Freedom Crossing

Laura’s apparel and manners, and their relationship to femininity, are motifs used throughout the novel to elevate Laura’s character arc. At the beginning of the book, she is nervous for Joel to see her in her bed clothes and prefers to be seen “wearing a starched blue housedress and her hair, smoothly brushed [is] pulled back and tied with a blue ribbon” (37). In Virginia, her aunt and uncle taught her to be a proper lady, which to them means letting other people take care of her while she focuses on music and sewing lessons.

As a child she had been more independent, roaming through the woods with Joel and gathering nuts and berries. At the time, “Her mother had called her a tomboy, but her father had said, ‘Let her go. She’s healthier than those pasty-faced little girls who never poke their noses out of doors’” (7). Throughout the book, Laura finds ways to break out of the confines of traditional femininity. When she puts on some of Bert’s old clothes to take Martin to Tryon’s Folly, her “first thought [is] how easy it [is] to run without skirts. Boys [are] certainly lucky” (131). When she encounters Joel at the house, she no longer cares that he sees her out of her fancy dresses and with her hair up. Finally finding herself again, she regains her independence and sense of adventure.