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Chapter I–Chapter V

Summary: Chapter I

The story opens in Rhode Island in May 1776. Young Isabel walks to the funeral of Mary Finch, along with Pastor Weeks, the wagon driver, her “simple” sister Ruth, and Robert Finch, nephew of the deceased. Ruth and Isabel’s mother is buried in the same cemetery, dead of smallpox for nearly a year. Isabel runs ahead to ask her Momma to cross over from the dead and advise what she and Ruth should do now that Mary Finch is dead. Robert Finch, Mary’s only living relative, appeared when Mary was sick and has rushed the funeral and taken her money. Isabel’s Momma does not respond. Finch harshly calls Isabel back to his aunt’s graveside to pray for the woman who owned her.

Summary: Chapter II

Isabel explains to Pastor Weeks that she and Ruth were set free in Mary Finch’s will, a document in the possession of a lawyer named Cornell who has moved to Boston. She has read the will because Mary Finch had taught her to read. Robert Finch objects, claims Isabel and Ruth are now his property, and declares his intent to sell them at auction, which horrifies Isabel. She recalls the time when she was sold at a young age along with her parents. Her father fought like a lion to keep the family intact, and when her mother fainted, Isabel caught her baby sister Ruth as she cried.

Summary: Chapter III

Isabel and Ruth return to their house with Finch to retrieve shoes and blankets. When Finch is in the privy, Isabel grabs a handful of her Momma’s seeds and hides them in her pocket. By afternoon, they are in Newport in a busy tavern. Finch wants to auction them on the tavern steps, but Jenny, the matron, says no. Jenny takes Isabel and Ruth into the kitchen and feeds them, revealing that she knew their Momma, Dinah, who was kind to her when she was an indentured servant. Finch calls Isabel and Ruth back to the tavern, where they meet the Locktons, a couple who wants to buy them. After some conversation, Jenny offers to take them, but when the Locktons double their offer, she backs down, and Finch accepts the heavy coins.

Summary: Chapter IV

Isabel and Ruth spend two sickly days on a cargo ship, headed to New York. At night, Isabel ventures onto the deck and muses that ghosts cannot move over water, the reason why their ancestors couldn’t follow those who were stolen from Africa and why Momma can’t help her now.

Summary: Chapter V

The ship arrives at a busy New York dock. A man named Charles approaches Lockton and suggests that they may not be safe. Suddenly, a man named Bellingham questions the Locktons’ loyalty to the revolution in America. When Lockton insists that he is a merchant, not a Tory, Bellingham accuses him explicitly and orders his men to search the Locktons’ wooden chests. Madam refuses because her undergarments are inside. When Ruth giggles at this, Madam asks who laughed. When Isabel lies that it was her, not Ruth, Madam slaps her face hard, an act noticed by Bellingham’s enslaved boy in a red hat. Bellingham relinquishes, they move the uninspected chest to their carriage, and Lockton congratulates Madam on a job well done. When Madam wants Isabel to fetch water, Curzon, the boy in the red hat, offers to show Isabel the way.

Analysis: Chapter I–Chapter V

The first five chapters of Chains set the stage for the action to follow, introduce the five main characters, and establish the novel’s major conflicts and themes. Although Mary Finch is dead before the novel begins, she plays a large role in the protagonist Isabel’s life by teaching Isabel to read and by treating her and Ruth with some respect. According to Isabel, Mary left a will that frees Isabel and Ruth upon her death, a document that is never discovered in the novel. Isabel’s ability to read, however, is important at several points in the plot, sets her apart from most slaves of the era, and constitutes the first of many crimes Isabel commits.

Chapter I reveals some of the earlier family history as Isabel remembers it. Her family was sold at auction when Ruth was an infant and Isabel was a young child, but Poppa “fought like a lion when they came for him.” When they beat him into submission, Momma fainted, but she was sold with her two daughters. Momma died of smallpox the year before the novel begins, and Ruth is a simple five-year-old child who suffers from a seizure disorder, a terribly misunderstood condition at the time of the novel. Isabel misses her parents deeply, but she is reminded of their memories and their strengths many times.

The other characters in the novel soon reveal themselves as either sympathetic and kind or cruel and evil. Robert Finch, Mary’s nephew, is selfish and cruel. Jenny, the tavern owner’s wife, is kind and generous and offers the first of several kindnesses to Isabel and Ruth. The Locktons, Elihu and Madam, are both cruel, especially Madam, who will have the most interaction with Isabel and Ruth throughout the novel.

Chapter IV presents a surreal scene on a ship bound for New York, in which a character’s perceptions are affected by illness but truer in a deeper sense than more realistic scenes. While ill, Isabel has visions of her parents and of more distant ancestors who traveled from Africa to the Americas. This ship transports Isabel and Ruth from an idyllic Rhode Island farm to a chaotic, dangerous, and war-torn New York City. The voyage portends Isabel’s final journey in a rowboat in which she travels from danger to safety and possibly from slavery to freedom.

Chapter V introduces the Revolutionary War and weaves the characters into its tapestry. The Locktons are Tories, but they are also liars. When Madam protects the wooden crate by refusing to let the patriots inspect her undergarments, she reveals her own complicity in her husband’s corruption and loyalties to King George. Bellingham is introduced as a rule-following patriot, and his slave, Curzon, is generous and friendly toward Isabel. When Madam slaps Isabel across the face for giggling, even though it was Ruth who laughed, the action foreshadows the cruelty and violence to come between these two characters and establishes the main conflict in the novel, between tyrannical mistress and slave.

Next section Chapters VI–IX

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