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Sullivan Backhouse
Elsa’s mother, characterized by a fierce love and strong instinctual connection with her daughter. A dowdy and scatterbrained woman who wears too-big shoes and always concedes to her overbearing husband, Jack, Margaret isn’t as outwardly imposing as other female characters like Ida or Sister Penny. However, her constancy and protectiveness toward Elsa belie her appearance. At the end of the novel, likely against her husband’s wishes, Margaret facilitates Elsa’s reunion with Frank and decisively tells her overbearing sister-in-law Nance Briggs that polio won’t limit Elsa’s prospects. These incidents show that her daughter’s illness hasn’t defeated Margaret; in fact, it’s strengthened her character.
Margaret Briggs Quotes in The Golden Age
The The Golden Age quotes below are all either spoken by Margaret Briggs or refer to Margaret Briggs. 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:
).
3. Elsa
Quotes
When at last she’d left the Isolation Ward and her parents were allowed to sit by her bed, they looked smaller to her, aged by the terror they had suffered, old, shrunken, ill-at-ease. Something had happened to her which she didn’t yet understand. As if she’d gone away and come back distant from everybody.
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Sometimes even now in the Golden Age, after her mother visited, Elsa had the funny feeling that there was another mother waiting for her, blurred, gentle, beautiful as an angel, with an angel’s perfect understanding.
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14. Margaret in Her Garden
Quotes
Margaret grieved that her daughter had to carry this burden. Elsa, each time she saw her, had become more adult. She had lost her childhood. If she didn’t see Elsa more often, didn’t pay her close attention, Margaret wouldn’t keep up with her. Her daughter would outgrow her.
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Get the entire The Golden Age LitChart as a printable PDF.
Margaret Briggs Quotes in The Golden Age
The The Golden Age quotes below are all either spoken by Margaret Briggs or refer to Margaret Briggs. 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:
).
3. Elsa
Quotes
When at last she’d left the Isolation Ward and her parents were allowed to sit by her bed, they looked smaller to her, aged by the terror they had suffered, old, shrunken, ill-at-ease. Something had happened to her which she didn’t yet understand. As if she’d gone away and come back distant from everybody.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Sometimes even now in the Golden Age, after her mother visited, Elsa had the funny feeling that there was another mother waiting for her, blurred, gentle, beautiful as an angel, with an angel’s perfect understanding.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
14. Margaret in Her Garden
Quotes
Margaret grieved that her daughter had to carry this burden. Elsa, each time she saw her, had become more adult. She had lost her childhood. If she didn’t see Elsa more often, didn’t pay her close attention, Margaret wouldn’t keep up with her. Her daughter would outgrow her.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
