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Mrs. Strickland
Ata is a 17-year-old Tahitian girl. She is a distant relative of hotel-owner Tiaré Johnson. While Ata is working at Tiaré’s hotel, Tiaré notices that Ata has a crush on Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English painter who sometimes eats and plays chess at the hotel. Tiaré suggests that Ata and Strickland get married, selling Strickland on the idea by mentioning that Ata owns some rural property where Strickland could paint. Though Strickland tells Ata that he’ll beat her, Ata replies, “How else should I know you loved me?” After a month of trial cohabitation, they marry and move to Ata’s rural property. They have two children together, though one dies. When Strickland contracts leprosy three years into their marriage, Ata vehemently insists on staying with him even when he suggests that she could leave him and remarry. Strickland—despite his usual distaste for women’s emotional displays—seems genuinely touched by her loyalty. After Strickland dies four or five years later, Ata carries out his final request: to burn down their house, on the walls of which Strickland has painted his final masterpiece. She then moves to the Marquesas Islands with her surviving son to live with other relatives.
Ata Quotes in The Moon and Sixpence
The The Moon and Sixpence quotes below are all either spoken by Ata or refer to Ata. 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:
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Chapters 1–16 Quotes
The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
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Chapters 17–42 Quotes
“She had a wonderful body, and I wanted to paint a nude. When I’d finished my picture I took no more interest in her.”
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Chapters 43–58 Quotes
“She leaves me alone […]. She cooks my food and looks after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman.”
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“Thou art my man and I am thy woman. Whither thou goest I will go too.”
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“But he was blind.”
“Yes; he had been blind for nearly a year.”
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“I think Strickland knew it was a masterpiece. He had achieved what he wanted. His life was complete. He had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed it.”
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Ata Character Timeline in The Moon and Sixpence
The timeline below shows where the character Ata appears in The Moon and Sixpence. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapters 43–58
...in England—too far away to matter. Anyway, Tiaré had a distant relative, a 17-year-old named Ata, who worked for her at the hotel. After Ata admitted to Tiaré that she liked...
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...Tiaré, the narrator asked her to keep speaking of Strickland. She explained that she suggested Ata and Strickland cohabit for a month to decide whether they liked each other. After the...
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...three years were the most joyful of Strickland’s life: he read and painted, unbothered on Ata’s rural property, while she had a baby and more and more of her relatives came...
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...sell for his daughter’s dowry. And once, Brunot recalls, he went to visit Strickland at Ata’s rural house. Brunot says that the house was located practically in “the Garden of Eden.”...
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...visiting a patient in Taravao when a sobbing young girl approaches and tells him that Ata has sent her down from the hills to get help for Strickland. In that moment,...
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When Dr. Coutras comes to Ata’s, she meets him outside and tells him Strickland is inside painting. Dr. Coutras is annoyed,...
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Dr. Coutras and Strickland exit the house, where Ata and her family are crying. Strickland tells Ata to stop and announces his intention to...
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...the narrator that he did not hear much of Strickland for the next two years. Ata’s extended family ceases to live with them, until Ata, Strickland, and their children are living...
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One day, Dr. Coutras decides to visit Strickland again. He comes to Strickland and Ata’s house, which looks dilapidated and desolate. When he finds Ata and her son outside, Ata...
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...Strickland is dying. When he enters Strickland’s dilapidated house, he finds a terrible stench and Ata crying on the floor. As his eyes adjust, he sees painted walls that express something...
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...out in surprise, Dr. Coutras explains that Strickland, though untroubled by his approaching death, made Ata promise to burn the house down after he died. The narrator comments: “He remained the...
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The narrator asks what happened to Ata and her child with Strickland. Dr. Coutras says that they went to live with relatives;...
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...art is, the narrator wonders whether Mrs. Strickland knows that one of the paintings represents Ata with her baby by Strickland.
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...whole family believes this quotation comes from the Bible. He suddenly pictures Strickland’s son by Ata, merry aboard a ship on the Pacific, and narrowly avoids quoting that “the devil could...
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