A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32

“These be the thoughts of my heart: that I may remain here for ever and ever […] also that I may train myself to want to do what I am asked to do.”

A Gathering of Days is a bildungsroman, a novel that shows a young character’s journey toward maturation. Consistent with genre conventions, Catherine’s world is centered on her family and her closest friends as the story begins. She has no desire to leave home and simply wants to be obedient toward her neighbors. As she grows and changes in the course of the story, she will not only reconsider The Nature of Obedience but also embrace change. The story will end with her leaving the family farm.

“‘Turn him out and turn him in,’ is Father’s prompt reply.”

Father—Charles Hall—is speaking here of the need to turn in a runaway “bound boy,” that is, a young man who is serving a contractual period of indenture. He is a stickler for the letter of the law and disregards his brother’s argument that a man might have good reason to run. He makes this pronouncement with a rhetorical device of anaphora, repeating a word at the beginning of subsequent statements, as if he is giving a pompous speech. These words will haunt his daughter, Catherine, when a man running away from enslavement begs for her help in combatting the severe cold.

“PLEEZ MISS TAKE PITTY I AM COLD.”

Less than a month after Catherine hears her father’s stern judgment on runaways, the self-liberated man she has spotted in the woods takes her lesson book and writes this plea inside. The capital letters and incorrect spelling highlight the difference between Catherine and the man, particularly since he writes in the book that is the means of her comparatively good education, and yet she is more struck by what they have in common. The words set her off on her emotional journey of growth, and she will begin looking for common ground with others whose lives are very different from her own.

“The explosive sound set my heart to pounding—so certain was I the report was a rifle’s, and my phantom discovered.”

This quote is an example of the literary device called delayed decoding, which is a delay between a character having an impression of something and understanding what it is. Delayed decoding is designed to build suspense. Hearing a tree burst, Catherine imagines that it is the sound of a rifle shot in the direction of the fugitive. Her imagination is overactive because of her feelings of guilt.

“My mind was with the phantom. Indeed, it seemed a part of me travelled with him, across white fields, and toward what destination?”

Appropriately for a bildungsroman, there are several key journeys in the novel. Catherine often thinks of the man’s journey toward freedom. Her best friend, Cassie Shipman, dies and journeys from life to the afterlife. Catherine herself is on a figurative journey of growth that will become a literal one when she leaves the farm at the end of the novel.

“Uncle Jack calls the breaking out the closest a New-Hampshire Winter gets to the Fourth of July!”

The New Hampshire winters are cold and harsh, with snow that comes up to the windowsills and eventually reaches the top of the fenceposts. In the “breaking out,” teams of men and oxen join together to clear the snow from the road leading from their community to the nearest town. The event is a competitive and festive one, with people gathering in the taverns afterward to visit. It is typical of the rural farm community’s spirit of cooperation to turn what might have been hard work into a fun competition.

“Father favours re-settlement, which would be in Africa and a new-formed nation. Uncle Jack says that freeman means free; as free as any man.”

Only a handful of people still enslaved people in New Hampshire by 1830-1832, the time in which the novel is set. However, even in an abolitionist enclave like New Hampshire, people couldn’t decide on how the practice should end. Some, like Father, believed freed Africans or African Americans should settle a new African country, Liberia. Others, like Uncle Jack, believed that freed people should mingle freely in society. Still others, like the fiery publisher William Lloyd Garrison, believed that enslaved people should rise up and revolt.

“Would not a black girl know love and fear—love and honour her father and mother, and fear lest anything change?”

Having helped the fugitive, Catherine’s empathy is growing. The idea that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind is one of the novel’s major themes. Here, she wonders if an enslaved 17-year-old girl mentioned in a “for sale” ad would feel the same emotions as Catherine does: love, fear, and honor.

“You’ve been a woman while yet a child…Well, we shall see if Time or contrivance restore sweet youth to you.”

Both Catherine and her father reflect at various times on the fact that she took her mother’s place in the household at a very young age. She is only 13 as the novel begins, and her mother has been dead for four years. In Chapter 4, she wonders if, in selecting her to plead for help, the fugitive knows that she has been “installed in her mother’s place” (29). Here, Father’s words subtly foreshadow the arrival of his new wife, Ann, who will indeed take over as the mother in the household and give Catherine back some measure of her childhood.

“Joy and sorrow, says our father, each make its own season.”

The changing seasons are a motif supporting the idea that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind and that the only constant in life is constant change through the experience of both these emotions. Here, Charles overtly links the emotions to the seasons, which must regularly change and replace each other.

“Such a curious fellow, and likeable in his candor. I hope when he comes by again, he’ll not neglect to call.”

Catherine pronounces the Jewish peddler, the first Jewish person she has ever met, to be likeable after they share a joke about the cost of the scissors he is selling. This is another example of her journey toward understanding that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind. Often in the novel, the emotion that makes her feel connected to others is sorrow, as when she takes pity on the fugitive and feels empathy toward the enslaved 17-year-old girl in the “for sale” ad. In this case, however, it is joy that makes her feel one with the peddler.

