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One of the two main characters, Penny is a young girl at the beginning of the story who is evacuated from London with a group of children to escape the German bombing of London during World War II. She ventures into the woods with her new friend, Primrose, and together the two see the Thing in the forest (i.e., the loathly worm). They survive the encounter, and by the time Penny is returned to her family, her father has died. Her mother withdraws after this, leaving Penny to feel emotionally abandoned. She grows up to become a child psychologist specializing in children with severe autism. People with autism are often withdrawn, as Penny herself was, and she hopes that, by reaching out to them, she can help them in a way that no one helped her. She returns as an adult to the woods where she once encountered the loathly worm in the hopes that, by confronting the terror from her childhood, she can diminish its power over her and, in doing so, overcome her childhood trauma. Penny is a scientist, someone who relies on observation, data, and her five senses. When she does not encounter the worm on her return to the forest, she returns a second time, determined to draw the worm to her so that she can see it. She finally hears the worm approaching, and in this moment seems to be at peace, her “nerves relaxed” and her “blood slowed.” Byatt leaves it unclear whether Penny survives this second meeting with the worm. Because the worm is such a clear symbol of trauma and loss, this ending implies that Penny is ultimately destroyed by her grief surrounding her childhood trauma.
Penny Quotes in The Thing in the Forest
The The Thing in the Forest quotes below are all either spoken by Penny or refer to Penny. 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:
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The Thing in the Forest
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There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.
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They remembered the thing they had seen in the forest, on the contrary, in the way you remember those very few dreams—almost all nightmares—that have the quality of life itself. (Though what are dreams if not life itself?)
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I think, I think there are things that are real—more real than we are—but mostly we don’t cross their paths, or they don’t cross ours. Maybe at very bad times we get into their world, or notice what they are doing in ours.
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“Sometimes I think that thing finished me off,” said Penny to Primrose, a child’s voice rising in a woman’s gullet, arousing a little girl’s scared smile which wasn’t a smile on Primrose’s face.
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It was the encounter with the Thing that had led her to deal professionally in dreams. Something that resembled unreality had lumbered into reality, and she had seen it.
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When it came, she would look it in the face, she would see what it was. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Her nerves relaxed. Her blood slowed. She was ready.
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Penny Quotes in The Thing in the Forest
The The Thing in the Forest quotes below are all either spoken by Penny or refer to Penny. 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:
).
The Thing in the Forest
Quotes
There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.
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Explanation and Analysis:
They remembered the thing they had seen in the forest, on the contrary, in the way you remember those very few dreams—almost all nightmares—that have the quality of life itself. (Though what are dreams if not life itself?)
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I think, I think there are things that are real—more real than we are—but mostly we don’t cross their paths, or they don’t cross ours. Maybe at very bad times we get into their world, or notice what they are doing in ours.
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“Sometimes I think that thing finished me off,” said Penny to Primrose, a child’s voice rising in a woman’s gullet, arousing a little girl’s scared smile which wasn’t a smile on Primrose’s face.
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It was the encounter with the Thing that had led her to deal professionally in dreams. Something that resembled unreality had lumbered into reality, and she had seen it.
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When it came, she would look it in the face, she would see what it was. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Her nerves relaxed. Her blood slowed. She was ready.
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