55 pages • 1 hour read
Nancy E. TurnerThese Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Coming of Age and Developing an Authentic Self
These Is My Words is a coming-of-age story that granularly depicts Sarah Prine’s transition to maturity. In realistic fashion, this growth process is neither even nor consistent. Rather, Sarah’s growth to maturity gradually shifts from exercises in external reference and youthful mimicry to internal understanding through self-reflection.
Early in the novel, Sarah first shows growth through her observations and emulation of Savannah and her reading of etiquette manuals like The Happy Bride. These early stages in Sarah’s maturation process are external to her own experience, guided by models and source guides that she references toward becoming a proper—and, therefore, marriageable—lady. To avoid becoming an “old maid,” she seeks to be seen as appealingly feminine, rather than the boyish girl she was on Papa’s New Mexico ranch. Thus, additional influences on Sarah’s early growth come from the page she finds from The Duchess of Warwick and the Sears and Roebuck catalog at Mr. Fish’s store, which features pictures of beautiful dresses she wants to own. Her early externalized exercises in growing up link womanhood to behaving and being seen by others as a lady. As such, Sarah aspires early on only to achieve the appearance of growth, as manifested by the physical and performative trappings of womanhood: She is interested in pretty dresses and how to behave properly around men, but her conception of maturity doesn’t reach beyond these parameters. As an external process, then, Sarah’s early stages of growth are intricately linked to one of the novel’s most significant symbols: books, which she associates with both education and feminine gentility.
Particularly in the years following Jimmy Reed’s death, however, Sarah’s growth process shifts from external reference to internal understanding. Not only do her developing self-awareness and confidence make significant strides in this period, but her experiences during this time also lead her to accept and understand her own emotions and desires. For example, when Jimmy dies, Sarah cries for herself—not for Jimmy—yet she does not articulate why she does this. Nevertheless, his death embitters her for a time, until Ruben Maldonado unexpectedly proposes and inspires in Sarah an epiphany. With this proposal, Sarah suddenly realizes she married Jimmy based on advice like that of The Happy Bride, but not out of love. As she once believed of Jimmy, Sarah knows Ruben “will make a good husband” (150), but she refuses his proposal because she does not love him; instead, she accepts her longing for a loving marriage like Savannah and Albert’s and casts off the tenets she once read in books.
Sarah’s internal growth progresses still further as she links her own difficult experiences to those of others. Through this progress, she develops a rich sense of empathy, particularly for Mama. For instance, following the death of her youngest daughter, Suzanne, Sarah comes to understand Mama’s reaction to her losses of Clover and Papa early in the novel. Comparing her children’s abilities to go on with their lives after Suzanne’s death to her own experience of losing Clover, Sarah suddenly appreciates that “losing a brother or sister is not nearly so terrible as losing a child” (365). This leads her to conclude that it’s “[n]o wonder Mama went away in her head when Clover passed on” (363). She regrets the frustration she felt toward her mother at that time as she acknowledges, “If I knew how to make myself go away in my head, I declare I would” (363). Sarah’s growth process shifts from externalizations that play at adulthood to a deeper understanding that results from the difficult experiences she faces. These experiences inspire her to turn inward in reflection, drawing her attention away from surface-level appearances of maturity and toward authentic understandings of her own needs and feelings.
Distinctions Between Education and Intelligence
The novel’s thematic distinction between education and intellect revolves around its narrator, protagonist, and fictional author’s experiences and attitudes. Sarah receives no formal education over the course of her life, but this ostensible lack does not diminish her intelligence. However, for much of the novel, Sarah does not perceive her own aptitude, and her lack of education makes her insecure. As she matures, she grows to understand that her experiences can enhance her intellect and that wisdom can be gained apart from schooling.
In the first half of the novel, Sarah sees and treats books as practical tools for self-education and wisdom, and her perception of them does not change much. However, the almost desperate importance she attaches to them changes as she grows into adulthood. For example, when her wagon train happens upon an abandoned book-filled wagon in Chapter 3, she registers being “struck greedier than ever in [her] life” (44): “I want [the wagon full of books] so bad I am just beside myself. All these words to read and know is more than my insides can stand and I am trembling all over with excitement” (44).
Sarah sees endless possibilities for self-edification in this wagon; it is the “dearest treasure” on which she ever laid eyes and a doorway to expanding her reading skills and education. She keeps the collection after settling with her family in Arizona Territory and notes in several early chapters that she hungrily reads through the trove. However, in proceeding chapters, Sarah’s focus shifts as she takes on marriage, has children, and inherits a ranch that she must maintain. By her early twenties, she is less able to find time for self-education via reading.
