise at every opportunity that the reason Sara Louise is despised by everyone is Jacob 9: 13 "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." This bible verse refers to the story of the twins Esau and Jacob. Esau, the elder and an outdoors-man, is the favorite of their father because he loves eating the meat Esau hunts, but Jacob, the studious and beautiful younger twin, is the favorite of their mother. Esau is eventually tricked out of his birthright by Jacob with their mother's help and exiled. Struck by the parallels between her own situation and the story, Sara Louise is crushed to realize that even God favored the younger, more talented twin, and what this may mean for herself.
Call abandons Sara Louise to earn more money on her father's fishing boat, and Hiram's new wife prefers Caroline's musical company to Sara Louise's. The religious traditions of the island, and Sara Louise's vicious grandmother, dictate that expressions of selfishness or emotion put a person in danger of hellfire, which Sara Louise takes deeply to heart, especially since her parent's have emphasized that her main positive feature is that she never causes them to worry. Resentful of giving all of her income for Caroline, who does not contribute to the household, and fearful that the beauty advertisements are correct that her rough appearance renders herself unlovable, Sara Louise saves some money back to purchase herself some hand cream and a manicure kit. Sara Louise uses these products religiously in secret, attempting to improve her embarrassing hands. After Sara Louise returns home one day to find Caroline imperiously helping herself to her sister's beauty products, Sara Louise destroys the lotion in a fit of shame at her selfish splurge being discovered and rage that Caroline would take even this small thing from her.
Eventually, the economic hardships after the hurricane result in Caroline being pulled from her special voice lessons inland. As a thank you for the pleasure Trudy received from Caroline's singing, Hiram steps in and gladly offers a small fortune to pay for Caroline to attend a prestigious boarding school in Baltimore and have a private voice tutor for her entire high school career. No offer is extended for Sara Louise to attend.
Sara Louise feels completely betrayed that even the Captain would so blatantly and unfairly prefer Caroline and is devastated that she will be left behind in the sub-par one room school house available on the island. At Caroline's departure, their mother pays attention enough to realize this decision is hurtful to the left-behind Sara Louise and asks if Sara Louise would like to be sent to a far less prestigious local school on the mainland, though they cannot afford it and would be required to take out loans. Unfortunately, her mother took too long to approach the topic and Sara Louise turns the insulting offer down in a burst of emotion, convinced it proves her mother wishes to be rid of her, and is further hurt when her mother immediately retreats and never makes the offer again, which Sara Louise further interprets as her mother's lack of interest in her.
Call enlists in the navy and leaves to join the war. Sara Louise drops out of school and takes over Call's duties, finally allowed on her father's oyster boat.
Sara Louise is content. The hard work leaves no time for thought and, finally absent Caroline's shadow, Sara Louise enjoys the attention she receives from her father. Causing her mother worry at last, she receives homeschooling from her mother and Hiram, whom she has gotten over. Sara Louise earns her high school diploma, achieving the highest score of any student from the island in its history, starts applying hand cream again, and waits for a change.
Released from ever needing to provide for Caroline again after Caroline graduates and is awarded a full-ride scholarship to Juilliard, Sara Louise awaits the return of Call to take her place on her father's boat and fully free Sara Louise from all of her obligations to her family, though she is secretly still afraid they do not need or want her, and that she has no true place on the island, which is slowly being reclaimed by the sea.
Call's return at the end of the war is not what Sara Louise was expecting. Much-changed, Call announces he is not returning permanently, but will attend university and marry Caroline. Sara Louise remains trapped and stationary on the island.
Staying behind to watch her grandmother while her parents travel to Caroline and Call's wedding, Sara Louise gets a wake up call from the Captain when he is the first person to ask her what she'd like to do with her life and tell her he's always known she had the ability to make her own opportunities. Sara Louise confesses she would like to see the mountains and would like to become a doctor, but when pushed to go and achieve these goals, Sara Louise retreats, saying she can't leave her family.
Sara Louise's grandmother grows exceptionally nasty upon her parent's return from their trip and Sara Louise begins to chafe in their small house on their small island. Sara Louise explodes and demands to know how her intelligent, educated, and attractive mother could wind up on such an abandoned place. Raging at the utter waste of her mother's life, Sara Louise vows that such an end will not happen to her and demands to be let go, finally expressing some of her resentment at Caroline's privilege. To which her mother replies Sara Louise was always free to go, but had never said she wanted to. Sara Louise realizes that this is true; she was so afraid that saying what she wanted or trying to leave would result in her being left forgotten in a basket again that she never asked, and therefore never received. Asking for and receiving assurance that she will be missed, Sara Louise applies to college as a pre-med student and eagerly leaves the island to become her own person and have her own adventures at last.
