Hamnet: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Just shy of her second birthday, Susanna sits in a basket, pretending to row herself down the river with a pair of spoons. In her imagination’s eye, she sees Mary’s parlor filled with ducks and swans. Her father crosses the room, and she wants to warn him against falling in. He stops in front of Agnes, whose needle leaps like a silvery fish in and out of her sewing. Susanna watches her father and grandmother argue. She looks toward Agnes, her belly full with a brother or sister just for her. A squirrel perches on Agnes’s arm. Susanna longs to touch it, but she knows it will not allow her too close. Quick as a flash, Agnes turns and lets the squirrel out the open window. 

As Mary listens to the husband eagerly discuss John’s plan to send him to London, she grows furious, especially because she thinks that Agnes, cooing stupidly at the half-tame squirrel she allows into the house, isn’t listening. But Mary knows Agnes is far more astute than she seems; she believes that Agnes enticed and seduced her son into an unsuitable marriage. She loses her temper and shouts at her son about irresponsibility. But what she really wants is to unwind time, undo his marriage to Agnes, and keep him far away from crowded, disease-ridden London. She appeals to Agnes, who maddeningly says that there’s no reason to keep her husband in Stratford against his will. Mary wants to hit Agnes. Instead, she throws her own needlework to the floor and storms out, further enraged to hear her son and daughter-in-law laughing at her retreat.

Weeks later, Agnes walks arm-in-arm with her husband to the edge of town. He struggles to walk slowly enough for her, since the weight of the baby makes her slow. She can tell that he is impatient to be gone. Although she herself engineered this moment, she doesn’t really want it. She wants him to stay with her. But what she wants doesn’t matter, she tells herself. He is going. He will be gone. She casts a sideways glance at her beloved husband, his boots shiny with polish, his beard glossy, his pack filled with glove samples and more than a few of his books. She asks him questions about London to which she already knows the answers, just to hear his voice and delay the inevitable.

The husband talks and talks about nothing. He asks again if Agnes knows what their baby will be—John hopes for a grandson, but he doesn’t care. But she doesn’t; all the signs have been ambiguous. He kisses her and makes one final offer to stay, which she refuses. She only asks that he fetch her as soon as he can. She refuses to watch him walk away; he promises to walk backwards all the way to London if it lets him keep her in his sight for a second more. As she retraces her steps, Agnes can hardly believe how little has changed in the outside world when her life has been cut into two halves: the part before her husband left and the part after. Inside her, the baby moves, and she places her hand on her belly to return its touch.