Following these life changes, two main factors contribute to her insecurity about her lack of formal education: Chess’s informing her of Jack’s attendance at West Point and the building of a new university that she knows she will not attend in Tucson. She does not understand why Jack never told her himself about his education and becomes convinced he must be ashamed of her “because [she is] so ignorant” (277). Jack assures her that “lack of education does not keep a person from being intelligent” and that she is not ignorant (278). Nevertheless, Sarah struggles to understand what he means and later continues to feel an “achy sadness” as she rides past the building site of the new university. She feels the “greedy” longing she felt when she found the wagon of books, but this time, she believes she cannot satiate it. She sees her life as a road with “bends and forks to choose” (309); given her domestic responsibilities, she asserts that attending college “would be foolishness” (309). Sarah carries this sadness about the end of her education for a year.
In the novel’s final chapters, however, she has a moment of clarity concerning her intelligence, education, and Jack’s statement. Sarah’s sudden understanding is triggered while she reads as her children nap, and she recalls an insight shared with her by Blue Horse: “Wisdom is not a path, it is a tree” (317). Sarah realizes that her lack of formal education does not leave a “big empty spot” in her life (318); rather, she can live the life she has chosen and still “spread out” and continue learning through raising her children. Sarah finally views her life as a form of education and a way to continue enriching her intellect through experiences. In this key scene, she at once understands that she may educate her children through her experiences while edifying herself through theirs, particularly as she is intent on their receiving formal education.
The Difference Between Bravery and Courage
These Is My Words thematizes the nuanced distinctions between the qualities of bravery and courage through Jack and Sarah’s complementary characterizations as brave and courageous, respectively. While these gradations of difference eventually complement their marriage, early in their relationship, the ways Jack’s bravery differs from Sarah’s courage create frustration, particularly for her. This frustration defines Sarah’s experience of her relationship with Jack for some time, as it takes a significant portion of their marriage for her to accept his bravery as an instinctive part of who he is. When she is finally able to accept this distinction between Jack and herself, she makes peace with this intrinsic quality of his character.
Bravery is a quality of mind distinguished by a person’s ability to confront something dangerous, difficult, or even painful without fear. Bravery does not necessarily need a particular cause to inspire it; it is simply a quality a person has or does not have. Jack exemplifies this quality. Early in the story, Sarah watches him fearlessly defend their wagon train against Indian ambushes; following her settlement in Arizona Territory, he rescues her from danger on several occasions. Moreover, it simply “doesn’t occur to him” to ever turn down a campaign assignment from the military (273), even after they are married and preparing to move to Tucson to be closer to his fort. For his service, Jack is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for “bravery and exceptional action in the line of duty” (271); however, the actions he took were, as Jack describes it, “hare-brained” and unnecessarily dangerous. Sarah stares at Jack as he tells her this, contrasting his activities with her own propensity to “not do anything hare-brained in the first place” (272). Jack’s bravery functions as an instinct or impulse, as he shows no hesitation in endangering himself to save others; however, Sarah mistakes his impulses as conscious, foolish choices that frighten and frustrate her.
Early in their marriage, Sarah mistakes Jack’s bravery for courage—one of her own most pronounced character traits. Courage is a choice: It is something one finds within when a cause inspires it. Thus, courage refers to one’s ability to face something dangerous, difficult, or painful despite the presence of fear. Sarah finds this quality in herself again and again. For example, despite paralyzing fear and fury, she shoots the two men who rape Ulyssa in Chapter 1. In Chapter 7, Sarah fights through a terrifying and long labor to deliver April. In Chapter 15, she nervously rides Rose through a flood to help Savannah with a complicated birth. When someone close to Sarah is at risk, she carries out daunting feats, even though she is afraid. Unlike Jack, there is no evidence in the novel of Sarah doing anything “hare-brained” or dangerously foolhardy for the sake of a friend or a stranger. This is why, during the first years of their marriage, Sarah claims to hate Jack for leaving her to “go off and chase around the country,” putting himself in danger (274). She is constantly afraid of his being killed in the line of duty and their children having to grow up without a father.
Ironically, it is due to her courageous spirit that Sarah is eventually able to accept Jack’s bravery and its manifestation in his military career. The Elliot family moves to Tucson to be close to Jack’s fort in Chapter 17. While her relative unfamiliarity with the city unnerves her, proximity to the fort brings Jack’s work into perspective for Sarah. She becomes familiar with the men he works alongside, and when Jack leaves with a detachment in the fall of 1887, she does not register her customary anxiety. Rather than worrying for his safety, she now trusts his fellow soldiers; rather than hating him for leaving, she focuses on raising their children. Though, in the remaining chapters, Sarah still registers the occasional concern for Jack, her courage and open-mindedness in their new Tucson life inspire her acceptance of Jack’s bravery. Through their move to Tucson, Sarah comes to understand this crucial difference between Jack and herself and learns to accept it as part of their life together
