The Girls in the Stilt House

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of racism, gender discrimination, illness and death, and emotional abuse.

Nearly every female character in the novel demonstrates incredible resilience. Remarkably, each woman finds her own way to manage the trauma she undergoes in her life, from abusive husbands to systemic racism. Though their lives are not always happy or peaceful, they find ways to endure and maintain their dreams for a better life.

Sylvie manages by carefully choosing her battles and secretly plotting an escape for herself and Ada; Teensy displays resilience by focusing her thoughts on the things that bring her joy. When Ada returns to Virgil’s home, finding it in absolute squalor, “She was almost glad her mother was not alive to see this, to have to live with this, which she would have [….]. [H]er mother was well schooled in living with things. With enduring” (12). Ada realizes that her mother must have felt trapped, and this makes the revelation that “her mother had planned an escape for the two of them” (62) all the more surprising and uplifting to her. Sylvie may have acted like a mouse, may have feared snakes, and been deeply vulnerable, but she maintained a quiet strength, it seems, for her daughter.