The_Guilt_Of_Orleana

The Guilt Of Orleana The Guilt of Orleanna Orleanna Price becomes the wife of Nathan, an unsanctioned Baptist Missionary, who in 1959 drags his family from Bethlehem, Georgia, to the Congo. The determined Orleanna mainly tries to keep her family alive as disease, starvation, the threat of revolution, and even her husband’s presence threaten their existence. “I had washed up there on the riptide of my husband’s confidence and the undertow of my children’s needs. That’s my excuse…” (Kingsolver 8). Orleanna begins the story of the Price family claiming, “I rode in with the horseman and beheld the apocalypse, but still I’ll insist I was only a captive witness. What is the conqueror’s wife, if not a conquest herself'” (Kingsolver 9) This quote appears in Orleanna’s opening narrative and immediately introduces us to the dominant them in The Poisonwood Bible: the attempt to grapple with guilt. Orleanna’s guilt is twofold. A paralyzing guilt causes her to feel responsible in the death of her youngest daughter, and also the guilt she suffers because of the crimes perpetrated by the Unites States against the natives of the Congo. This passage calls our attention to both of these guilty burdens. By calling herself the “conqueror’s wife,” Orleanna places orleanna, guilt, kingsolver, woman, poisonwood, husband, herself, family, bible, wife, whether, understand, states, even, 1950s, youngest, women, upon, tries, suffers, story, standards, societal, should, readers, raise, price, perpetrated, out, nation, march, judge, husband