Betrayal

Betrayal

1. Chapter 5

   • 'It was as though she was searching for something she wanted, needed - must have, more than life itself, and which had been taken from her.'
     • She will stop at nothing to try and get revenge on the world for making her give up her child

2. Chapter 9

   • 'When they began again it was at first in passionate outrage and protest, later, in quiet, resigned bitterness. Pressure was being exerted upon her to give up the child for adoption.'
     • She felt betrayed by her own family as they were pressuring her to give up her child for adoption.
   • 'In Scotland, a son was born to her and she wrote of him with a desperate , clinging affection.'
     • She was not always bitter and resentful - it was only her feeling of betrayal by the world which made her like this.

3. Chapter 11

   • 'But it seemed most likely that only a blood relation would have given, or rather, been forced to give her illegitimate child for adoption to another woman.'
     • Arthur has realised that it was Jennet's family who betrayed her, and didn't let her keep her child
   • 'She was not welcome at her parents' house and the man - the child's father - had gone abroad for good.'
     • She feels betrayed and abandoned by everyone. even her child's father
   • 'But Jennet was so distressed that she threatened violence and in the very end the sister relented—just so far…'
     • She has to fight to see her son, even among her family, which brings a strong sense of betrayal as she can't even tell her child that she is his mother
     • 'Threatened violence' - did not care if anyone got injured, just wanted to see her son
   • 'But the feelings that must accompany the death of someone as close to my heart and bound up with my own being as it was possible to be, I knew then, in the nursery of Eel Marsh House.'
     • She was desperate to blame everyone else for the death of her son
   • 'It was for Jennet Eliza Humfrye, spinster, aged thirty-six years. The cause of death was given simply as "heart failure.'
     • She was so consumed by grief and anger that her body couldn't take it any more
   • 'Her passionate love for her child and her isolation with it, her anger and the way she at first fought bitterly against and finally, gave despairingly in to the course proposed to her, filled me with sadness and sympathy'.
     • She was betrayed by her family as she had to give up her child, and she also feels betrayed by society as it dictates that she has to give up her child
     • She feels betrayed when her child dies at the hands of the people who forced her to give him up
   • 'When she went about the streets, people drew back. Children were terrified of her. She died eventually. She died in hatred and misery.'
     • She gets no sympathy when she's alive, or while she's dead, so she comes back to haunt the town that betrayed her