Freedom and Agency
What This Theme Explores
In Geraldine Brooks’s Horse, Freedom and Agency probes how self-determination is both sought and thwarted across eras, institutions, and relationships. The novel contrasts the legal nonpersonhood of enslaved people like Jarret Lewis with the constrained autonomy of a modern Black scholar like Theo, revealing how law alone cannot confer genuine freedom. Brooks asks what forms of power remain when formal rights are denied, and what limitations persist even when those rights are granted. The book ultimately locates agency in hard-won expertise, moral risk-taking, and the intricate bonds—especially between human and animal—that allow individuals to act meaningfully within oppressive systems.
How It Develops
In the 1850s–1870s storyline, agency appears first as a narrow channel within absolute bondage. Jarret’s legal status as property forecloses ordinary choice, but his mastery with horses—especially Lexington—creates a “second track” of power. When his father, Harry Lewis, a free Black man, briefly gains ownership of the colt, the family experiences a rare alignment of skill, recognition, and economic leverage. Racist racing bylaws obliterate that foothold, forcing a sale and exposing how institutions can recode Black achievement into white gain. Jarret’s flight is a refusal of the script assigned to him, yet even new circumstances, such as service under Richard Ten Broeck, bind him to another regime; paradoxically, his indispensability enlarges his practical autonomy. The arc culminates with legal and financial freedom in Canada—a victory that certifies, rather than initiates, the autonomy Jarret has been forging all along.
The 1950s chapter follows Martha Jackson, whose legal freedom and wealth do not spare her the constraints of gendered gatekeeping. In a male-dominated art world, she must choose, repeatedly, to disregard convention and endure reputational costs to define her own taste and career. Her acquisition of the Lexington painting—an outlier in her collection—becomes an assertion of curatorial agency, a decision to trust her eye over the market’s expectations.
By 2019, the novel shows how formal rights do not shield Black lives from suspicion and lethal misinterpretation. Theo’s education and mobility suggest unbounded choice, yet daily “defensive” habits—how to dress, where to run, whom to approach—betray a constant calculus of threat. The climactic police violence transforms his altruistic decision into a fatal misreading, revealing how, under systemic racism, even the most ordinary acts of care can be stripped of intention and turned against the actor.
Key Examples
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The Stripping of Ownership: After Lexington’s first major win, Captain Willa Viley invokes the Kentucky Association’s bylaw—“No negro or mulatto, to make nomination in any stake, to be run over this course”—to force a sale, nullifying Jarret and Harry’s victory. In the Chapter 16-20 Summary, Brooks shows how institutional rules can overwrite merit, converting Black skill into white profit. The moment crystallizes how legalistic structures are engineered to prevent Black agency from converting into durable power.
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Mary Barr’s Constrained World: Mary Barr Clay recognizes the continuity between marital subordination and chattel slavery, noting, “My father calls himself an emancipator, but he makes my mother the most complete slave I know.” As seen in the Chapter 21-25 Summary, her forging of a pass for Jarret asserts moral agency against both patriarchy and slavery. The act reframes freedom as the courage to defy unjust laws, even when one benefits from them.
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Jarret’s Refusal to Enlist: When the painter Thomas J. Scott urges Jarret to join the Union Army to earn freedom, Jarret replies that he already commands respect and wages at Woodburn—calling a white officer “just another massa.” In the Chapter 46-50 Summary, Jarret redefines freedom as lived authority, not merely a status bestowed by institutions. Brooks suggests that true agency arises from recognized competence and reciprocal reliance, not from formal enlistment into another hierarchy.
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Theo’s Death: The police report claims the officer “interrupted an apparent assault,” saying Theo “appeared to raise a weapon,” erasing his intention to help. The official narrative replaces his choice with a stereotype, a fatal misreading that nullifies his personhood. His friend Daniel’s comment to Jess—“He just didn’t know how he needed to be if he was going to live in this country”—underscores how survival demands a constraining performance that contradicts freedom.
Character Connections
Jarret Lewis: Jarret’s trajectory exemplifies agency wrested from constraint. Beginning as property, he constructs authority through irrefutable expertise and a singular bond with Lexington. When legal freedom finally arrives, it ratifies the autonomy he has long practiced—agency built not on permission but on mastery and mutual dependence.
Harry Lewis: As a formerly enslaved, now free man, Harry occupies the narrowest ledge of freedom—enough to earn status and save for ownership, not enough to secure it against racist policy. His inability to hold the horse in his name reveals freedom’s precarity: without institutional recognition, personal agency remains vulnerable to confiscation.
Theo: Theo’s cosmopolitan life suggests the promise of modern liberty, yet his movements are constantly surveilled by racial scripts that pre-assign his intentions. His killing exposes a devastating truth: in a society that presumes Black danger, agency can be revoked in a heartbeat, and even benevolence is read as threat.
Mary Barr Clay: Mary Barr’s insight into domestic patriarchy and her daring interventions position her as a bridge between abolitionist and suffragist struggles. Her intellectual independence and moral risk-taking show how women’s agency often begins in private rebellion and grows into public advocacy.
Symbolic Elements
The Racetrack: A theater of supposed meritocracy that stages excellence while entrenching exclusion. Its bylaws perform freedom for owners and spectators even as they structurally deny it to Black horsemen, converting labor and skill into spectacle without conferring power.
Lexington’s Blindness: When Lexington goes blind, the end of racing forcibly redirects his life—and deepens his partnership with Jarret. Blindness becomes a paradoxical liberation, relocating value from speed and victory to trust, attunement, and nonverbal collaboration, where agency is shared rather than imposed.
Money: Currency operates as a visible measure of agency—what can be bought, secured, and protected—and a tool for domination. Harry’s savings purchase freedom; Ten Broeck’s capital acquires people and horses; purses that might deliver autonomy are diverted by racist rules, proving that money amplifies agency only when institutions permit it.
The North and Canada: Geography functions as moral and legal thresholds. The Ohio River marks a dangerous passage from enslavement to precarious safety, while Canada signifies a space where lawful personhood aligns with economic possibility—a landscape where autonomy can be exercised without constant fear of re-enslavement.
Contemporary Relevance
The theme resonates in ongoing debates about policing, mobility, and the unequal presumption of innocence. Theo’s death echoes real-world cases that animate the Black Lives Matter movement, insisting that legal rights do not guarantee the freedom to move, help, or simply exist without suspicion. By pairing Jarret’s nineteenth-century ascent with Theo’s twenty-first-century erasure, Brooks rejects narratives of linear progress and challenges readers to consider how institutional design continues to shape, shrink, or sanction agency. The novel urges a vision of freedom that dismantles systems of misrecognition, not just the chains that once made subjugation overt.
Essential Quote
“He just didn’t know how he needed to be if he was going to live in this country.”
This line distills the theme’s bleak insight: survival for Black Americans often requires self-limiting performances that contradict genuine freedom. It reframes “agency” as a defensive posture under surveillance—choices made to avoid punishment rather than to pursue possibility—thereby exposing how far the distance remains between legal liberty and lived autonomy.