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Hortense Bowden
Captain Charlie Durham is a British colonist posted to Jamaica in the early 20th century, where he meets Ambrosia Bowden, the daughter of his landlady. He impregnates Ambrosia, who later gives birth to their daughter Clara. After the Kingston earthquake of 1907, he attempts to marry Ambrosia, but she rebuffs him.
Captain Charlie Durham Quotes in White Teeth
The White Teeth quotes below are all either spoken by Captain Charlie Durham or refer to Captain Charlie Durham. 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:
).
Chapter 13 Quotes
As the months flicked by. Ambrosia learned a lot of wonderful things from the handsome captain. He taught her how to read the trials of Job and study the warnings of Revelation, to swing a cricket bat, to sing “Jerusalem.” How to add up a column of numbers. How to decline a Latin noun. How to kiss a man’s ear until he wept like a child. But mostly he taught her that she was no longer a maidservant, that her education had elevated her, that in her heart she was a lady, though her daily chores remained unchanged. In here, in here, he liked to say, pointing to somewhere beneath her breastbone, the exact spot, in fact, where she routinely rested her broom. A maid no more. Ambrosia, a maid no more, he liked to say, enjoying the pun.
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Captain Charlie Durham Character Timeline in White Teeth
The timeline below shows where the character Captain Charlie Durham appears in White Teeth. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 12
...answers tentatively: “I guess the English in my side,” thinking of her grandfather, Captain Charlie Durham. After Joyce leaves the party, though, Clara is frustrated at herself, since she knows that...
(full context)
Chapter 13
...of what happened to her grandmother, Ambrosia Bowden, when she—the adolescent daughter of Captain Charlie Durham’s landlady—became pregnant by Captain Durham in May 1906, in Kingston, Jamaica. Captain Durham told Ambrosia...
(full context)
Durham entrusts Ambrosia’s continued education to Sir Edmund Flecker Glenard, who believed that the “natives required...
(full context)
...walks down King Street, praying for “the return of Christ or the return of Charlie Durham—the two men who could save her.” Sir Glenard blocks Ambrosia’s path as she walks down...
(full context)
Chapter 15
...her time digging through Hortense’s house, looking at pictures of her great-grandmother Ambrosia and Captain Durham. Durham looks “handsome and melancholy,” “every inch the Englishman”: by looking through the photos, Irie...
(full context)
