54 pages • 1 hour read
Jayne Anne PhillipsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Dearbhla watches Papa and ConaLee leave with the chap, ConaLee’s younger brother. Dearbhla came home one day two years prior and found Papa at Eliza’s house, acting like he owned it. Dearbhla sensed the “madness” of the man, who told her to take ConaLee. Eliza told Dearbhla that Papa took the guns and that she knew him from during the war. Dearbhla found Eliza tied to her chicken coop one day, and she realized that Eliza did not have the power to free herself from Papa. Dearbhla helped deliver the chap, and she taught ConaLee how to care for the child.
Dearbhla goes in the see Eliza while Papa is gone and tries to get Eliza to speak. Eliza does not talk to remove some of Papa’s enjoyment from torturing her. Sometimes Dearbhla can see Papa playing with Eliza like a doll. After a year, Eliza is pregnant again, and ConaLee delivers and cares for the twins, too. Dearbhla goes to town and trades with a storekeeper, giving him herbs for provisions. The storekeeper wants to send his wife to an asylum, and Dearbhla gives him a potion to make her sleep in exchange for extra supplies for ConaLee.
Later, Dearbhla returns to find that the storekeeper killed his wife with too much potion. Dearbhla convinces him to give Papa his wife’s clothes and mention the asylum. Per Dearbhla’s plan, Papa packs up Eliza’s house, leaving the children with neighboring widows. Dearbhla is confident that Papa will leave Eliza and ConaLee at the asylum, where they will be safe.
A nurse brings ConaLee and Eliza to Dr. Story’s office. Dr. Story asks ConaLee about Eliza’s family history. ConaLee says that she has worked for “Miss Janet” for two years and that she has not spoken much in that time. ConaLee says that her own family died in the war and that the family for whom she worked left town after a fire burned down Miss Janet’s home. Dr. Story seems to know that ConaLee is lying. He asks Eliza if she wants ConaLee to be her personal attendant, and Eliza responds, “Yes.” ConaLee does not recognize Eliza’s voice, remembering playful shouting and laughing before Papa came.
Dr. Story offers ConaLee room and board to become Eliza’s attendant on a trial basis. The asylum uses “moral treatment,” focusing on community and activity. ConaLee tells him about her ability to read and Eliza’s love of books. Dr. Story calls in Mrs. Bowman, and ConaLee waits outside the office with Eliza. Mrs. Bowman does not want to employ ConaLee, and she is upset that O’Shea admitted them. Dr. Story says that Weston was torn by the war, fixed in Confederate territory but occupied by the Union. O’Shea made his judgment, and Dr. Story trusts him.
Mrs. Bowman explains ConaLee’s responsibilities as a nurse. ConaLee will live with Eliza, wear a uniform, and shadow Nurse Blevins to learn the asylum regimen. ConaLee almost cries with relief, realizing that she and Eliza will stay.
ConaLee dries Eliza’s breastmilk, and she puts on her new nurse’s uniform. Eliza calls her ConaLee, and she reminds Eliza to call her Nurse Eliza Connolly. Nurse Blevins introduces herself as Eira and Mrs. Kasinski as Ruth. Mrs. Kasinski sings and hums; she thinks that she is Abraham Lincoln’s wife, mourning his assassination. Eliza likes Ruth, and the four women take a walk. Eira tells ConaLee not to entertain the patients’ delusions, and she recommends always talking about the present.
Ruth links arms with Eliza. Eira and ConaLee discuss the different people and functions of the hospital. Dr. Story and Mrs. Bowman came from Pennsylvania to run the Weston asylum. The group passes the grave digger, and Eira notes that the graves are only marked with numbers, saving families the embarrassment of having their name in the asylum graveyard. Eliza runs to an orchard, and Eira chases her. Eliza stops in a meadow, allowing ConaLee, Eira, and Ruth to catch up. Eira asks if Eliza wants to visit the orchard, and Eliza says, “Yes.” They see two stags fighting to death, which almost makes ConaLee pass out. Eira is disturbed, but she wants to alert Mrs. Hexum to harvest the venison. Ruth stops at the grave diggers’ ditch to lament Lincoln’s death, and Eliza asks her about him. Ruth stops singing to respond.
ConaLee asks Eira about Weed, who wears a woman’s jacket. Eira explains that Mrs. Hexum takes care of children in the basement and that the children play in an enclosure outside. Before Dr. Story arrived, there were many instances of patients arriving with children or becoming pregnant.
