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Mr. and Mrs. Garner are a married couple, and the owners of a small plantation called Sweet Home, on which many of the novel’s characters are enslaved. The Garners uphold a softer style of slavery, in which enslaved people are not subjected to violence and brutality, are treated relatively well by their owners, and may even be given opportunities to gain emancipation. Mr. Garner prides himself on raising well-behaved male slaves, and he educates them to the extent that they are able to become independent thinkers and confident ranch hands. He allows Halle to buy Baby Suggs’ freedom, and happily transports her to her new emancipated life. Mrs. Garner is kind to the enslaved women of the ranch, and even gifts Sethe a pair of her own earrings. Of course, the Garners’ humanization of their slaves only goes so far. Mrs. Garner laughs at the idea of throwing a wedding celebration for Sethe and Halle, and Mr. Garner is very patronizing.
When Mr. Garner dies, Mrs. Garner, who is also in bad health, feels that she must hire schoolteacher, her brother-in-law, to take over operations at the ranch. She needs help running the plantation, and she is also concerned for her safety as the only white person left on the ranch. Unfortunately, as her illness worsens and schoolteacher increases his cruel practices, she finds herself woefully unprepared to deal with the horrors schoolteacher subjects on the enslaved people of the ranch. She cries when Sethe tells her she has been raped, but Mrs. Garner is powerless to intercede.
Although the Garners’ enslavement of other humans was, despite their relative benevolence, inexcusable, it’s worth noting that slavers in the South often used threats of violence against other whites to keep them in line, specifically targeting slave owners who educated and freed their slaves. They engaged in violence against white people with more liberal proclivities as a punishment for deviating from the strict rules of their white supremacist system. The novel suggests that these tactics may have been used against the Garners. There is some suspicion amongst the enslaved men at Sweet Home that Mr. Garner may have been shot by a neighbor, potentially for his progressive views surrounding the treatment of enslaved people. Sixo was also suspicious that Mrs. Garner’s doctor was behind her mysterious illness, implying that Mrs. Garner was being weakened and poisoned in a scheme to give schoolteacher full control of the ranch. Ironically, Mrs. Garner hired schoolteacher to protect her safety, but Sixo’s theory suggests that she had more to fear from the men of her own race than she did the Black men of the ranch.
