The Guilt Of Orleana

            
            
             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 herself in a particular position with respect to the .
             guilt she is feeling. Although having not perpetrated the act, she is closely connected to .
             that perpetrator and perhaps even might have benefited from his crimes.
             Orleanna struggles to revive the ability to act out on her own, to oppose .
             .
             her husband's will. She even suffers through neglectful abuse, her husband's control and .
             daily duties. It is not until the death of her youngest daughter that Orleanna decides to .
             desert her husband and two of her daughters. She states "Anyone can see I should have, .
             long before- (Kingsolver 9). Orleanna tries to explain her guilt by adding "To resist .
             occupation whether you"re a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the .