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Harriet Bird / The Woman
Iris turns up in the stadium during one of Hobbs’ games, and her presence seems to inspire him to play better, as he hits an impressive home run right after seeing her. Hobbs later pursues Iris, leading to an erotic scene at a lake. Unlike Memo, Iris is kind and empathetic, and Hobbs confides in her about his desires and his past. Though Iris never encountered Hobbs before attending his game, she feels naturally protective of and maternal towards him. When she reveals that she is both a mother and a grandmother, though, Hobbs is repulsed, and he decides to pursue Memo again. Iris’s letters to Hobbs, which go unanswered, suggest that she became a mother by “mistake” (possibly as the result of a rape), yet Hobbs is hardly as forgiving and sympathetic to Iris as she is to him. Hobbs hits Iris with a foul ball during the last game of the Knights’ season, and though injured, she manages to tell him that she is pregnant with his child. Tragically, though, it is too late for Hobbs to redeem himself and become the upstanding, moral individual Iris would want as her child’s father, since he has already agreed to Judge Banner’s bribe. Iris is a figure who might save Hobbs from himself, but his poor decisions ensure his own failures, free of her positive influence.
Iris Lemon Quotes in The Natural
The The Natural quotes below are all either spoken by Iris Lemon or refer to Iris Lemon. 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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Batter Up! Part 5 Quotes
[Hobbs] woke in the locker room, stretched out on a bench […] He sat there paralyzed though his innards were in flight […] He longed for a friend, a father, a home to return to—saw himself packing his duds in a suitcase, buying a ticket, and running for a train. Beyond the first station he’d fling Wonderboy out the window.
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Batter Up! Part 6 Quotes
Half [Iris’s] life ago, just out of childhood it seemed […] she had one night alone in the movies met a man twice her age, with whom she had gone walking in the park. Sensing at once what he so unyieldingly desired, she felt instead of fright, amazement at her willingness to respond […] She had all she could do to tear herself away from him, and rushed through the branches, scratching her face and arms in the bargain. But he would not let her go, leading her always into dark places.
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Batter Up! Part 7 Quotes
It later struck him that the picture he had drawn of Memo sitting domestically home wasn’t exactly the girl she was. The kind he had in mind, though it bothered him to admit it, was more like Iris seemed to be, only she didn’t suit him. Yet he could not help but wonder what was in her letter.
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Iris Lemon Character Timeline in The Natural
The timeline below shows where the character Iris Lemon appears in The Natural. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Batter Up! Part 5
...might go well for him if he were able to play. Hobbs spots a young black-haired woman in the stands and is intrigued by her; she wears a red dress and a...
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...Pop asks Hobbs to go play with “any decent stick.” Hobbs refuses. In the stands, the woman in the red dress rises; she bows her head to the dugout, as if trying to “communicate something she...
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Hobbs goes to bat and strikes out twice. The woman in the stands rises for the third time, and a photographer takes a picture of her; she is...
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Batter Up! Part 6
The novel cuts to the perspective of a woman, Iris, waiting on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, thinking about the man she is about to meet,...
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Hobbs asks Iris why she decided to stand up for him in the stands, and she eventually explains...
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Iris and Hobbs discuss suffering and past trauma: Iris promises she will never hurt Hobbs and...
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...too long, hoping to “touch the bottom” of the lake. “A sense of abandonment” grips Iris, who reflects that she stood up because Hobbs is a “man whose life she wanted...
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Batter Up! Part 7
...an enormous amount of food each day. Hobbs wonders whether to open the letter from Iris he has been carrying around. He feels that he cannot be with her, since he...
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...have together as husband and wife, though he knows that Memo is not domestic—and that Iris would be more suitable as a wife.
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Batter Up! Part 8
...suggesting that Memo might leave him for Sands. Hobbs agrees to the deal. Hobbs reads Iris’s letter about her child and grandchild: she writes that her love for her child outweighed...
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Batter Up! Part 9
...as a memory in which his mother “drowned the black tom cat in the tub;” Iris, too, weighs on his mind, and Roy strikes out. The game progresses slowly, with neither...
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...in the face. She collapses. Hobbs follows the crowd toward her, realizing that it is Iris. When he carries her into the clubhouse, she tells him that he must win for...
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