46 pages • 1 hour read
Joan W. BlosA Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The Prologue is a letter written in November 1899 from Catherine Hall Onesti to her great-granddaughter and namesake, another Catherine. The older Catherine is currently living in Providence. In the letter, Catherine explains to the younger Catherine that she is giving her the journal for her 14th birthday. The older Catherine turned 14 in the last year of the journal, 1831, the same year in which her father remarried; she lost her best friend, Cassie; and she left the farm. She tells her great-granddaughter that although Cassie will never grow old, she understands that life is all about changing, and she hopes that the younger Catherine will not be afraid of, or waste, her life.
Chapter 1 Summary
Chapter 1 includes journal entries from October 17 to November 7, 1830. In the first entry, Catherine states that she is 13 years, six months, and 29 days old and lives in Meredith, New Hampshire. The book was a gift from Father, Charles Hall. Her mother has been dead for four years, and she has a younger sister named Mary Martha (called Matty in the rest of the story) and a best friend, Cassie Shipman, who is a year older than Catherine. Cassie has three brothers: David, two years older; Asa, Catherine’s age; and the baby, Willie. It is the Sabbath day, so the family attended both morning and afternoon services.
In the next entry, Catherine expresses the wish that she may remain in the house forever, that no harm will come to those she loves (Father, Matty, Cassie and her family, and her Uncle Jack), and that she may train herself to want to do what she is asked to do. Subsequent entries describe life at school with Teacher Holt and a story told by Father to demonstrate that intelligence must prevail over feelings. The story tells of a man who goes searching for his lost hogs but is frightened by what seems to be a headless woman blocking his path. The next morning, he sees that the apparition is only a tangle of roots.
Catherine remarks on the coming winter, and she freshens a dress and helps Cassie and Mrs. Shipman prepare for Thanksgiving. On November 4, she is frightened by the appearance of a lanky man in a tattered coat as she returns home from school. He disappears before she can point him out to Cassie and Asa.
Mrs. Shipman calls on Father to say that her unmarried sister is coming to visit; she agrees to continue teaching Catherine and Matty household tasks in return for a cupboard that Father will build for her. The Halls visit with the Shipmans after a Sabbath service and discuss the frequent number of missing “bound boys”—indentured servants—advertised in the local newspaper. Father says that if he found such a man, he would “[t]urn him out and turn him in” (11). Cassie finds Father’s attitude honorable.
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 includes journal entries from November 10 to Thanksgiving Day, 1830. In the first entry, Catherine sees the “phantom” again in the same place, near Wally Piper’s Woods. Asa and Cassie have been teaching Catherine about her apparition, and she resolves to examine the spot. Her friend Sophy tells her that when she turns 15, she will be sent to Lowell, Massachusetts, to work in the mills. Another friend, Joshua Nelson, is thrashed in school because he tried to blame another student for something he did. The teacher makes him write a quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet 100 times about being true to oneself; Catherine resonates with the quotation.
Mrs. Shipman’s stylish sister, to be called “Aunt Lucy” by all, arrives bearing fabrics and other makings for dresses. Catherine and Cassie pass the time knitting. A deep snow falls, preventing the children from attending school. Thanksgiving Day brings a feast at the Shipman home, and everyone wears their best clothes.
Chapter 3 Summary
These journal entries cover events from November 28 to December 5, 1830. On November 29, Catherine remarks that she has lost her writing book, which she had special permission to bring home from school to show Father. She set it down outside to pick some grasses, and now it is gone. Aunt Lucy visits to ask Father to mend a leather strap for her, although she has clearly come to flirt with him. Matty asks if Father is going to marry Aunt Lucy, but Father replies that the family is doing fine as they are. Catherine wholeheartedly agrees.
On December 2, Catherine finds her lesson book on a rock near Piper’s Woods. Inside, someone has written in a ragged hand, “Pleez Miss Take Pitty I am cold” (20). Matty is ill, so Catherine doesn’t have a chance to discuss the message with her friends. Asa leaves her a note asking her to meet him at the rock, and she concludes that he must know something about the lesson book. Asa shows her boot prints in the snow and tells her that the “phantom” made them. He has read the message in her book and now guesses that the man is running away from his enslavers. Asa says that the man is cold and that they should help him, but Catherine thinks of her father’s words about the necessity of turning in such a man. She is confused and tells Asa that she must think about the matter. She intends to speak to Cassie about it the next day.
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
A Gathering of Days is a bildungsroman; the German word means “novel of education.” A bildungsroman depicts a young main character’s coming of age by experiencing a series of trials and formative experiences. As is typical of the genre, these chapters show Catherine at the start of her journey. She is just beginning to grow from an obedient child who is content with her small circle of family and friends and eager to please her father to a young woman with her own beliefs and moral center. The self-emancipated man, whose name is later revealed to be Curtis, is the catalyst for her journey of moral and emotional growth. He will prompt Catherine to change her understanding of both The Nature of Obedience and the way in which Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind, two of the novel’s main themes.
Father’s story about the supposed headless woman foreshadows the appearance of the fugitive whom Catherine calls her “phantom,” a recurring motif in the novel. At this point in the story, Catherine is struggling with the knowledge that her father would want her to turn him in. In saying that he would “[t]urn him out and turn him in” (11), Father is referring specifically to indentured servants; these young men signed a contract legally binding them to work for an employer for a period of time, either to work off a debt or in exchange for room, board, and instruction in a trade. Catherine knows that he would apply the same strict reasoning to someone escaping slavery. However, after Asa tells her that the man needs their help, she reacts with confusion rather than denial. She is not going to obey her father but will work out the right thing to do. This demonstrates character development regarding the nature of obedience since in Chapter 1, she desires to want to do what she is asked to do.
Nevertheless, at this point in the text, Catherine is still looking to others for confirmation of what is right; Chapter 3 closes with her intention to speak to Cassie about the self-emancipated man. However, the Shakespeare quotation (from Hamlet) about being true to oneself foreshadows the emotional growth that will occur.
Blos begins to build the symbolism of warmth and cold in these opening chapters. Father’s stern interpretation of the laws regarding runaways reflects a harsh attitude toward lawbreakers, even among abolitionists like the Halls. The self-emancipated man hides in the woods, despite the literal cold, because he knows that to reveal himself would result in equally cold treatment.
By the end of the section, information in the Prologue has been contextualized. The Prologue tells little about the 82-year-old Catherine except that she never returned to the farm and that she continues to embrace the life lessons she learned in the time period covered by her journal entries. However, the opening and closing of the letter offer two important details. First, she is living in Providence, the capital of Rhode Island, a bustling manufacturing center that attracted immigrants from Europe, Cabo Verde, and England. She has come a long way from her father’s insular rural community. Second, she married a man with a name of Italian origin, Onesti, in contrast to the plain English names of the families with whom she grew up. This suggests that she has carried open-mindedness into adulthood.
