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Bartholomew
Eliza is John’s and Mary’s only living daughter. She the tutors sister and has three other brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmond. She shares a name with her parents’ firstborn daughter, who died in infancy. Eliza grows up close to the tutor and their sister Anne, and she continues to grieve after Anne dies of the plague at age eight. She welcomes Agnes into the home as a new sister when she marries the tutor. Eliza can read and write thanks to the tutor’s lessons, and she often helps Agnes communicate with her husband while he is away in London. Eventually, she marries a milliner and moves into the apartment which Agnes’s family used to occupy.
Eliza Quotes in Hamnet
The Hamnet quotes below are all either spoken by Eliza or refer to Eliza . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
“It’s a kestrel, not a hawk,” he says, in a rush. “She trained it herself. A priest taught her. She has a gauntlet and the bird takes off, like an arrow, up through the trees. You have never seen anything like it. It is so different when it flies—it is almost, you might think, two creatures. One on the ground and another in the air. When she calls, it returns to her, circling in these great wheels in the sky, and it lands with such force upon the glove, such determination.”
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Chapter 6
Quotes
Eliza must, Mary has said, share her bed with Agnes until such time as the wedding can be arranged. Her mother told her with tight, rigid lips, not meeting Eliza’s eye, flapping out an extra blanket over the bed. Eliza had looked down at the half of the pallet nearest the window, which has remained empty since her sister Anne died. She had glanced up to see that her mother was doing the same and she wanted to say, Do you think of her, do you still catch yourself listening for her footsteps, for her voice, for the sound of her breathing at night, because I do, all the time, I still think that one day I might wake and she will be there, next to me, again; there will have been some wrinkle or pleat in time and we will be back where we were, when she was living and breathing.
Chapter 16
Quotes
Agnes’s concept of death has, for a long time, taken the form of a single room, lit from within, perhaps in the middle of an expanse of moorland. The living inhabit the room; the dead mill about outside it, pressing their palms and faces and fingertips to the window, desperate to get back, to reach their people. Some inside the room can hear and see those outside; some can speak through the walls; most cannot.
The idea that this tiny child might have to live out there, on the cold and misted moor, without her, is unthinkable. She will not let her pass over.
Get the entire Hamnet LitChart as a printable PDF.
Eliza Quotes in Hamnet
The Hamnet quotes below are all either spoken by Eliza or refer to Eliza . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
“It’s a kestrel, not a hawk,” he says, in a rush. “She trained it herself. A priest taught her. She has a gauntlet and the bird takes off, like an arrow, up through the trees. You have never seen anything like it. It is so different when it flies—it is almost, you might think, two creatures. One on the ground and another in the air. When she calls, it returns to her, circling in these great wheels in the sky, and it lands with such force upon the glove, such determination.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6
Quotes
Eliza must, Mary has said, share her bed with Agnes until such time as the wedding can be arranged. Her mother told her with tight, rigid lips, not meeting Eliza’s eye, flapping out an extra blanket over the bed. Eliza had looked down at the half of the pallet nearest the window, which has remained empty since her sister Anne died. She had glanced up to see that her mother was doing the same and she wanted to say, Do you think of her, do you still catch yourself listening for her footsteps, for her voice, for the sound of her breathing at night, because I do, all the time, I still think that one day I might wake and she will be there, next to me, again; there will have been some wrinkle or pleat in time and we will be back where we were, when she was living and breathing.
Chapter 16
Quotes
Agnes’s concept of death has, for a long time, taken the form of a single room, lit from within, perhaps in the middle of an expanse of moorland. The living inhabit the room; the dead mill about outside it, pressing their palms and faces and fingertips to the window, desperate to get back, to reach their people. Some inside the room can hear and see those outside; some can speak through the walls; most cannot.
The idea that this tiny child might have to live out there, on the cold and misted moor, without her, is unthinkable. She will not let her pass over.
