The Great Meadows in Wethersfield, Connecticut represent the idea that home isn’t tied to a specific place—rather, a person can feel at home simply by connecting with and appreciating their surroundings, wherever they are. When Kit first arrives in Wethersfield, she misses Barbados, her childhood home. In Puritan New England, Kit finds life dreary and restrictive, and the landscape looks grim compared to vibrant Barbados. All in all, Kit misses happy, privileged life she had in Barbados, where she “[ran] free as the wind in a world filled with sunshine.” Although New England initially seems incompatible with the sense of comfort and belonging that she associates with Barbados, Kit finds this homey feeling again in the Great Meadows.
As soon as Kit sees the Meadows, a wide-open stretch of land in Wethersfield, she immediately feels at home in them even though they’re unfamiliar to her. As novel describes it, “the Meadows claim[] her and ma[k]e her their own.” She’s not sure why she feels an affinity for them, but the novel suggests that it’s “the sense of freedom and space and light [of the Meadows] that [speak] to her of home.” In other words, Kit feels the same sense of comfort and freedom that she did in Barbados. The implication is that home isn’t necessarily limited to one’s country of origin—rather, it can be anyplace a person feels liberated, comfortable, and connected to their environment. It doesn’t necessarily matter where exactly Kit is, then, so long as she feels this way.
It’s also significant that Hannah Tupper, who becomes one of Kit’s closest friends, lives in the Meadows. Hannah shows Kit the kindness, love, and support that Kit has been missing while living in New England. When Uncle Matthew forbids Kit from seeing Hannah again because he believes that Hannah is a witch, Kit refuses to obey him. She knows that “[s]he ha[s] found a secret place, a place of freedom and clear sunlight and peace” in Hannah’s cottage in the Meadows, and that “nothing that anyone could say would prevent her from going back to that place again.” The Meadows and Hannah become Kit’s new idea of home, as they give her the feelings of peace and freedom that she associates with feeling at home. Home, then, isn’t an unchanging place or set of people; home is a feeling that a person creates by forming meaningful connections with the people and places around them.
Great Meadows Quotes in The Witch of Blackbird Pond
As they came out from the shelter of the trees and the Great Meadows stretched before them, Kit caught her breath. She had not expected anything like this. From that first moment, in a way she could never explain, the Meadows claimed her and made her their own. As far as she could see they stretched on either side, a great level sea of green, broken here and there by a solitary graceful elm. Was it the fields of sugar cane they brought to mind, or the endless reach of the ocean to meet the sky? Or was it simply the sense of freedom and space and light that spoke to her of home?
“The river is so blue today,” [Kit] said sleepily. “It could almost be the water in Carlisle Bay.”
“Homesick?” asked Nat casually, his eyes on the blue strip of water.
“Not here,” she answered. “Not when I’m in the meadow, or with Hannah.”
“Why should you take it upon yourself to mend a roof for the Quaker woman?” demanded [Matthew].
“She lives all alone—” began Kit.
“She is a heretic, and she refuses to attend Meeting. She has no claim on your charity.”
As Kit watched, her uncle bent slowly and scooped up a handful of brown dirt from the garden patch at his feet, and stood holding it with a curious reverence, as though it were some priceless substance. As it crumbled through his fingers his hand convulsed in a sudden passionate gesture. Kit backed through the door and closed it softly. She felt as though she had eavesdropped. When she had hated and feared her uncle for so long, why did it suddenly hurt to think of that lonely defiant figure in the garden?
Great Meadows Symbol Timeline in The Witch of Blackbird Pond
