Year of Wonders

by

Geraldine Brooks

Aphra Bont Character Analysis

Aphra is Josiah’s wife and Anna’s stepmother. Smarter than her husband, she’s just as amoral as he is, supporting his greedy behavior and refusing to stop him from abusing Anna as a child. She’s very superstitious and mistrusts the local healers, Mem and Anys Gowdie, but she’s also eager to capitalize on the superstitions of others, selling her neighbors fake charms that she claims will protect them from the plague. After the death of her husband and most of her children, Aphra becomes completely deranged. She abandons even the most basic social conventions, dismembering her dead children instead of burying them, and eventually kills Elinor in front of the entire town. Her behavior shows the extent to which a catastrophe can erode personal sanity and community norms.

Aphra Bont Quotes in Year of Wonders

The Year of Wonders quotes below are all either spoken by Aphra Bont or refer to Aphra Bont . 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:
Community and Convention Theme Icon
).
Part 2: The Body of the Mine Quotes

I did not go, and for that I will forever reproach myself. Because out of our negligence and her loneliness came much rage. Much rage and some madness – and a surfeit of grief.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

I saw that she had fashioned, instead, a figure that looked like a manikin. This she lay atop the cairn. I commenced to say the Lord’s Prayer, and I thought she was saying it with me in a low, deep-throated murmur. But when I said amen, her muttering continued, and the sign she made at the end of it did not resemble the sign of the cross.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Press of Their Ghosts Quotes

By gathering and sorting my own feelings so, I was finally able to fashion a scale on which I could weigh my father’s nature and find a balance between my disgust for him and an understanding of him; my guilt in the matter of his death against the debt he owed me for the manner of my life.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Elinor Mompellion, Josiah Bont , Aphra Bont
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: A Great Burning Quotes

To be sure, our stocks were nothing so fearful as the Bakewell pillory. In that market town, where people came and went without deep ties to another, to be pilloried was to be a target of rotten fruit or fish heads or any noisome thing the mob could lay a hand to. […] Even Reverend Stanley seldom called for sinners to be stocked, and Mr. Mompellion had actively discouraged it.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Michael Mompellion , Aphra Bont , Thomas Stanley
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

She plunged and leapt, barking out a nonsense chant that rose in pitch to a piercing cry: “Arataly, rataly, ataly, taly, aly, ly…..” She darted then toward the fire, seizing out the ends of an iron that had lain in the blaze, and placed them on the earthen floor so as to form an X. She prostrated herself four times, in each notch of the figure, and then reached up her arms as if in supplication.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
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Year of Wonders PDF

Aphra Bont Quotes in Year of Wonders

The Year of Wonders quotes below are all either spoken by Aphra Bont or refer to Aphra Bont . 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:
Community and Convention Theme Icon
).
Part 2: The Body of the Mine Quotes

I did not go, and for that I will forever reproach myself. Because out of our negligence and her loneliness came much rage. Much rage and some madness – and a surfeit of grief.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:

I saw that she had fashioned, instead, a figure that looked like a manikin. This she lay atop the cairn. I commenced to say the Lord’s Prayer, and I thought she was saying it with me in a low, deep-throated murmur. But when I said amen, her muttering continued, and the sign she made at the end of it did not resemble the sign of the cross.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: The Press of Their Ghosts Quotes

By gathering and sorting my own feelings so, I was finally able to fashion a scale on which I could weigh my father’s nature and find a balance between my disgust for him and an understanding of him; my guilt in the matter of his death against the debt he owed me for the manner of my life.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Elinor Mompellion, Josiah Bont , Aphra Bont
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: A Great Burning Quotes

To be sure, our stocks were nothing so fearful as the Bakewell pillory. In that market town, where people came and went without deep ties to another, to be pilloried was to be a target of rotten fruit or fish heads or any noisome thing the mob could lay a hand to. […] Even Reverend Stanley seldom called for sinners to be stocked, and Mr. Mompellion had actively discouraged it.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Michael Mompellion , Aphra Bont , Thomas Stanley
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

She plunged and leapt, barking out a nonsense chant that rose in pitch to a piercing cry: “Arataly, rataly, ataly, taly, aly, ly…..” She darted then toward the fire, seizing out the ends of an iron that had lain in the blaze, and placed them on the earthen floor so as to form an X. She prostrated herself four times, in each notch of the figure, and then reached up her arms as if in supplication.

Related Characters: Anna Frith (speaker), Aphra Bont
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis: