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Part 1, Chapter 3: April 1891
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dictionary of Lost Words, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Language and Change
Bias, Sexism, and Classism
Identity, Community, and Womanhood
Activism
Grief, Pain, and Legacy
Summary
Analysis
Esme and Da visit Scotland but return to the Scriptorium before everyone else. Lizzie tells Esme it is unladylike to hide under the sorting table. Esme lingers between the shelves, where she finds two slips that Mr. Crane dropped. Later, Crane tells Dr. Murray that Esme has stolen slips. Da finds a slip with the word count in Esme’s pocket. He sends Esme alone to Lizzie’s room. There, Esme hides the second word—counted—in Lizzie’s trunk. Esme finds her punishment unfair since Mr. Crane lost the words and she saved them. Finding no pen, Esme uses Lizzie’s mother’s hat pin to carve the words “The Dictionary of Lost Words” into the trunk, irreparably bending the pin.
As Esme gets older, her presence in the Scriptorium comes under more scrutiny. Lizzie implies that Esme’s behavior is inappropriate and Mr. Crane undermines her trustworthiness, provoking even Da’s disapproval. Though Crane’s accusations are true, no one asks Esme’s reasons for stealing slips or considers the general harmlessness of her actions. Instead, Esme feels persecuted, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated. In this light, her act of carving the words into the trunk seems almost retaliatory. Readers should also note the bent pin, which might foreshadow conflict with Lizzie.
Active
Themes
Esme avoids the Scriptorium until her twelfth birthday. Then, Dr. Murray tells her she may consult the Dictionary sections that are published but must ask Da to search the pigeon-holes. Ditte sends Esme a card containing a “superfluous” word, meaning it is unnecessary. Though the word (brown) is uninteresting, Esme hides it in Lizzie’s trunk. Seeing the etched words, Lizzie understands that Esme bent her mother’s hat pin. She cries and Esme feels terrible. When Esme tells her what the words are, Lizzie says she should call the trunk the dictionary of stolen words instead. Lizzie only has a photo and a hat pin to remember her mother. Esme realizes these items are like rare words she has treated as superfluous.
Esme carries the shame of being caught stealing for many months. Dr. Murray’s stipulations indicate that Esme has lost the privilege of full trust, deepening her humiliation. The word from Ditte, too, suggests Esme is now being treated as a greedy child who needs to be pacified with superfluous words that no one else cares about. (Again, this alludes to the idea that some words and people are less important than others.) Additionally, Esme has unintentionally hurt Lizzie by damaging one of the only remnants she has of her mother. Comparing the hat pin to a rare word, Esme understands how she disrespected the hat pin’s importance.
Active
Themes
Esme tries to fix the hat pin and apologizes to Lizzie, weeping. The mistake feels permanent, like the words etched in the trunk. Another day, Esme sees Mr. Crane drop a bundle of slips as he leaves the Scriptorium. The top word is distrustful, making Esme think of Mr. Crane’s negligence. She takes a single slip bearing a quotation from the stack. Crane catches Esme returning the rest of the bundle to his workspace and ignores her protests that he dropped them. Once Mr. Crane leaves, Da tells Esme he believed her but didn’t say so before to “mollify” the other man. They look up mollify, and Esme understands that Da was trying to make Crane less angry.
Active
Themes
