The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by

Ann Shaffer

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Juliet Ashton Character Analysis

Juliet is the 33-year-old protagonist of the novel. She's a writer living in London and is attempting to come up with a new idea for a book after deciding she no longer wants to write humorously under her wartime pseudonym, Izzy Bickerstaff. Juliet corresponds with a number of close friends, as she has no living family. Juliet adores books and literature above all; she called off her first engagement when Rob Dartry, her fiancé, tried to put her books in the basement. This love of books leads her to develop pen pal relationships with several people on the island of Guernsey. Dawsey writes first, as he acquired one of her used copies of a Charles Lamb book with her address in it. Juliet becomes enchanted by Dawsey's stories of his local literary society, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. When she's asked to write three articles for the Times, she chooses to write them on Guernsey and the Society. During this time, Juliet begins to date the American Mark Reynolds. While she enjoys dating Mark, Sidney believes that Mark only likes Juliet because she's pretty and intellectual. Juliet is perpetually unsure about Mark and when he eventually proposes marriage, she refuses and moves to Guernsey to write a book about the German Occupation. During Juliet's time on Guernsey, she becomes a member of the Society and a valued member of the community. She lives in the house of Elizabeth McKenna, the brain behind the Society's inception. Juliet feels as though Elizabeth becomes a true friend, and Juliet decides to write her book about Elizabeth. Juliet becomes very close with Elizabeth's four-year-old daughter, Kit, which eventually leads her to break things off with Mark--he wouldn't respect her relationship with Kit. She also falls in love with Dawsey, though she questions Dawsey's feelings when he appears to care more deeply for Remy, a visiting woman who knew Elizabeth. Finally, when Isola discovers that Dawsey keeps mementos of Juliet's, Juliet asks Dawsey to marry her. The two get married the weekend after the novel ends.

Juliet Ashton Quotes in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society quotes below are all either spoken by Juliet Ashton or refer to Juliet Ashton. 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:
Literature and Connection Theme Icon
).
Part 1: 8 Jan, 1946 Quotes

I don't want to be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh—or at least chuckle—during the war was no mean feat, but I don't want to do it anymore. I can't seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one can't write humor without them.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark
Related Symbols: Izzy Bickerstaff
Page Number: 3-4
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 12 Jan, 1946 Quotes

Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 21 Jan, 1946 Quotes

All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark, Susan Scott
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Feb 5, 1946 Quotes

The simple truth of it is that you're the only female writer who makes me laugh. Your Izzy Bickerstaff columns were the wittiest work to come out of the war, and I want to meet the woman who wrote them.

Related Characters: Markham V. Reynolds (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Related Symbols: Izzy Bickerstaff
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 28 Feb, 1946 Quotes

One poor soldier was caught stealing a potato. He was chased by his own people and climbed up a tree to hide. But they found him and shot him down out of the tree. Still, that did not stop them from stealing food. I am not pointing a finger at those practices, because some of us were doing the same. I figure hunger makes you desperate when you wake to it every morning.

Related Characters: Eben Ramsey (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 4 Mar, 1946 Quotes

Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! I nearly seized up. What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns." What's passive about that, I'd like to know. That's exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats.

Related Characters: Clovis Fossey (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Mrs. Amelia Maugery
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 12 Mar, 1946 Quotes

Though I had little hope of success, I knew it was my duty to warn her of the fate that awaited her. I told her she would be cast out of decent society, but she did not heed me. In fact, she laughed. I bore it. Then she told me to get out of her house.

Related Characters: Miss Adelaide Addison (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Kit McKenna, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:

The principal work of the baby's maintenance was undertaken by Amelia Maugery, with other Society members taking her out—like a library book—for several weeks at a time.

They all dandled the baby, and now that the child can walk, she goes everywhere with one or another of them—holding hands or riding on their shoulders. Such are their standards!

Related Characters: Miss Adelaide Addison (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Mrs. Amelia Maugery, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 2 Apr, 1946 Quotes

The way that Christian and I met may have been unusual, but our friendship was not. I'm sure many Islanders grew to be friends with some of the soldiers. But sometimes I think of Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 22 Apr, 1946 Quotes

There was an old canvas bathing shoe left lying right in the middle of the path. Eli walked around it, staring. Finally, he said, "That shoe is all alone, Grandpa." I answered that yes it was. He looked at it some more, and then we walked on by. After a bit, he said, "Grandpa, that's something I never am." I asked him, "What's that?" And he said, "Lonesome in my spirits."

Related Characters: Eben Ramsey (speaker), Eli (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Kit McKenna, Jane
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:

The States didn't want the parents to come into the school itself—too crowded and too sad. Better to say good-byes outside. One child crying might set them all off.

So it was strangers who tied up shoelaces, wiped noses, put a nametag around each child's neck. We did up buttons and played games with them until the buses could come.

Related Characters: Isola Pribby (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Miss Adelaide Addison
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 1 May, 1946 Quotes

But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. We argued and he lectured and I wept a bit more because I was so exhausted, and eventually he called his chauffer to take me home. As he shut me into the back seat, he leaned in to kiss me and said, "You're an idiot, Juliet."

