Playing Beatie Bow: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

The day Abigail runs away to go home begins like any other. She is dressed in Dovey’s plain clothes. She has noticed over the last several days that some women, either highborn ladies or “high-steppers”—women unacceptable to polite society—wear finer clothes of lace and silk, while working women always wear drab, modest dresses. Abigail understands now why her mother’s shop never gets any lower-class Victorian clothing in—it would have been worn out by hard conditions and labor.

On the day Abigail tries to run away, her ankle has gone down to its normal size, and she is wearing more comfortable shoes. Beatie goes off to school, excited that Judah’s ship is supposed to make port again tonight, and he will be home. Abigail helps Granny make sweets in the shop, and as she does, marvels at how quickly not only the Bows and the Talliskers but the rest of the community, too, were to believe the story that Abigail was an immigrant girl who lost her memory. She has been in the past for two weeks now, and in those two weeks there has been little discussion beyond the first few days of Abigail’s green dress, her being the Stranger, or the family’s Gift.

Abigail has had to field endless questions from Beatie about the future, however, but Beatie does not always believe the things Abigail tells her. The one thing Beatie is happy to hear is that women can, in the future, become doctors, teachers, and scholars. Every conversation with Beatie comes back to the question of how the children of the future know her name.

After Beatie has gone off to school and Granny and Dovey leave Abigail alone in the shop with the absent-minded Mr. Bow, Abigail seizes her chance and leaves the shop. She heads down Argyle Street, planning to navigate back to the spot where she first entered the past, believing that as soon as she is there she will be instantly restored to her own time.

As Abigail passes the school where Beatie attends classes, she stoops low, hoping the child will not see her, but nonetheless hears Beatie call her name as she goes by. Abigail breaks into a run, and as she looks back realizes that Beatie did not call her from inside the school, but rather was heading her way with Judah, coming up from the wharf. As Beatie and Judah pursue her, Abigail continues running; she dives into an alley to escape them, and watches as they run right past her. In that moment, a hand fastens around Abigail’s ankle.

Abigail looks down and sees a frightful, legless man with a bulging forehead grinning toothlessly up at her—she kicks at the man’s face, but he dodges her blows, and bites her on the leg. Abigail screams out Beatie and Judah’s names, but then a horrible-smelling sack descends over her head and she cannot see anything more as she is half-carried, half-dragged away. She punches and claws at her captors but is no match for them, and though she succeeds in pulling out some hairs from one of their beards, she cannot stop them from bringing her to a strange, anonymous place.

The sack is pulled off Abigail’s head—she is in a dark room that smells horrible, and in front of her is a huge woman holding a bloody hand to her hairy chin. Abigail hears a man’s husky voice telling the bearded woman—Hannah—that Abigail will fetch a “sweet sum.” Abigail realizes she is in greater danger than she had ever even realized was possible, surrounded by many strangers, and that there is no chance of her fighting her way out.

The people around her openly discuss buying, selling, sampling, and “nibbling” Abigail. The man with the husky voice, Barker, asks Abigail if she’ll be quiet if he takes his hand off of her mouth—Abigail says she will, but as soon as he removes it, she begins screaming Judah’s name. The man stuffs a dirty rag in Abigail’s mouth and pushes her to the ground. He instructs Hannah to keep Abigail close and keep her from becoming “damaged goods.”

Abigail feels something moving beneath her on the ground, and realizes that she has fallen on top of another woman, who resembles a “hobgoblin,” and is in a horrible state of disarray. The woman goes over to a table and begins eating some moldy bread, but one of the other women advises her not to eat it, calling her Doll. Abigail, paralyzed by terror, imagines herself in twenty years’ time as Doll herself, worn out and degraded beyond belief.

A pretty woman approaches Abigail and introduces herself as Emily, but tells Abigail that she goes by Maude, as the name sounds more “posh.” Maude then tells Doll that the lamps have been lit—it’s time to get on the streets. Doll begins to cough horribly, and Maude changes her mind, saying that she won’t bring Doll into the street with her as long as she has her embarrassing cough. One of the other women in the room urges Hannah to throw Doll out, but Hannah says she must be charitable to her own niece. She instructs a man named Chow to take Doll and Abigail up to the attic. Doll begs Hannah to give her some gin before she’s taken away, and Hannah obliges her. Hannah and Chow shut Doll and Abigail in the attic and lock the door.

Abigail looks around the room and immediately tries to think of ways she might get herself out, but she is too frightened to devise a plan. She realizes that the only hope she has is that Judah and Beatie heard her cries for help back on the street. Abigail starts to try to get her hands unbound from the kerchief that holds them—after half an hour, she succeeds. As she works, Doll tells Abigail her sad story.

Doll was born Dorothea Victoria Brand in an ill-educated but still respectable family. Doll attended school and was a “bookish” child, and though her father wished he could afford a better education for his daughter, he could not. After Doll’s father died suddenly, her mother went to a “slop-shop” to work, where she sewed clothing standing upright in a cramped room with twenty other women, and soon herself succumbed to illness and death. Doll was sent to live with her aunt Hannah in the colonies, and she tells Abigail that Hannah did her the favor of putting her to work so that she wouldn’t starve.

Doll is in a stupor or a trance as she tells her story, and Abigail takes the opportunity to get to her feet and go to the window, slowly working an iron bar that blocks the pane from its sockets. Abigail is terrified, and almost all she can think to do is silently beg Granny, who has the Gift, to help her. Abigail finally gets the window open, and sees a frayed rope hanging from above. She tries to pull on the rope, but it is so old that it turns to dust in her hands. Abigail’s eyes fill with tears—her last hope has gone. Just then, she looks up, and sees that someone is lying on the roof above her, looking down at her.