Lone Women

Mrs. Grace Price is Adelaide’s neighbor, who eventually becomes her close friend and confidante. She is also a homesteader, as well as a hopeful schoolteacher, though she admits that her son Sam is her only student. Grace is initially presented as standoffish and critical. She makes several appraising comments about Adelaide’s cabin when she first visits, and Adelaide finds that Grace is “[t]he advisor. Full of suggestions even when no one asked for them” (60). Although this trait can be off-putting, Adelaide decides to befriend Grace, who is in desperate need of friendship, just like Adelaide herself. Grace is also a social outcast, largely because of the town’s negative attitude toward Sam, who is later revealed to be trans. Even before this revelation, it is evident that Grace has no interest in sacrificing her identity to suit the expectations of others, and this stolid sense of self often damages her potential relationships. However, Grace’s demeanor fosters a sense of trust and kinship in Adelaide.

Grace’s other defining characteristics is her utter devotion to Sam. She is willing to face ostracization at best and physical harm at worst in order to keep him safe and to allow him to live an authentic life. As she explains to Mrs. Reed after slapping the woman across the face, “If you ask me to pick between my child and your approval, I will pick this boy every time” (183). Grace’s protection of and dedication to Sam comes at the expense of her own well-being. She bears a physical reminder of the lengths to which she will go, for she received the injury to her hand when she attempted to defend herself from the Mudges. Functioning as a kind of curse-mark, the injured hand “never recover[s] its color quite the same. The back of the hand show[s] spiderwebs of veins, and the fingers [look] faintly purple and [will] until the end of time” (142). Grace also experiences frequent pain in this hand: another reminder of her determination and sacrifices. The one time she does not experience pain in this hand is when she uses it to strike Mrs. Reed for suggesting that Grace change Sam’s “presentation.” This act highlights that Grace can overcome pain and physical limitations in order to defend her child from persecution.

Mrs. Reed is initially introduced as a motherly figure, a town leader who wants to make everyone feel welcome and dedicates herself to finding new ways to improve the small town of Big Sandy. Initially depicted as a small, well-dressed woman with a warm demeanor, she officiously greets newcomers at the train station every day. She provides a welcoming gesture and advice for Adelaide upon her arrival in town, and from Adelaide’s perspective, “[t]he woman seemed to grow in direct proportion to her generosity of spirit, until it almost felt like she and Adelaide were standing eye to eye” (28). Indeed, Mrs. Reed’s showy displays of generosity stand as her defining trait for much of the novel. For example, she uses her own funds to construct the Big Sandy opera house and purchase the organ, and she is also generous with her time, devoting herself to the promotion of women’s suffrage and to leading the local women's organization, the Busy Bees. Mrs. Reed is in many ways synonymous with the town of Big Sandy.

However, Mrs. Reed’s petite size and friendly spirit belie her true nature, which is soon revealed to be self-centered, power-loving, and manipulative. She often gathers members of the town before her in the opera house, ostensibly to share news and information, but also because she insists on being the center of attention. She is supposedly supportive of all women, but only up to a point, for she is quick to vilify Fiona Wong due to the latter’s race and ethnicity. Mrs. Reed therefore emerges as one of the novel’s main antagonists, representing a dire threat to the safety of Adelaide and her fellow “lone women.”

Mrs. Reed’s performance of generosity and her desire for control both stem from her own secret guilt: that she once bore a monstrous child just like Elizabeth and allowed her husband to kill it. Rather than facing the consequences of her actions, she throws herself into the development of the town, cultivating compliance among its inhabitants. While she may unconsciously feel guilt for the actions that she and her husband took against their child, she also claims that it was the “right” course of action to take. By refusing to show any remorse, Mrs. Reed shows her cold and ruthless qualities, which allow her to plainly and even happily order the hanging of Grace, Fiona, and Bertie. In her mind, it is the only “right” and logical thing to do in the face of what she perceives to be horror and defiance.