And maybe he's right.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 13 May, 1946 Quotes

I sometimes think that we are morally obliged to begin a search for Kit's German relations, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Christian was a rare soul, and he detested what his country was doing, but the same cannot be true for many Germans...And how could we send our Kit away to a foreign—and destroyed—land, even if her relations could be found? We are the only family she's ever known.

Related Characters: Mrs. Amelia Maugery (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Kit McKenna, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 137-38
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 15 May, 1946 Quotes

It may be about those Germans, but honor due is honor due. They unloaded all those boxes of food for us from the Vega, and they didn't take none, not one box of it, for themselves. Of course, their Commandant had told them, "That food is for the Islanders, it is not yours. Steal one bit and I'll have you shot."

Related Characters: Micah Daniels (speaker), Juliet Ashton, The Commandant
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 24 May, 1946 Quotes

Maybe I am a complete idiot. I know of three women who are mad for him—he'll be snapped up in a trice, and I'll spend my declining years in a grimy bed-sit, with my teeth falling out one by one.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 6 Jun, 1946 Quotes

I knew that all children were gruesome, but I don't know whether I'm supposed to encourage them in it. I'm afraid to ask Sophie if Dead Bride is too morbid a game for a four-year-old. If she says yes, we'll have to stop playing, and I don't want to stop. I love Dead Bride.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark, Kit McKenna, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 16 Jun, 1946 Quotes

It's odd, I suppose, to mourn so for someone you've never met. But I do.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 6 Jul, 1946 Quotes

If she marries him, she'll spend the rest of her life being shown to people at theaters and clubs and weekends and she'll never write another book. As her editor, I'm dismayed by the prospect, but as her friend, I'm horrified. It will be the end of our Juliet.

Related Characters: Sidney Stark (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 194-95
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 17 Jul, 1946 Quotes

Maybe every mother looks at her baby that way—with that intense focus—but Elizabeth put it on paper. There was one shaky drawing of a wizened little Kit, made the day after she was born, according to Amelia.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark, Mrs. Amelia Maugery, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 19 Jul, 1946 Quotes

Why, there'd be soldiers riding guard in the back of potato lorries going to the army's mess hall—children would follow them, hoping potatoes would fall off into the street. Soldiers would look straight ahead, grim-like, and then flick potatoes off the pile—on purpose.

Related Characters: Captain Christian Hellman (speaker), Sam Withers (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 24 Jul, 1946 Quotes

How could I ever have considered marrying him? One year as his wife, and I'd have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 214
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 2 Sep, 1946 Quotes

She told me once that those guards used big dogs. Riled them up and loosed them deliberately on the lines of women standing for roll call—just to watch the fun. Christ! I've been ignorant, Juliet. I thought being here with us could help her forget.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Sidney Stark, Remy Giraud
Page Number: 255
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 7 Sep, 1946 Quotes

She was showing me her treasures, Sophie—her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn't start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them, and under the covers with me—and went sound asleep. Not me! I couldn't. I was too happy planning the rest of our lives.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Kit McKenna, Sophie Strachan, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis:
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Juliet Ashton Quotes in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society quotes below are all either spoken by Juliet Ashton or refer to Juliet Ashton. 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:
Literature and Connection Theme Icon
).
Part 1: 8 Jan, 1946 Quotes

I don't want to be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh—or at least chuckle—during the war was no mean feat, but I don't want to do it anymore. I can't seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one can't write humor without them.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark
Related Symbols: Izzy Bickerstaff
Page Number: 3-4
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 12 Jan, 1946 Quotes

Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 21 Jan, 1946 Quotes

All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark, Susan Scott
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Feb 5, 1946 Quotes

The simple truth of it is that you're the only female writer who makes me laugh. Your Izzy Bickerstaff columns were the wittiest work to come out of the war, and I want to meet the woman who wrote them.

Related Characters: Markham V. Reynolds (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Related Symbols: Izzy Bickerstaff
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 28 Feb, 1946 Quotes

One poor soldier was caught stealing a potato. He was chased by his own people and climbed up a tree to hide. But they found him and shot him down out of the tree. Still, that did not stop them from stealing food. I am not pointing a finger at those practices, because some of us were doing the same. I figure hunger makes you desperate when you wake to it every morning.

Related Characters: Eben Ramsey (speaker), Juliet Ashton
Page Number: 65
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 4 Mar, 1946 Quotes

Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! I nearly seized up. What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns." What's passive about that, I'd like to know. That's exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats.

Related Characters: Clovis Fossey (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Mrs. Amelia Maugery
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 12 Mar, 1946 Quotes

Though I had little hope of success, I knew it was my duty to warn her of the fate that awaited her. I told her she would be cast out of decent society, but she did not heed me. In fact, she laughed. I bore it. Then she told me to get out of her house.

Related Characters: Miss Adelaide Addison (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Kit McKenna, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:

The principal work of the baby's maintenance was undertaken by Amelia Maugery, with other Society members taking her out—like a library book—for several weeks at a time.