“I will not call her mother.”

Catherine writes these angry words in her journal on her father’s wedding day to Ann, May 22, 1831. She has been subtly protesting the extravagance that her father has shown toward the upcoming wedding; here, in her private journal, she can express her anger at being displaced as the mother figure in the household. Catherine will not, in fact, ever have to call Ann “Mother,” as her stepbrother will come up with a suitable nickname for her, “Mammann.” However, a difficult month will pass before Catherine can accept Ann’s presence in her home.

“Besides, I am here now to teach you.”

These words of Ann’s begin Catherine’s new relationship with her stepmother, whose steadfast goodness and support of Catherine finally touch her heart. The milestone marks the second turning point in this bildungsroman, which is structured around three major trials in the main character’s life.

“For good times and ill each have their place; and he who doubts or questions either will only reveal how poor is his trust, how flawed his obedience.”

Ann makes this pronouncement after the engagement of Teacher Holt and Aunt Lucy is announced. She makes it from a place of complacency; the Halls are busy with the harvest, and all the family members are at peace with one another. However, Cassie will soon die, shaking Ann’s faith.

“We stood quite close for the longest time, observing every shaded feather.”

At this point in the novel, four couples have paired off: Daniel and Cassie, Asa and Sophy, Father and Ann, and Teacher Holt and Aunt Lucy. Joshua expressed his interest in Catherine when he gave her forget-me-nots at the end of winter school. In this scene, he walks through the woods with Catherine. Catherine, however, has no eyes for Joshua. Rather, she looks intently at a beautiful oriole, wishing she could draw it. The author makes it clear that while romance may be a component of some classic novels in the bildungsroman genre, such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), it is not a part of Catherine’s emotional journey.

“You know that you have to fight Death, Charles…I have done so, and did not you?”

Just a few entries before, Ann has preached acceptance of joy and sorrow to Catherine. Now, however, she expresses her belief to her husband that Cassie isn’t receiving the best possible medical care, as she would have been able to do in Boston. The idea that acceptance is a part of New England life is a bone of contention between the husband and wife, highlighting the theme of Acceptance of Hardship Versus Action.

“Cassie is dead. It happened while she slept. I—Saturday. August the 20th. 1831.”

Blos finds ways to convey Catherine’s state of mind besides her literal words. At times, the character crosses out words in her journal, as she does to change the day of the week in an earlier entry to show that one day is much like another. Here, Blos shows Catherine’s deep despair at the death of her friend by having her unable to finish writing a sentence.

“Are we then with those strangers joined whose lives, names, faces are veiled from us yet whose griefs we share?”

Catherine has just learned about the deaths of many people, including women and children, in a revolt of enslaved people led by Nat Turner. Her particular talent for empathizing with others is nearly fully developed at this point. She understands that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind, the book’s major thematic point.

“Now does the present re-pay the past and flow on towards the future.”

Catherine can remember when her father promised his childhood Barlow knife to her baby brother, who died in infancy. She had hoped that her father would give the knife to her, but he has given it to Daniel, his stepson, to reward him for his help with the harvest. She accepts the loss philosophically, knowing that a boy is more valuable on a farm than a girl simply because he can do more heavy work. Blos does not present a character who fights gender equality. Rather, her concern is to show a character who learns lessons about what it means to be human.

“Are we not, all of us, wand’rers and strangers; and do we not, all of us, travel in danger or voyage uncharted seas?”

Earlier in the novel, Charles’s views were inflexible toward everything from the need to turn in a runaway to the necessity of celebrating the Fourth of July with dangerous fireworks. However, Cassie’s death touches all the older members of the Hall family. Charles can now understand his daughter’s great sympathy for the two “travelers” who have touched her life: the self-liberated man, now safe in Canada, and Cassie, who has “crossed the shore” in death.

“I do now believe we all are joined, where ever we are, what ever we do—and be we quick, or be we dead; fair, dark, dear, or stranger.”

Catherine wonders if it is blasphemy to join the self-liberated man and Cassie in the same thought. She concludes, however, by articulating the novel’s major thematic idea: Because everyone experiences both joy and sorrow, everyone is joined. She extends this point to include both the “quick,” or the living, and the dead.

“It now appears to me that trust, and not submission, defines obedience.”

Catherine struggles to understand The Nature of Obedience throughout the novel but comes to understand that people live in relationship with others. This passage marks a key epiphany: Her father’s word is not the rule. Obedience proceeds from internal, not external, forces, and one can only be obedient to those who are trustworthy.

“This year, more than others, has been a lengthy gathering of days wherein we lived, we loved, were moved; learned how to accept.”

The book takes its title from this sentence, which expresses the idea that everyone’s life is a “gathering” of days that bring both joy and sorrow. In events that mingled great joy and deep grief, the key year 1831 has propelled Catherine from childhood to young adulthood and has also brought great change to her family and neighbors.