The Girls in the Stilt House

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of racism, gender discrimination, child abuse, cursing, illness and death, rape, animal abuse and death, and emotional abuse.

Ada is the novel’s dynamic protagonist, a 16-year-old girl who returns to her childhood home in Natchez Trace, Mississippi, after running away with an older man one year earlier. When she returns to her father's house, she is—in many ways—the same meek, mousy girl who left. She craves love and abhors her abusive father, but she has nowhere else to go. After Matilda kills Virgil, she confirms that Ada is pregnant, and Ada quickly learns to rely on the very capable older girl who has had to learn a lot more about life out of necessity. Despite Virgil’s abuse and Sylvie’s death, she has been shielded from some of the harsh realities of the world that Matilda has had to confront head-on. Throughout the novel, however, Ada becomes a confident, self-possessed young woman and a capable mother, someone who is prepared to live independently and take responsibility for herself and her life, demonstrating The Resilience of Women.

Ada changes from a character who waits for other people to help her into one who helps herself.