Character Analysis
Boo! There are a couple of ghostly characters haunting this novel, and Deborah is one of them. She's long dead before the night in 1935 when it all goes down. But she is alive and well in the memories of Florence and Gabriel, and even John and Elizabeth know and wonder about her. So let's analyze her up.
Deborah is first introduced in the novel as a girl in big trouble. She's Gabriel and Florence's neighbor, "sixteen, three years older than Florence," and "had been taken away into the fields the night before by many white men, where they did things to her to make her cry and bleed" (2.1.15). This traumatic gang rape marks Deborah for life. She never gets over the shame, sorrow, and pain of that night.
It's not just an inner trauma, either. The entire community is unable to forget Deborah's victimization: "In their eyes lived perpetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she had been taken in the fields. That night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman" (2.1.25). Deborah is reduced to sex, but in a strange, contradictory way she is also taken out of the sexual equation. Because of her rape, she is no longer part of traditional society. Ugh. #1 takeaway from Go Tell It On The Mountain: traditional society sucks.
After even the preachers make fun of Deborah, with rude comments about her past, Gabriel decides to take her as a wife. It's almost like a mission of mercy for him:
For the first time since he had known her he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, thinking what untender touch these shoulders had once known, and how she would be raised now in honor. (2.2.98)
Everything about the way people relate to Deborah goes back to that night. What a drag.
Perhaps as a result of her early trauma, Deborah is a strong, faithful, silent woman, but also very sickly. She knows about Gabriel's infidelity and his son, Royal, but never says a word about it until she's on her deathbed. It's the first time she ever talks about her rape or the betrayal, perhaps because she's so close to death that it doesn't matter:
"[…] Look like I couldn't nohow forget… how they done me way back there when I weren't nothing but a girl." She paused and looked away. "But, Gabriel, if you'd said something even when that poor girl was buried, if you'd wanted to own that poor boy, I wouldn't nohow of cared what folks said, or where we might have had to go, or nothing. I'd have raised him like my own, I swear to my God I would have—and he might be living now." (2.2.367)
It's kind of strange, this selfless promise of Deborah, after the fact. She reminds Gabriel of her rape, letting him know why she could never be his wife in a sexual sense, really letting go and enjoying sex with him. But she also says that she would have adopted Royal (like he later adopts John) and raised up a family. But it's too late.
The speech is more to punish Gabriel for his dishonesty than anything else. After her death, Deborah just kind of haunts the memories of Gabriel, Florence, and even Gabriel's new family, who never knew her. She's like a symbol of the past and of Gabriel's sins.