The women eat lunch in the dining room. Eliza eats and converses with other patients. Eira tells ConaLee about her in-laws’ property, and ConaLee gets distracted by the sun in the window. She remembers the mirror Papa gave her was her own mirror. Eliza gave her the mirror as a child, and she remembers being forced into the hatch. Everything goes dark, and ConaLee snaps back to Eira offering her hat pins.
Days after ConaLee and Eliza left with Papa, Dearbhla sees Papa’s horse and wagon climbing the ridge. She assumes that Papa left the horse in favor of lighter transport and it came home. Dearbhla remembers the horse at Eliza’s after Dearbhla returned from Alexandria. She remembers Papa saying that he recognized the horse when he returned in 1872. Dearbhla laments how her adoptive son was meant to have all the land, animals, and sustenance of the ridge, but the Union took his life and hardly won the war.
ConaLee walks with Eliza after Eliza meets with Dr. Story. Eliza says that she and Dr. Story read Shakespeare’s sonnets, and she praises Dr. Story’s kindness. ConaLee is thrilled. Eliza implies that Ruth is pretending to be unwell, like Eliza did with Papa. Playing battledore, Eliza shows her athletic skill, but Ruth falls. Mrs. Hexum comes to bandage Ruth’s foot, and Weed circles her. Mrs. Hexum sees ConaLee, winks, and tells her to go inside with Eliza. The wink reminds ConaLee of Dearbhla’s conjuring, though Dearbhla does not use the word “conjure.”
ConaLee and Eliza enter to find a commotion. Papa, dressed in fine clothes, is fighting a series of male orderlies and a physician. O’Shea comes out, larger than the other men, and restrains Papa. Eliza pulls Papa back when he tries to bite O’Shea, but O’Shea’s shirt is ripped. The orderlies force Papa into a crib, and O’Shea pushes Eliza away as she touches the scars on his chest. Back in their room, ConaLee worries that Papa will hurt them, but Eliza is elated, saying that they are safe.
Weed digs himself a hole in the horse barn and lies down in the cool dirt. Weed is Mrs. Hexum’s pet, and he rides the small train in the basement to each of the wards’ dumbwaiters. Weed likes watching the gentlemen, but Hexum tells him to avoid the men. Hexum brings Weed whenever she needs to resolve a conflict, such as bandaging Ruth’s ankle. Weed knows that Eira pricks Ruth with a hatpin to stop her from singing. Weed takes Ruth’s sock to play with, and he often brings trinkets to Hexum.
Hexum calls Weed and brings him to O’Shea. O’Shea lets Weed in, and Weed sets up a checkerboard. O’Shea shows Weed his scars, explaining how he does not remember being branded. Weed puts ointment on O’Shea’s back, and they play checkers. Weed only speaks with O’Shea, and he runs off when the bell rings for dinner service. Hexum thinks that the asylum children should grow up to work in the asylum since they cannot get jobs elsewhere.
December is unusually warm, and ConaLee walks with Eliza. ConaLee is a nurse and tends to other patients during Eliza’s activities. Ruth has limited privileges and misses Eliza. ConaLee is afraid of Papa, though he is restrained with no privileges. Eliza says that Papa is locked up and they are protected. Eliza spends many evenings with Dr. Story, and nurses think that he is courting Eliza. Eliza invites ConaLee to join her and Dr. Story for a carriage ride. ConaLee asks about Dearbhla and Eliza’s husband, but Eliza avoids her. ConaLee sees Weed in a meadow by a fence separating the men’s and women’s areas. ConaLee asks if Weed can tell the future with his blind eye, and Weed gives ConaLee a robin’s egg.
Eliza and ConaLee see the male patients racing by speedwalking, and ConaLee laughs. Eliza stares at O’Shea, who is watching the race. She gives ConaLee some rouge to wear for the carriage ride. ConaLee uses the nurses’ lavatory while the other nurses are out, changing her clothes and putting on the makeup. ConaLee feels like she is aging fast, while Eliza seems to be getting younger. She remembers the robin’s egg and wraps it in hair from her brush to keep in a box.
Weed hides in a tree outside Mrs. Hexum’s room to watch the people around the asylum. Weed saw Papa arrive and alerted Hexum. Weed watched the orderlies bind Papa in a crib.
