Orleanna Price

Orleanna Price is a character in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. In the novel, the dynamic between her and her husband, Nathan Price, is one of complete domination. Nathan is controlling, and even scary.
"'Orleanna, shut up!' he yelled, grabbing her arm hard and jerking the plate out of her hand. He raised it up over her head and slammed it down hard on the table, cracking it right in two. The smaller half flipped upside down as it broke, and lay there dribbling black plantain juice like blood onto the tablecloth." p134


Why did Orleanna marry such a man?

She should have known better. She should have seen what her daughters walk on eggshells to avoid. As Rachel knows on page 133:
"Then Father's whole face changed and I knew he was going to use the special way of talking he frequently perpetuates on his family members, dogs that have peed in the house, and morons, with his words saying one thing that's fairly nice and his tone of voice saying another thing that is not."

However, the last sentence implicates slightly more. His words are nice while his tone is not. Is it possible Orleanna could have fallen in love with a different man?

It's a shame that some people believe every poor situation one encounters is directly related to a decision they have made. While I was reading, I perceived Orleanna as a human with weak character. She should have known not to marry him.
It is later that her decision to marry Nathan was revealed...if you could call it a decision. It was sudden. She was young and she didn't understand what was going on. She just barely picked up she was being courted.

Was she weak to not stop the marriage? To just 'go along with it' and agree to spend her life with him in the best of times and the worst of times? Maybe. But there's something to be said to grant Orleanna some benefit of the doubt.
Someone named Fnord wrote in this forum about possible reasons women choose to be with an abusive husband. There are the classic psychological reasons like 'she doesn't love herself' or 'her daddy was a bad bad man and that's all she knows.' Despite that some of these may be true, I don't see much of a discussion of 'she didn't know that version of him.'

There's so much we cannot possibly understand about abused women. Making an attempt is good because that's the only way we can help, but we can't make judgments and decide for them the psychological explanation in their past that made them fall in love with the wrong man. They've had too many things decided for them already.

Orleanna seems to deny she meets the points Fnord discusses.
"My downfall was not predicted. I didn't grow up looking for ravishment or rescue, either one. My childhood was a happy one in its own bedraggled way. My mother died when I was quite young, and certainly a motherless girl will come up wanting in some respects, but in my opinion she has a freedom unbeknown to other daughters. For every womanly fact of life she doesn't get told, a star of possibility still winks for her on the horizon." p192
Her perception of herself is that she would have more freedom because she would be able to avoid the expectations of a housewife.

Why does it matter why Orleanna married Nathan?
Because it could happen to you. Women who don't have 'scarred' or 'troubled' childhoods may assume that they have nothing to worry about. It is my fear that some of these women also believe it's their fault for not knowing before hand.
Orleanna is not to blame because Nathan stripped away her free will.

Everyone has a right to safe - physically and mentally. Everyone has a right to be happy.