John Character Analysis

Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. Him standing there, at the back of the house, calling for the people who had fed him, swaddled him, rocked him to sleep, held his hand as he took his first steps, taught him to use a spoon, to blow on broth before he ate it, to take care crossing the street, to let sleeping dogs lie, to swill out a cup before drinking, to stay away from deep water.

It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.

As he stands at Hewlands’ window, the need to leave, to rebel, to escape is so great that it fills him to his very outer edge: he can eat nothing from the plate the farmer’s widow left for him, so crammed is he with the urge to leave, to get away, to move his feet and legs to some other place, as far away from here as he can manage.

[…] He is just about to turn and face his pupils when he sees, from the trees, a figure emerge.

For a moment, the tutor believes it to be a young man […who] moves out of the trees with a brand of masculine insouciance or entitlement, covering the ground with booted strides. There is some kind of bird on his outstretched fist […]. It sits hunched, subdued, its body swaying with the movement of its companion, its familiar.

She thinks […how] a glove covers and fits and restrains the hand. She thinks of the skins in the storeroom, pulled and stretched almost—but not quite—to the tearing or breaking point. She thinks of the tools in the workshop, for cutting and shaping, pinning and piercing. She thinks of what must be discarded and stolen from the animal in order to make it useful to the glove-maker: the heart, the bones, the soul, the spirit, the blood, the viscera. A glover will only ever want the skin, the surface, the outer layer. Everything else is useless, an inconvenience, an unnecessary mess. She thinks of the private cruelty behind something as beautiful and perfect as a glove. She thinks that if she took his hand […] she might see the landscape she saw before but […also a] dark and looming presence there, with tools to eviscerate and flay and thieve […]

And now the moment has arrived. Agnes conjugates it: he is going, he will be gone, he will go. She has put these circumstances together; she has set it all in motion, as if she were the puppeteer, hidden behind a screen, gently pulling on the strings of her wooden people, easing and guiding them on where to go. She asked Bartholomew to speak to John, then waited for John to speak to her husband. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t got Bartholomew to plant the idea in John’s head. She has created this moment—no one else—and yet, now it is happening, she finds that it is entirely at odds with what she desires.

So much to mull over in this letter. It has taken Agnes days to absorb all the detail; she has run the words over and over inside her head, she has traced them with a finger, and now she has them down to memory. Jewels and beads. Scenes in court. The hands of young stage boys. And soft gloves for ladies. There is something in the way he has written all this, in such lingering detail, in the long passage about these gloves for the players that alerts Agnes to something. She is not yet sure what. Some kind of change in him, some alteration or turning. Never has he written so much about so little: a glove contract. It is just a contract, like many others, so why, then, does she feel like a small animal, hearing something far off?

Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. Him standing there, at the back of the house, calling for the people who had fed him, swaddled him, rocked him to sleep, held his hand as he took his first steps, taught him to use a spoon, to blow on broth before he ate it, to take care crossing the street, to let sleeping dogs lie, to swill out a cup before drinking, to stay away from deep water.

It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.

As he stands at Hewlands’ window, the need to leave, to rebel, to escape is so great that it fills him to his very outer edge: he can eat nothing from the plate the farmer’s widow left for him, so crammed is he with the urge to leave, to get away, to move his feet and legs to some other place, as far away from here as he can manage.

[…] He is just about to turn and face his pupils when he sees, from the trees, a figure emerge.

For a moment, the tutor believes it to be a young man […who] moves out of the trees with a brand of masculine insouciance or entitlement, covering the ground with booted strides. There is some kind of bird on his outstretched fist […]. It sits hunched, subdued, its body swaying with the movement of its companion, its familiar.

She thinks […how] a glove covers and fits and restrains the hand. She thinks of the skins in the storeroom, pulled and stretched almost—but not quite—to the tearing or breaking point. She thinks of the tools in the workshop, for cutting and shaping, pinning and piercing. She thinks of what must be discarded and stolen from the animal in order to make it useful to the glove-maker: the heart, the bones, the soul, the spirit, the blood, the viscera. A glover will only ever want the skin, the surface, the outer layer. Everything else is useless, an inconvenience, an unnecessary mess. She thinks of the private cruelty behind something as beautiful and perfect as a glove. She thinks that if she took his hand […] she might see the landscape she saw before but […also a] dark and looming presence there, with tools to eviscerate and flay and thieve […]

And now the moment has arrived. Agnes conjugates it: he is going, he will be gone, he will go. She has put these circumstances together; she has set it all in motion, as if she were the puppeteer, hidden behind a screen, gently pulling on the strings of her wooden people, easing and guiding them on where to go. She asked Bartholomew to speak to John, then waited for John to speak to her husband. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t got Bartholomew to plant the idea in John’s head. She has created this moment—no one else—and yet, now it is happening, she finds that it is entirely at odds with what she desires.

So much to mull over in this letter. It has taken Agnes days to absorb all the detail; she has run the words over and over inside her head, she has traced them with a finger, and now she has them down to memory. Jewels and beads. Scenes in court. The hands of young stage boys. And soft gloves for ladies. There is something in the way he has written all this, in such lingering detail, in the long passage about these gloves for the players that alerts Agnes to something. She is not yet sure what. Some kind of change in him, some alteration or turning. Never has he written so much about so little: a glove contract. It is just a contract, like many others, so why, then, does she feel like a small animal, hearing something far off?