The Heretic's Daughter

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “April 1691-August 1691”

When Sarah returns home, she’s resentful and struggles to adjust to her family. She misses Grandmother Allen and is particularly angry at her mother, Martha, for separating her from Margaret. Once the epidemic ended, the selectmen wanted the Carriers to leave Andover, but Reverend Dane once again came to their aid. Sarah’s grandmother was respected in the community, and her final wish was that the Carriers inherit her farm and continue to maintain the property. Thus, the family remained.

The villagers live in constant dread of Indigenous attacks. Once smallpox ravaged the tribes, they began abducting young settlers to offset their own losses. Captives were either adopted into US tribes or taken to Canada. Their only hope was to be ransomed back. During planting season, the Carriers need additional help, so Thomas ransoms an orphaned girl named Mercy Williams, who was a captive for about three years. Sarah notes, “The skin on her face was pitted with pox scars, and, despite the washing, she had a smell about her of something sour, like milk gone bad or calfskin poorly tanned” (78).

Although Mercy is strong and a hard worker, she’s also sly and malicious. She soon begins to show an interest in the community’s young men, especially Sarah’s eldest brother, Richard. However, he isn’t particularly interested in her until she shows him some battle tactics she learned from her captors. One day, Sarah’s brother Tom tells her a story about some trouble with Allen Toothaker, Uncle Roger’s eldest son. He tried to persuade Martha that the homestead should have gone to Aunt Mary after Grandmother’s death since she was the eldest daughter. Martha sent him away, but he promised to take the property even if he had to burn the Carriers out.

In July, a thunderstorm threatens the area. Unable to sleep with lightning flashing all around, Sarah notices that Mercy has left her bed. Sarah tracks her to the barn, where she discovers Mercy in the hayloft with Richard. They appear to be having sex, and Sarah throws one of her shoes at Mercy’s head. Later that night, the entire family awakens to learn that their fields are on fire. An elm tree was struck by lightning, and the blaze spread quickly. Everyone desperately battles the fire to try to save their crops. Fortunately, the wind shifts direction and blows the fire toward the neighboring Holt property to the east. The next morning, the Carriers discover that their wheat crop was spared but the hay has burned: “When Robert Russell came to the house days after for the harvesting of the wheat, he said there were hardened feelings from the Holts, as our crops had been spared and theirs had not” (98).

In August, Sarah witnesses a heated confrontation between her mother and Mercy. The latter claims to be pregnant by Richard and demands that he marry her. Martha insists on examining the girl and finds she’s still a virgin. Apparently, the tryst that Sarah witnessed in the hayloft was never consummated. Enraged by Mercy’s lies and her stealing, Martha turns her out of the house: “For all that you stole, I might have forgiven you, but worst of all is your lying. I will not abide a liar” (104). Mercy immediately finds work as a barmaid at Chandler’s, a nearby tavern and inn.

Chapter 4 Summary: “September 1691-December 1691”

In September, Uncle Roger visits the family. Sarah is overjoyed to see him since he brings her a sampler that Margaret stitched as a gift for her. Martha, however, is wary of her brother-in-law. She soon learns that he wants to negotiate the transfer of the farm into his wife’s name since she’s the eldest child of the deceased Mrs. Allen. Martha insists that Grandmother Allen’s dying wish was that she retain the property. The dispute continues until Sarah’s father enters the house carrying an axe, and Roger beats a hasty retreat.

Later that month, Sarah is summoned to help her mother when a neighbor’s cow and calf are found devouring their corn crop. Martha tethers the cow and marches off to the Preston property to tell the landowner to mind his livestock. He’s known as a greedy bully, but Martha stands up to him: “Samuel Preston, the next cow that wanders onto our land will be ours in recompense [...] Take heed to take better care of what’s yours or what’s yours will sicken and die” (118-19).

Later in the autumn, Sarah sees Mercy at the meetinghouse with her new best friend, Phoebe Chandler, the tavern owner’s daughter. The two gang up on Sarah as she leaves the service. They’re on the verge of beating her when Reverend Dane strolls past. Mercy covers quickly but threatens to burn Sarah alive if she tells anyone about the attack.

By the end of October, Sarah’s resentment toward her mother increases. One day, Martha takes Sarah for a walk in a beautiful meadow. She says that when she was a girl, Grandmother allowed her one chance to speak out all her grievances without fear of punishment. This cleared the air between them. Now, Martha is offering Sarah the same opportunity, but the girl refuses to take it. Martha doesn’t force Sarah but cautions her daughter about trusting Uncle Roger: “He is one who appears outwardly all smooth, all right with his fellows, when inwardly his heart is filled with poison” (132). Sarah refuses to believe the warning: “If you mean that I am to give up my love for Margaret because you have a quarrel with Uncle, I will not do it. And you cannot beat it out of me. Margaret is everything to me” (133).