Denied entry to medical school due to her gender and the influx of GI Bill students, Sara Louise becomes even more determined to become a doctor and graduates as a nurse midwife, intending to first gain experience and then request entry to medical school and become a doctor.
After finishing college, Sara Louise goes to work in a small Appalachian Mountains town as a nurse and midwife. She thrives there, on the people who depend on her, and eventually marries a widowed father. Her husband posits that all of her experiences on the island were God's way of preparing her from birth for her position in the town, a supposition which enrages the long agnostic Sara Louise. Meanwhile, Sara Louise has a baby boy, Caroline is debuting as an opera singer in New Haven, their father and grandmother die; and their mother leaves the island permanently.
On a snowy, winter night, Sara Louis assists in delivering twins. The mother has the first one, a boy, safely. When the second one comes out, it is a small and cold girl. Since she doesn't have an incubator, Sara Louis rushes the baby to the fireside and much effort is made to revive her. She then realizes the boy has been forgotten and asks about his whereabouts. He is in the basket, sleeping, where his grandmother put him. The twins remind her of her and Caroline. She tells the family to pick him up, hold him as much as they can, and have his mother breastfeed him. In her mind, she does not want him to end up like her, sleeping in a basket, alone and forgotten. Lactating from her own child, Sara Louise breastfeeds the younger twin.
Characters
- Sara Louise Bradshaw
Sara Louise helps her father through the crabbing season. She is a few minutes older than her twin sister, Caroline. As she grows older, she becomes frustrated with the unceasing attention Caroline receives and attempts to become more feminine -- to no avail. After growing up in the oppressive situation of playing second-fiddle to Caroline, she eventually leaves the island to move to a small town in the mountains that she has always wanted to see.
- Caroline Bradshaw
Caroline is perfect. While she and Sara Louise are twins, she is considered the "miracle child" because she was near death during birth. She is an amazing singer and pianist, and she is considered more intelligent and feminine than Sara Louise. She tends to tease her, and she made up "Wheeze," a nickname Sara Louise despises. She went to a music school after she graduated from high school on her home island, then goes to Juilliard in New York. She marries McCall Purnell, Sara Louise's longtime friend.
- McCall Purnell
McCall, also known as Call, is a boy who works on the waters with Sara Louise because his father died. He works with the Captain after he arrives. He ends up going to war, and when he comes back to Rass, he marries Caroline.
- Hiram Wallace
Also known as "The Captain", Hiram is an old man that used to live on the island as a boy but moved away. He comes back and befriends Call and Sara Louise. She falls in love with him.
- Susan Bradshaw
Susan is Sara Louise and Caroline's mother and Truitt's wife. She is an educated woman who used to be a teacher.
- Grandma Bradshaw
A very religious woman, Grandma can be strict and hard to get along with. She loves the Lord, but hates the water. She believes the Captain is a heathen.
- Truitt Bradshaw
Truitt is Sara Louise and Caroline's father and Susan's husband. He is a waterman and war veteran.
- Auntie (Trudy) Braxton
Auntie is an elderly, eccentric neighbor of the Bradshaws. She lives with a litany of feral cats. After she suffers a stroke, The Captain moves in with her, and eventually marries her.
Reception
Jacob Have I Loved received favorable reviews. Booklist called it "an intense, moving portrayal" and Carol Katz concluded for School Library Journal (copyright 2010), "All libraries will benefit from owning this outstanding telling of a remarkable tale." Patricia Liddie wrote for The ALAN Review, "This novel is indeed a classic, and the beauty of it is that it's so readable for and appropriate to the older junior-high student."
According to Kirkus Reviews, "Paterson has to get into [Louise's] later years to make the point, and to avoid the instant realizations that substitute in too many juvenile novels. However, this tends to flatten the tone and blur the shape of the novel. Louise's earlier, intense feelings evoke recognition and sympathy, but this hasn't the resonant clarity of Bridge to Terabithia or The Great Gilly Hopkins."
In 2012 Jacob Have I Loved was ranked number 43 among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal - the second of three Paterson novels in the top 100.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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