Previous
Swallow
Jocelyn is an older woman who lives in Hartham. She’s one of Sarah’s earliest visitors, and she comes seeking both prayers and wisdom for how to handle her abusive husband, Hugh. These conversations drive home to Sarah how young and inexperienced she is. At first, she tries to offer what sounds like good advice drawn from her Rule, but after Hugh pushes Jocelyn into a fire, causing her to be badly burned, Sarah realizes the depths of her ignorance and begins to approach her relationships with more humility.
Jocelyn Quotes in The Anchoress
The The Anchoress quotes below are all either spoken by Jocelyn or refer to Jocelyn. 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:
).
Chapter 25 Quotes
“The man deserves to suffer.”
Silence for a time. “I cursed him, too, but we can’t wish him to suffer. No. Not right.”
“There’s Alyce in the ground just there, an Anna, and Sam. We can’t wish more death.”
“Anna. Think of the maid and why she died. And he’d have bled us dry and thrown us off our land, given it to the sheep.”
“Strange to think: for all a man’s money, all it takes is a spark.”
“And so we must pray for him. He’s a man just like us.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Anchoress LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Jocelyn Character Timeline in The Anchoress
The timeline below shows where the character Jocelyn appears in The Anchoress. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
On the day after the memorial service, a woman named Jocelyn comes to Sarah for prayer and advice about how to manage her anger. She confesses...
(full context)
Chapter 5
...faces—sometimes comforting, more often alarming—in the shadows that her candles throw on the walls. When Jocelyn, ill and injured after a particularly nasty episode with Hugh, comes seeking comfort and counsel,...
(full context)
Chapter 9
Many of Sarah’s usual visitors—Jocelyn, Winifred the alewife, and Eleanor—stay away during her recuperation, but Maud makes frequent, short visits....
(full context)
Sarah enjoys these visits, and she begins to feel guilty about her last visit with Jocelyn. Louise tells her that Jocelyn recently suffered a dreadful accident when her skirts caught on...
(full context)
...close to Louise and avoids boys. After the maids leave, many of Sarah’s acquaintances—Avice, Winifred, Jocelyn, Lizzie, and Eleanor—drop by with greetings and little treats.
(full context)
Chapter 21
...to tell Sarah that Anna is in labor at Lizzie’s house, attended by Lizzie, Maud, Jocelyn, and Avice. Sarah paces her cell and worries. And she remembers the fear she felt...
(full context)