On Sundays, townspeople visit, and Weed watches them converse with the patients. Hexum tells Weed that the townspeople are as problematic as the patients, especially the men. Weed looks around Hexum’s room, finding trinkets. Hexum does not always agree with Dr. Story’s methods. The other workers avoid Weed, thinking his blind eye is magic. Weed thinks that Hexum can use magic. Weed plays with a magnifying glass, which Hexum said could light paper on fire. The other children play with bubbles.
Part 3 expands on Phillips’s use of magic in the novel, hinting at Dearbhla and Hexum’s abilities to use “conjuring.” Dearbhla claims, “She did not conjure, only saw, knew, took the pulse of person or place” (130), and the first half of Part 3 explains the difference between “conjuring” and the more intuitive “magic” both Dearbhla and Hexum employ. Dearbhla’s magic is an emotional intelligence, grounded in observing others and predicting their behavior. With the storekeeper, Dearbhla pieces together how his desire to send his wife to the asylum might be transferred to Papa through word of mouth and gifts. There is an element of magic to Dearbhla’s behavior, though, as she senses O’Shea in Alexandria, blurring the line between intelligence and spirituality.
Hexum, like Dearbhla, uses her natural strengths to protect herself and influence others. Weed’s perch in the tree and Hexum’s wink to ConaLee imply that Hexum saw Papa drop off ConaLee and Eliza. Hexum sends ConaLee and Eliza inside while Papa is raging because she knows that ConaLee and Eliza will recognize Papa. ConaLee observes, “Hexum has her hand in us, in the food she made or ordered made, in her kitchen that drew unseen lines to garden, dairy, orchard, field, each the spoke of a wheel she turned” (183). The magic Hexum uses is knowledge and observation, keeping track of people’s movements and actions across the asylum, and then manipulating those people to achieve a desired outcome. The mystery with Hexum is what outcome she desires for ConaLee and Eliza, as it is possible that she also knows about Eliza and O’Shea’s connection.
Furthering the exploration of Trauma and Its Long-Term Effects, Eliza shows improvement at the asylum, and she even helps other patients improve as well. A critical scene in Eliza’s recovery occurs when she sprints into the orchard. Eira is displeased with Eliza’s actions, but Eliza’s freedom at the asylum is an important step in recovering from the trauma she faced with Papa. Living with Papa, Dearbhla finds Eliza tied to the chicken coop. Eliza explains, “To keep me here, by the coop, till her returns” (132), but Dearbhla adds, “It doesn’t tie you here. And you afraid to cut it yourself” (132). The rope is representative of Papa’s control over Eliza, which literally binds her to the ridge. At the asylum, though Eliza is technically restricted to the asylum grounds, she is not bound to Papa or controlled by anyone. When Eliza responds with “Yes” to exploring the orchard, she is effectively declaring her own freedom.
Papa’s return foreshadows the possibility that Papa will infringe on Eliza’s freedom, though only ConaLee worries about it. Two parallel scenes serve to enhance this foreshadowing, as ConaLee almost faints at the sight of two stags fighting in the orchard and Papa and O’Shea engage in a direct conflict. Observing the stags, ConaLee narrates, “Struggling, they cracked thick branches into fragments, white slather dripping from their jaws” (167). When ConaLee sees Papa in the asylum, she makes a similar observation, saying, “He foamed and slathered from his mouth like a rabid creature and seemed not to know us” (185). In the conflict with O’Shea, Eliza must hold Papa back to stop him from biting O’Shea, adding to the parallel of the scenes, in which two masculine creatures vie for control and dominance. Though O’Shea and Papa’s conflict is brief, the connection with the stags foreshadows one or both of their deaths.
Weed’s character develops further in this section, presenting the idea of an unconventional family in The Importance of Family. Hexum’s desire for the children in the asylum to grow up and get jobs within the asylum conveys a family unit of its own, as Hexum cares for the children like a mother. However, Weed’s family is larger than just Hexum, as he spends his time with O’Shea at night and with Hexum during the day. Regarding O’Shea’s scars, O’Shea explains to Weed, “You’re Weed […] not James, no more than I’m a whole man. You want to know how they did it, or why, Weed? That’s why you need to talk. You need to say words” (197). Weed speaks with O’Shea, and O’Shea knows that communicating is a fundamental part of developing one’s identity and connections with others. Even as O’Shea says that he is not “a whole man,” he knows that talking, even with a child like Weed, helps repair injuries to one’s identity, just as it can help Weed discover who he is.
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