Bridget Character Analysis

Bridget had an abashed affection for the man but he seemed like a living memorial, or like a guardian spirit, or quite what she could not say, but that an inner decorum and formality and modesty of manner were required when she was with him, which she loved and which she felt with no one else. He alone made her feel as if her work, her life, in America, the awful trip over the ocean, being away from her mother and father—so far away it barely felt real anymore, felt as if her sorrow and longing were for people and places her imagination had invented—Mr. Hale alone could make her feel as if her job were important enough to bear being an orphan.

DO YOU MIND if I watch you draw? Bridget asked Ethan when, after a day spent mostly watching the mowers from just inside the opened barn doors (and stepping back out of view whenever Bridget came out to bring him food or to hang the laundry), he first ventured to the meadow and began sketching.

He was hot, probably sunburned, again, on his arms and nose and face and his neck, too. The hot sweet hay perfume mingled with the cigarette smoke and he wanted to sit down but there was no natural place to do so in the middle of the field.

THE PAINTING WAS of a small, tidy bundle of asparagus, tied together with twine, placed on a dark stone tabletop, glowing under pure white light from somewhere above, ivory except at the tips, which blushed thistle-purple and pale green, as if just quickened into color by the lamp.

Here. He gave her his handkerchief and mixed the blood into the paint with a small brush. Look.

An animal Mr. Hale at first glimpse thinks must be a young doe trots into view along the drive near the servants’ entrance to the kitchen. But the animal does not move like a deer and, as what Mr. Hale instinctively thinks should be the case is replaced by what he in fact sees, the animal changes into a person, the person into a girl, and the girl into the servant, Bridget. The innocent trotting when she was a doe discolors and deforms into haste and guile and indecency as she hurries, now obviously away from the mulatto’s bed in the barn, to the servants’ entrance, which, although still in shadow, Mr. Hale knows she unlocks, opens, passes through, and closes behind her, to quickly gather herself in order to appear a spotless lamb by the time he rings for his tea and toast.

You do not need your paints anymore, Mr. Hale says. Leave them there and come with me.

You have to leave the island.

This section of the State University’s exhibit commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the eviction of the settlers on Apple Island is devoted to the artwork of Ethan Honey. Honey was one of the last generation of native-born islanders (ca. 1897). He left behind dozens of competent—and informative—drawings of the people on the island and of daily life there at the end of its settlement. On loan from the estate of Ms. Phoebe Hale, of Enon, Massachusetts, where Honey briefly resided and practiced, are drawings of the summer hay mowing in July of 1913, the workers, the landscape, and the only three surviving paintings Honey made in oil: a large landscape depicting haystacks at sunset; a small, whimsically colored piece depicting a sop of green hay in an otherwise dry bale; and a portrait of a teenaged girl identified by Ms. Hale as Bridget Carney, an Irish immigrant who worked for the family as a domestic servant and Ms. Hale’s nanny for two years.

Bridget had an abashed affection for the man but he seemed like a living memorial, or like a guardian spirit, or quite what she could not say, but that an inner decorum and formality and modesty of manner were required when she was with him, which she loved and which she felt with no one else. He alone made her feel as if her work, her life, in America, the awful trip over the ocean, being away from her mother and father—so far away it barely felt real anymore, felt as if her sorrow and longing were for people and places her imagination had invented—Mr. Hale alone could make her feel as if her job were important enough to bear being an orphan.

DO YOU MIND if I watch you draw? Bridget asked Ethan when, after a day spent mostly watching the mowers from just inside the opened barn doors (and stepping back out of view whenever Bridget came out to bring him food or to hang the laundry), he first ventured to the meadow and began sketching.

He was hot, probably sunburned, again, on his arms and nose and face and his neck, too. The hot sweet hay perfume mingled with the cigarette smoke and he wanted to sit down but there was no natural place to do so in the middle of the field.

THE PAINTING WAS of a small, tidy bundle of asparagus, tied together with twine, placed on a dark stone tabletop, glowing under pure white light from somewhere above, ivory except at the tips, which blushed thistle-purple and pale green, as if just quickened into color by the lamp.

Here. He gave her his handkerchief and mixed the blood into the paint with a small brush. Look.

An animal Mr. Hale at first glimpse thinks must be a young doe trots into view along the drive near the servants’ entrance to the kitchen. But the animal does not move like a deer and, as what Mr. Hale instinctively thinks should be the case is replaced by what he in fact sees, the animal changes into a person, the person into a girl, and the girl into the servant, Bridget. The innocent trotting when she was a doe discolors and deforms into haste and guile and indecency as she hurries, now obviously away from the mulatto’s bed in the barn, to the servants’ entrance, which, although still in shadow, Mr. Hale knows she unlocks, opens, passes through, and closes behind her, to quickly gather herself in order to appear a spotless lamb by the time he rings for his tea and toast.

You do not need your paints anymore, Mr. Hale says. Leave them there and come with me.

You have to leave the island.

This section of the State University’s exhibit commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the eviction of the settlers on Apple Island is devoted to the artwork of Ethan Honey. Honey was one of the last generation of native-born islanders (ca. 1897). He left behind dozens of competent—and informative—drawings of the people on the island and of daily life there at the end of its settlement. On loan from the estate of Ms. Phoebe Hale, of Enon, Massachusetts, where Honey briefly resided and practiced, are drawings of the summer hay mowing in July of 1913, the workers, the landscape, and the only three surviving paintings Honey made in oil: a large landscape depicting haystacks at sunset; a small, whimsically colored piece depicting a sop of green hay in an otherwise dry bale; and a portrait of a teenaged girl identified by Ms. Hale as Bridget Carney, an Irish immigrant who worked for the family as a domestic servant and Ms. Hale’s nanny for two years.