In November, the family plans a dinner for their neighbor, Robert Russell. His niece will accompany him, and Richard seems intent on courting her. Sarah is sent to Chandler’s tavern for a bucket of beer for the feast. While there, she sees her uncle taking liberties with Mercy, who encourages his advances. The drunken Roger sees Sarah’s eyes on him: “He raised a finger and pointed at me, jabbing the air like a sword, and said, ‘I am watching you. I am watching you all” (140).

Outside the tavern, Sarah is once again attacked by Mercy and Phoebe. This time, she fights back and bites Mercy’s hand. Phoebe’s mother arrives to break up the attack but blames Sarah for starting it. Sarah says to Mercy, “I hope it rots until every finger on your thieving hand falls off” (142). Mercy calls on everyone within earshot to witness that she’s been cursed by the daughter of a witch.

As winter closes in again, a group of girls in Salem indulge in some innocent fun by conjuring a Venus glass to foretell the identity of their future husbands. Sarah notes, “The spin within that fragile vessel would form a vortex into which the good and the evil alike would be sucked down and drowned” (145).

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

The book’s second segment principally focuses on the theme of A Community in Crisis. By the spring of 1691, the Puritans have survived another wave of smallpox, but they’re still vulnerable to Indigenous massacres and abductions. Unfortunately, these negative events take on spiritual significance as local preachers point out that such afflictions are God’s punishments for people’s sinfulness. Stoking the anxieties of the Puritan community, each new Sunday sermon suggests they’re under constant scrutiny and are found wanting by a God who is swift to punish but slow to forgive. Sarah describes one of Reverend Barnard’s sermons:

It was a different matter when the Reverend Barnard let loose his dark visions upon the people, for though his voice was like creek water over soapstone, his message was ominous. Friend to the great theologian Cotton Mather, he was a minister of ferocious and unshakable belief that God was as hard as bedrock (85).

Although the threat of Indigenous attacks and a vengeful God are ever-present in the minds of the people, the central threat to the community seems to be petty rivalries and jealousies that fester among the citizens of Andover and Billerica.

This segment features a few instances in which Martha’s fiery temper causes trouble with her neighbors. Words that she utters in anger are interpreted as the curses of a witch. She nearly comes to blows with Farmer Preston after his cow wanders into the Carrier property and eats much of their corn crop. Martha’s unwillingness to back down is seen as unnatural: “I don’t think, until that moment, a woman had ever met his anger without a bowed head and a curved back. It so disturbed his expectations that he took a few steps backwards” (118).

After the Carrier fields catch fire from a bolt of lightning, another neighbor claims that Martha cast a spell to make the wind shift so that the Carrier crops would be spared and a neighbor’s field would burn instead. Martha retorts, “Susannah is old and half blind, and if I was dancing about, it was to put out the fire from the hem of my skirt” (99). While Martha dismisses such accusations as rubbish, they continue to mount. Troubles multiply when nephew Allen Toothaker insists that the Carrier farm belongs to his family. After Martha won’t yield on the subject, he threatens her. Tom later tells Sarah about the dispute:

There was a terrible row. Mother clapped her hands in front of his face and told him he would get nothing by it. And that he would get the house only over her corpse. Then Allen said, as angry as I’ve ever seen a man, “That may well be” (88).

Martha makes yet another enemy through her outspoken criticism of Mercy. After she catches the latter in a lie, in addition to stealing, Martha turns her out of the house, and Mercy turns her wrath on Sarah and her mother. Martha advises Sarah not to allow grudges to fester, not realizing how much anger is already being directed toward her. Sarah notes, “She told me that hoarding anger is like hoarding grain in a lidded rain barrel. The dark and the dank will cause the seeds to sprout but the lack of light and air will soon force the grain to spoil” (129).

Martha regards her own frankness as a virtue in a community riddled with hypocrisy. She considers it absurd that looking pious at the meetinghouse has become more important than having a good heart. She tries to warn Sarah away from trusting appearances by showing her a poisonous mushroom that looks edible:

That which is scarred and pitted in nature can mean sustenance and life, whereas a smooth and pretty skin can mean destruction and death. People, too, are not often what they seem, even those whom you love. You must look closely, Sarah (132).

Martha’s analogy is meant to warn her daughter away from her often charming uncle, Roger Toothaker. Unfortunately, Sarah is still too young to appreciate the lesson. However, Martha has yet to appreciate the degree to which her honesty has stirred up the malice of her neighbors. This puts Martha, her daughter, and the rest of her immediate family in danger because the authorities of the Puritan community, powerless to address real threats such as disease, are eager to exert control. It serves their agenda to spread false beliefs and keep people in a state of unnecessary suspicion and fear over things that instead might require simple neighborly compassion and understanding.