The Vaster Wilds

The mistress is a selfish and vain upper-class Englishwoman to whom the girl is bound as a servant. Her treatment of the girl reveals the base and insensitive nature of her character, for she is only caring when it suits her own purposes and whims. She takes the girl in from the poorhouse not out of altruism, but because she “had been searching for a replacement pet” (120) after the death of her monkey. Her dehumanizing treatment of the girl can be seen in all of her actions, even those that appear to be kind on the surface. For example, she places the girl to sleep in her bed not out of kindness, but so that the girl can warm her feet. She doesn’t exert herself to evince concern for others in any situation, as is seen when she is more concerned about preventing her first husband from giving her the plague than she is with helping him to overcome the disease.

She is deeply insecure, and she ignores her own daughter, Bess, because she is ashamed of and disgusted by Bess’s developmental disability, the existence of which makes her feel inadequate. She sees “in her daughter her own weakness as a woman, her own insufficiencies and bald inferiority to any man around her” (106). This insecurity is also reflected in her appearance, for she exerts significant efforts to appear younger and healthier than she is. Her desire for the company of artists and poets is also an aspect of her insecurity, as is seen when she uses her money to keep them close and to solicit their compliments.

Her position in the story reflects the all-consuming nature of the imperial, colonial society of which she is a product. Even as one of the most socially powerful people in the story, her status as a woman leads her to experience subjugation at times. She is led to Jamestown out of her fear that she will be unable to prevent her husband’s infidelity if she stays behind. She does not even have the influence necessary to protect the girl from the depredations of her own son. As she says when the girl reveals that the mistress’s son and his friends have raped her, “Thou hast suffered only the daily lot of woman. Do not think for a moment that this pain I have not known myself” (143). Throughout her life, she clings desperately to forms of power that she cannot truly possess, and she is willing to punish those of lower status in order to retain her own. She is even willing to consume the flesh of her own child to stave off starvation. This action is ultimately a metaphor of her social status too, for even before she reaches her lowest moment in the doomed colony, she is a rich woman who actively consumes everything around her in order to maintain her station in life.

Bess is the daughter of the mistress and her first husband, the goldsmith. Bess has developmental disabilities, and she is largely ignored by her parents and is mainly cared for by the girl. Though Bess only ever appears in the girl’s memory and remains largely unchanged, her profound influence on the girl makes her a significant character. Bess is also one of the only named characters in the novel. The girl states that Bess was named for the queen, in the hopes that some of her virtues would be reflected back onto Bess herself. Because Bess is the one character with a proper name, this stylistic choice indicates both the power and the lack of power that others have over her. Childlike, Bess largely goes wherever she is led, but she rejects the realities of life in the colony. Ultimately, her name does not hold her to the world or define her identity—she is able to slip out of the world on her own volition, choosing the unknown of death over the misery of life in the colony.

Bess’s death greatly affects the girl. It is revealed that Bess’s death and subsequent consumption by some of the colonists (including her own mother and stepfather) is the impetus for the girl’s escape from the fort. Though the girl admits that she was jealous when the minister stole away her mistress’s attention, it is ultimately her love for Bess that truly ties her to the family. She fulfills the role of a mother for Bess, and it is the horror that ensues after Bess’s demise that motivates the girl to escape the fort. Even when Bess is still alive and the girl is still committed to caring for her, she is willing to defy the minister in order to aid her charge, snatching back her hard-won bowl of food and drinking it in spite, just so that he will not be able to steal something meant for Bess. Bess is dying by this point, but her death grants the girl freedom to act. The girl sees something brave in Bess’s death, thinking, “This sweet nothing of a child Bess, this pure baby inside her mind, could make herself die of horror in a way that far more intelligent men and women could not do, for their courage failed them” (235).