Jean 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.

They cannot keep the anger in, the women: they drink too much, they shoplift, they sleep with their doubles partners, they scream at their children, the pay someone to take a knife to their eyes or breast or stomach. The turn the anger inward and develop a depression so deep they cannot get out of bed.

If I get out of this alive, I will shoulder the responsibility for this family. I will work hard at school. I will be the most serious, most studious, most hard-working boy and I’ll do whatever Ma says and I’ll never do another naughty thing, not ever, not if I live to be a hundred.

“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.”

Kip has that set on his face that reminds me of his father, that wistful look. I’d never confess it to another living soul but some days I can’t bear the sight of that boy. It’s a judgment on me.

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.

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.

They cannot keep the anger in, the women: they drink too much, they shoplift, they sleep with their doubles partners, they scream at their children, the pay someone to take a knife to their eyes or breast or stomach. The turn the anger inward and develop a depression so deep they cannot get out of bed.

If I get out of this alive, I will shoulder the responsibility for this family. I will work hard at school. I will be the most serious, most studious, most hard-working boy and I’ll do whatever Ma says and I’ll never do another naughty thing, not ever, not if I live to be a hundred.

“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.”

Kip has that set on his face that reminds me of his father, that wistful look. I’d never confess it to another living soul but some days I can’t bear the sight of that boy. It’s a judgment on me.

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.

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.