They all dandled the baby, and now that the child can walk, she goes everywhere with one or another of them—holding hands or riding on their shoulders. Such are their standards!

Related Characters: Miss Adelaide Addison (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Mrs. Amelia Maugery, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 2 Apr, 1946 Quotes

The way that Christian and I met may have been unusual, but our friendship was not. I'm sure many Islanders grew to be friends with some of the soldiers. But sometimes I think of Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 22 Apr, 1946 Quotes

There was an old canvas bathing shoe left lying right in the middle of the path. Eli walked around it, staring. Finally, he said, "That shoe is all alone, Grandpa." I answered that yes it was. He looked at it some more, and then we walked on by. After a bit, he said, "Grandpa, that's something I never am." I asked him, "What's that?" And he said, "Lonesome in my spirits."

Related Characters: Eben Ramsey (speaker), Eli (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Kit McKenna, Jane
Page Number: 124
Explanation and Analysis:

The States didn't want the parents to come into the school itself—too crowded and too sad. Better to say good-byes outside. One child crying might set them all off.

So it was strangers who tied up shoelaces, wiped noses, put a nametag around each child's neck. We did up buttons and played games with them until the buses could come.

Related Characters: Isola Pribby (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Miss Adelaide Addison
Page Number: 126
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 1 May, 1946 Quotes

But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. We argued and he lectured and I wept a bit more because I was so exhausted, and eventually he called his chauffer to take me home. As he shut me into the back seat, he leaned in to kiss me and said, "You're an idiot, Juliet."

And maybe he's right.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 13 May, 1946 Quotes

I sometimes think that we are morally obliged to begin a search for Kit's German relations, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Christian was a rare soul, and he detested what his country was doing, but the same cannot be true for many Germans...And how could we send our Kit away to a foreign—and destroyed—land, even if her relations could be found? We are the only family she's ever known.

Related Characters: Mrs. Amelia Maugery (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Kit McKenna, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 137-38
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: 15 May, 1946 Quotes

It may be about those Germans, but honor due is honor due. They unloaded all those boxes of food for us from the Vega, and they didn't take none, not one box of it, for themselves. Of course, their Commandant had told them, "That food is for the Islanders, it is not yours. Steal one bit and I'll have you shot."

Related Characters: Micah Daniels (speaker), Juliet Ashton, The Commandant
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 24 May, 1946 Quotes

Maybe I am a complete idiot. I know of three women who are mad for him—he'll be snapped up in a trice, and I'll spend my declining years in a grimy bed-sit, with my teeth falling out one by one.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 6 Jun, 1946 Quotes

I knew that all children were gruesome, but I don't know whether I'm supposed to encourage them in it. I'm afraid to ask Sophie if Dead Bride is too morbid a game for a four-year-old. If she says yes, we'll have to stop playing, and I don't want to stop. I love Dead Bride.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Sidney Stark, Kit McKenna, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 16 Jun, 1946 Quotes

It's odd, I suppose, to mourn so for someone you've never met. But I do.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 6 Jul, 1946 Quotes

If she marries him, she'll spend the rest of her life being shown to people at theaters and clubs and weekends and she'll never write another book. As her editor, I'm dismayed by the prospect, but as her friend, I'm horrified. It will be the end of our Juliet.

Related Characters: Sidney Stark (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 194-95
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 17 Jul, 1946 Quotes

Maybe every mother looks at her baby that way—with that intense focus—but Elizabeth put it on paper. There was one shaky drawing of a wizened little Kit, made the day after she was born, according to Amelia.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark, Mrs. Amelia Maugery, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 19 Jul, 1946 Quotes

Why, there'd be soldiers riding guard in the back of potato lorries going to the army's mess hall—children would follow them, hoping potatoes would fall off into the street. Soldiers would look straight ahead, grim-like, and then flick potatoes off the pile—on purpose.

Related Characters: Captain Christian Hellman (speaker), Sam Withers (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Elizabeth McKenna, Sidney Stark, Kit McKenna
Page Number: 208
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 24 Jul, 1946 Quotes

How could I ever have considered marrying him? One year as his wife, and I'd have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Markham V. Reynolds, Sophie Strachan
Page Number: 214
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 2 Sep, 1946 Quotes

She told me once that those guards used big dogs. Riled them up and loosed them deliberately on the lines of women standing for roll call—just to watch the fun. Christ! I've been ignorant, Juliet. I thought being here with us could help her forget.

Related Characters: Dawsey Adams (speaker), Juliet Ashton, Sidney Stark, Remy Giraud
Page Number: 255
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: 7 Sep, 1946 Quotes

She was showing me her treasures, Sophie—her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn't start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them, and under the covers with me—and went sound asleep. Not me! I couldn't. I was too happy planning the rest of our lives.

Related Characters: Juliet Ashton (speaker), Elizabeth McKenna, Kit McKenna, Sophie Strachan, Captain Christian Hellman
Page Number: 259
Explanation and Analysis: