46 pages • 1 hour read
Joan W. BlosA Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 16-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
These journal entries cover the period from September 6 to September 20, 1831. Catherine explains the meaning of the quilt to Asa, who wonders how it would help a sailor on the sea if the quilt was in Boston. They laugh, the first time they have done so since Cassie’s death.
Slowly, life returns to normal: Matty plays with her dolls, and kittens in the barn grow bigger. The family learns of the August 21 revolt of enslaved people in the South led by Nat Turner; many people were murdered, and Turner is in jail. Catherine thinks that it is strange that they can speak about these deaths without grief and wonders if grief joins all of humanity. She wonders, too, how people can refer to “Providence” (the care of God) when it so often deprives people of life, as happened in the Wiley Slide. The latest edition of The Liberator says that the rebels who revolted deserved no more criticism than did the Patriots when killing the British during the Revolutionary War. Ann bridles at this and refuses to have the newspaper in the house.
Talk about the revolt of enslaved people continues. Many people favor the establishment of a “new Negro separate nation” in Africa (120), to be called Liberia. Enslavers disagree, protesting that not only are they dependent upon the labor of enslaved people, but the people themselves are also not prepared for such a journey. Father favors the resettlement movement, while Uncle Jack believes that the Southerners know what is best for the enslaved people. Catherine makes up her mind that the man she helped was running from slavery.
Ann disciplines Matty for refusing to do a favor, telling Matty that she must learn to like doing what others want her to do.
Chapter 17 Summary
These journal entries range from September 21 to October 25, 1831. Sophy departs for Lowell, and her friends tearfully wave her off. Teacher Holt accepts a position at the boys’ academy in Exeter, and he marries Aunt Lucy. Catherine still refuses to wear the blue bonnet that Ann gave her. A mysterious packet arrives for Catherine, addressed with the same hand that once wrote in her lesson book. Inside are two pieces of lace and a message signed by “Curtis, in Canada”: “Sisters Bless you. Free now” (125). Catherine weeps when she realizes that one of the pieces of lace sent by the man whom she helped—Curtis—was meant for Cassie.
Winter school starts, and Cassie has a new shawl from Ann. Cassie dislikes the new teacher, as do the older boys. The stencillers return and paint likenesses of Ann and the girls. Uncle Jack considers moving to Ohio, which Sophy’s family plans to do. Catherine senses that he resents the fact that Ann now influences Father the way Uncle Jack once did. Meanwhile, Father gives a knife, which Catherine had hoped for, to Daniel to reward him for his help with the harvest.
At school, the older boys tease the new teacher. When he finally prepares to whip Joshua, all the boys pick up the man and toss him into the yard.
Chapter 18 Summary
Chapter 18 covers the entries from October 26, 1831, to March 8, 1832. Catherine’s parents are horrified by the events at school. They withdraw the girls, and Ann declares that she will teach them herself. Catherine learns that Aunt Lucy is pregnant. She finishes her quilt pieces, and Father praises her choice of pattern, asking, “Do we not, all of us, travel in danger or voyage uncharted seas?” (135). Catherine sees that he is referring both to her stranger, safe now in Canada, and to Cassie, who has also made a journey. She reflects that everyone is joined, wherever they may be. She wears her blue bonnet to church.
On December 19, Mrs. Shipman shares a letter from Aunt Lucy asking if Catherine can come to stay with Holt and Lucy after the baby is born, as Lucy has no friends to help her. Holt will teach Catherine in exchange for her services. Catherine remembers once wishing that she could stay at home forever, but now she will do whatever her father and stepmother decide. They want Catherine to accept Aunt Lucy’s offer.
On New Year’s Day, Catherine reflects on the Bible verse beginning, “To every thing there is a season,” concluding that the year 1831 has been “a lengthy gathering of days” in which the family lived, loved, were moved, and learned how to accept (140).
On March 8, Catherine is to leave at daybreak the next morning. She can’t sleep and thinks about how dear home is to her, wishing it and its inhabitants goodbye.
Epilogue Summary
The novel closes with a second letter written in 1899 from Catherine, now Catherine Hall Onesti, to her great-granddaughter and namesake. The younger Catherine has read the journal and asked some questions. Catherine Onesti tells her that she never heard from the self-liberated man after the letter from Canada. She relates what happened to the neighbors: Both Joshua and his sons fought in the Civil War, and all the others are gone now, too, except for herself and Willie Shipman. She confirms that the family never had Christmas or birthday presents and says that although she is going on 83, she is not ready to quit living, as she is curious about young Catherine and the new century. She asks her great-granddaughter to remember that life is like a pudding: It takes “both the salt and the sugar” to make a good one (143). In a postscript, she thanks young Catherine for telling her that the chair made by Father is still in the family.
Chapter 16-Epilogue Analysis
The thematic idea that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind comes into sharp focus in these chapters. The theme builds throughout the novel as Catherine finds common ground with the self-liberated man who feels the cold, the enslaved 17-year-old girl who experiences fear, and the peddler who shares a moment of humor with her. By the end, Catherine has internalized these life lessons and can articulate them, as when she thinks of those killed in Nat Turner’s rebellion: “Are we then with those strangers joined whose lives, names, faces are veiled from us yet whose griefs we share?” (119). Father, too, expresses this idea when he praises her quilt and asks if we aren’t all “wand’rers and strangers” who travel in danger (135). Catherine understands that he is referring to both her self-liberated man and Cassie, called to the “opposite shore,” or afterlife. Father, so close-minded about self-liberated people at the beginning of the story, has changed through a combination of Ann’s broad-mindedness and the profound impact of Cassie’s death on the community.
The Mariner’s Compass quilt pattern, showing the compass that will keep travelers safe, is a symbol of those two journeys. The symbolism of the quilt supports the novel’s argument that joy and sorrow unite humankind. Because of the quilt, Catherine is able to openly articulate the idea that all humanity is joined, whether “fair, dark, dear, or stranger” (135). She conveys this idea in simple terms, highlighting her character development having spent the novel attempting to figure out her views.
Having moved emotionally from the safety of her home sphere to this new, mature belief, Catherine is ready to journey into the world. Her understanding of The Nature of Obedience also comes into play. She realizes that obedience is defined by “trust, and not submission” (139). This final reflection on obedience shows her hard-won understanding that people live in relationship with others. It also reinforces the novel’s condemnation of slavery.
The novel explores both the beginning of the end of slavery and the difficulties that lie ahead. In the book’s Epilogue, which contains the older Catherine’s letter to her great-granddaughter, she describes the self-liberated man as “a real tho’ tiny part of what was happening every where then, and what was going to come” (143). She is alluding to the increasing divide between the northern and southern states on the question of slavery, which would ultimately lead to the Civil War.
The Bible verse Catherine thinks about on New Year’s Day in 1832 relates to the motif of the changing seasons. The past year has been a “gathering” of days: assorted moments of grief and of sorrow. As she said in the Prologue, accepting changes—like the ones she experienced in the year 1831—is what life is all about. She reiterates this in her second letter to her great-granddaughter as she compares life to a pudding that needs both sugar and salt.
