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Ma
Sarah’s Pa is a well-to-do cloth merchant from the nearby town of Leeton. However, after Ma’s death and the loss of one of his ships at sea, Pa begins to pressure Sarah to marry. When Sir Goeffrey’s son, Thomas, shows an interest in her, Pa encourages it because of how he will benefit from the connection. He is furious when Sarah decides—and makes arrangements behind his back—to become an anchoress.
Pa Quotes in The Anchoress
The The Anchoress quotes below are all either spoken by Pa or refer to Pa. 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 3 Quotes
Behind her curtain, the anchoress said nothing. When I stopped, exhausted, and apologized for my tears, she told me to let them come, and when I asked her why Ma had died, she said that even though it felt so important, an answer to my question was not what I needed. A few words from me won’t touch your grief, and nor should they. Tend your grief like hard ground, and wait. One day, something will grow; there won’t be an answer, but you will see you’ve found a way to live, and to live with death. Then she was silent for some time, and finally she promised to pray for me.
On the way home, when Emma asked me what she had said, I told her […] that the holy woman’s silence was like presence.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Pa Character Timeline in The Anchoress
The timeline below shows where the character Pa appears in The Anchoress. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...Sarah excuses herself to pray but can’t shake off the conversation. It reminds her of Pa wanting to marry her off to save his business.
(full context)
Chapter 7
...She recalls the day when Thomas first came to choose cloth for a coat and Pa encouragingly left him alone with Sarah.
(full context)
