Connie Westaway Character Analysis

She sits beside me and slides an arm around my shoulders and she’s warm and she’s Connie and I’d like to sit there forever being held like when I was little but I know I’d blub so instead I say it’s nothing.

“A girl photographer.” [Francis] raises his arms and pulls on the clothesline, which explains its condition. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s not easy, raising children. It’s an enormous commitment. The most important job in the world.”

[Craig] rolls his eyes. “It’s not curing smallpox. It means you’ve fucked someone.”

“I couldn’t go while Ma was alive.” Kip looks Jos square in the face when he says it. “After Connie died, after the inquest and having it in all the newspapers. Having our business picked over by strangers. Most of the women in Richmond would cross the street when they saw Ma coming. Got so she wouldn’t go out the front gate and then so she wouldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t leave her.”

A husband and three littlies. The best days of my life. The reason women are put on the earth. There’s still hope for [Connie], to have a husband and children the right way, keeping them and not giving them up.

That first quickening, you never forget it. The first time you feel it, a cross between a squirming and a kicking, and you realize there’s another whole body enclosed within yours, and it’s made out of your very own flesh. While there’s a child of yours alive in the world, you never really die. They’re a part of your body living on without you.

From what [Kip] says, it seems like all kinds of stupid things had to be kept secret back then. When he says that his sister didn’t die from the flu, Stanzi just nods. Charlotte gets on her high horse about ridiculous sexist taboos and lies and nothing to be ashamed of. Grandma [Annabel] smiles. You can’t imagine what it was like back then, she says. So much pain, all covered over.

“Alec. You must know this. People disappear. They just go puff. Thin air. Every time you see someone, you never know if you’re seeing them for the last time. Drink them in, Alec. Kiss them. It’s very important.”

It seems that all my life I’ve had nothing I’ve desired and I’ve given up having desires at all. Now I know what it feels like to want and I’ll give anything to have it.

The secret to happiness is to be grateful. I think about Ma [Jean], widowed with three children, and Nan who was a slave all her life, first in domestic service and then to Pop, then back to the ironing factory when she was widowed. I have a wonderful job. I have my mother and Francis, and I have Kip my darling Kip.

And here is the most wonderful thing of all. I have had one night with the man of my heart and, just this once, I have had something that I wanted.

She sits beside me and slides an arm around my shoulders and she’s warm and she’s Connie and I’d like to sit there forever being held like when I was little but I know I’d blub so instead I say it’s nothing.

“A girl photographer.” [Francis] raises his arms and pulls on the clothesline, which explains its condition. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s not easy, raising children. It’s an enormous commitment. The most important job in the world.”

[Craig] rolls his eyes. “It’s not curing smallpox. It means you’ve fucked someone.”

“I couldn’t go while Ma was alive.” Kip looks Jos square in the face when he says it. “After Connie died, after the inquest and having it in all the newspapers. Having our business picked over by strangers. Most of the women in Richmond would cross the street when they saw Ma coming. Got so she wouldn’t go out the front gate and then so she wouldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t leave her.”

A husband and three littlies. The best days of my life. The reason women are put on the earth. There’s still hope for [Connie], to have a husband and children the right way, keeping them and not giving them up.

That first quickening, you never forget it. The first time you feel it, a cross between a squirming and a kicking, and you realize there’s another whole body enclosed within yours, and it’s made out of your very own flesh. While there’s a child of yours alive in the world, you never really die. They’re a part of your body living on without you.

From what [Kip] says, it seems like all kinds of stupid things had to be kept secret back then. When he says that his sister didn’t die from the flu, Stanzi just nods. Charlotte gets on her high horse about ridiculous sexist taboos and lies and nothing to be ashamed of. Grandma [Annabel] smiles. You can’t imagine what it was like back then, she says. So much pain, all covered over.

“Alec. You must know this. People disappear. They just go puff. Thin air. Every time you see someone, you never know if you’re seeing them for the last time. Drink them in, Alec. Kiss them. It’s very important.”

It seems that all my life I’ve had nothing I’ve desired and I’ve given up having desires at all. Now I know what it feels like to want and I’ll give anything to have it.

The secret to happiness is to be grateful. I think about Ma [Jean], widowed with three children, and Nan who was a slave all her life, first in domestic service and then to Pop, then back to the ironing factory when she was widowed. I have a wonderful job. I have my mother and Francis, and I have Kip my darling Kip.

And here is the most wonderful thing of all. I have had one night with the man of my heart and, just this once, I have had something that I wanted.