A major premise of Morrison's text is that benevolent masters often did more harm than good. As demonstrated by Mr. Garner's relationship with his slaves, Sweet Home—the embodiment of Stephen Foster's sentimental song "My Old Kentucky Home"—shielded slaves from the harsh world beyond that property. By playing God and creating an artificial haven, Garner ill-prepared his slaves for the shock of a new master, one disinterested in humanitarianism and concerned primarily with profit.
Another revelation from this and other chapters is that the Garners degraded their slaves by thinking of them as children. To Lillian Garner, the notion of a formal wedding for Sethe brought a patronizing upturn of the lips. To Mr. Garner, Baby Suggs's slave name, her only tie with her first mate in a string of eight, was undignified and also inappropriate for Halle, who was fathered by another slave. Garner devalued Baby Suggs’s experiences as wife and mother by claiming that Jenny Whitlow was a more fitting name for a "freed Negro." Baby Suggs, who kept her opinions to herself, realized that the only way she could locate her displaced family was to maintain the name by which they knew her. Wherever they were, they would not recognize her if she were called by a white woman's name like Jenny Whitlow.
