Lyddie

“‘She’s letting out the fields and the horse and cow. She’s sending you to be a miller’s boy and me to housemaid. She’s got us body and soul. We got no call to give her the calf.’ […] ‘No.’ Her voice was sharper than she meant, ground as it was on three years of unspoken anger. ‘We always done that and look where it got us.’”

Lyddie has worked tirelessly to keep her family afloat, without her mother’s help, since the departure of her father. She is tremendously resentful of her mother’s presumptuousness in sending her and Charlie to work so that Mattie might benefit from the income they will generate. Lyddie’s resistance to surrendering the proceeds from the calf’s sale indicates her awareness of the injustice of her circumstances and her insistence on asserting her autonomy where she can.

“Once I walk in that gate, I ain’t free anymore, she thought. No matter how handsome the house, once I enter I’m a servant girl—no more than a black slave. She had been queen of the cabin and the straggly fields and sugar bush up there on the hill, but now someone else would call the tune. How could her mother have done such a thing? She was sure her father would be horrified—she and Charlie drudges on someone else’s place. It didn’t matter that plenty of poor people put out their children for hire to save having to feed them. She and Charlie could have fed themselves—just one good harvest—that was all they needed. And they could have stayed together.”

Lyddie has a strong sense of pride and an enduring faith in her ability to achieve whatever she sets out to through hard work. Being forced into the service of others for her mother’s benefit is an affront to her dignity. It is counterproductive and ill-timed, as she and Charlie were just finding success in their efforts to sustain the farm. Despite their poverty, Lyddie was satisfied with her life there, fulfilled by the notion that all the time and energy she and Charlie were dedicating to their home and property was an investment in their future.

“She tried to keep him in her mind—to picture, as she lay upon her own cot, how he was growing and what he was doing. She rarely thought of Rachel or Agnes or their mother. The three of them seemed to belong to another, sadder life. The possibility of their father’s return slipped into the back of her mind. She wondered once if he were dead, and that was why she seldom thought of him now. There was no pain in the thought, only a kind of numb curiosity. […] When she realized that the dream she’d clutched for three years had slipped from her grasp, she wondered if she should feel bad that she had lost it. Her own voice said crossly within her head: ‘He shouldn’t have gone. He should never have left us.’”

The fate and whereabouts of Lyddie’s father are never revealed in the novel, but his disappearance casts a shadow over Lyddie’s personal history. Lyddie does not excuse her mother’s selfish, irrational behavior stemming from Mattie’s mental illness, but she does blame her father for leaving his four children alone with a woman who had begun displaying instability even before he left. To cope with her loneliness and the required adjustment to her strenuous new role in the mill, Lyddie is forced to become somewhat detached from her previous life and the people in it, focusing only on the practical steps of achieving her goal of reclaiming the farm.

“What did she mean? Who was growing fond of Charlie? Charlie was not their child, not even their apprentice. She felt a need to explain to the woman that Charlie belonged to her, but she couldn’t figure out how. […] Well, she was glad. Hadn’t she felt bad that he didn’t have a father and mother like Luke Stevens had to watch over him? But these weren’t his real family. She was his real family. More than their mother, really, who had shucked them off like corn husks to follow her craziness.”

There is a discordance between Lyddie’s enduring tenacity and independence and the powerlessness she experiences in so many facets of her life. While she can work tirelessly to accrue the funds that might allow her to pay off the farm’s debt, she is unable to prevent Charlie from slipping away from her and growing closer to the Phinneys. Lyddie struggles to reconcile her desire to reunite her family with the limitations she realizes are associated with her youth and the tremendous responsibility that caring for her mother, siblings, and farm entails.

“It was a strange good-bye. She did not hope to see Ezekial again. She hoped that he could cross the border fast as a fox—far away from the snares of those who would trap him. How could she have imagined for one minute that she could betray him?”

Ezekial is the first Black person Lyddie has ever met. She momentarily considered how far the $100 reward for reporting his whereabouts would stretch toward reclaiming the farm. The positive impression he makes upon her is illustrated in her decision to instead give him the $25 she received from the sale of the calf. The comparison Ezekial draws between their life circumstances increasingly resonates with Lyddie as she encounters the injustices of the mill and is subjected to upheavals in her family life beyond the scope of her control. He is the first person in the novel to introduce the theme of what it means to be enslaved.

“It seemed to Lyddie that there were as many buildings crowded before her as sheep in a shearing shed. But they were not soft and murmuring as sheep. They were huge and foreboding in the gray light of afternoon. She would not have believed the world contained as much brick as there was in a single building here. They were giants—five and six stories high and as long as the length of a large pasture. Chimneys, belching smoke, reached to the low hanging sky. And the noise of it! Her impulse was to cover her ears, but she held her hands tightly in her lap. She would not begin to be afraid now, she who had stared down a bear and conversed easily with a runaway slave.”

Lyddie’s life experience and exposure to the world outside her farm have been limited over the course of her 13 years. In addition to learning the trade of operating a loom and acclimating to the factory schedule, Lyddie must also adapt to a new lifestyle filled with regulations and expectations, both explicitly stated and unspoken. Her initial intimidation, illustrated here, is contrasted later in the novel with her ease and familiarity with city life, and finally with her confidence to travel even further, beyond New England, in search of novel opportunities.

“Despite her new clothes, Lyddie could feel the shame burning through her rough brown cheeks. She ducked her bonneted head and hurried as fast as she could, almost shoving Mrs. Bedlow in her haste. Once in the yard, she was acutely aware of the thudding. The pulse of the factory boomed through the massive brick wall, and she could feel the vibrations of the machinery as they made their way up the shadowy wooden staircase, which clung for dear life to the side of the building.”

Like her fellow factory workers, Lyddie eventually acclimates to the intense atmosphere of a fully operational textile mill, but this passage shows how overwhelming one’s first impression of a massive industrial structure could be. Lyddie has a sense of her physical insignificance in relation to the breadth and scale of the operation; she is about to become just one among many who serve a larger, greater interest for those with far more power than she has.

“They seemed moved by eyes alone—the eyes of neat, vigilant young women—needing only the occasional, swift intervention of a human hand to keep them clattering. From the overarching metal frame crowning each machine, wooden harnesses, carrying hundreds of warp threads drawn from a massive beam at the back of each loom, clanked up and down. Shuttles holding the weft thread hurtled themselves like beasts of prey through the tall forests of warp threads, and beaters slammed the threads tightly into place. With alarming speed, inches of finished cloth rolled up on the beams at the front of the looms. The girls didn’t seem amazed or even afraid.”

Through Lyddie’s first impression of the weaving room, Paterson explains how the various components of the industrial looms function. This foundation for understanding becomes integral as the novel explores the complexities and safety concerns associated with operating such mighty machines. Lyddie develops an aptitude for loom operation comparatively quickly; it is through Brigid’s struggles and the mention of several accidents throughout the novel that Paterson addresses how difficult and dangerous the operation of these machines was.

“Within five minutes, her head felt like a log being split to splinters. She kept shaking it, as though she could rid herself of the noise, or at least the pain, but both only seemed to grow more intense. […] [P]erhaps the tears were caused by the swirling dust and lint. Now that she thought of it, she could hardly breathe, the air was so laden with moisture and debris. She snatched a moment to run to the window. She had to get air, but the window was nailed shut against the April morning. […] She coughed, trying to free her throat and lungs for breath.”

In this passage, the thunderous sound of all the machines operating at once contributes to Lyddie’s sudden rush of anxiety, but it is her inability to breathe that foreshadows future events related directly to the air quality inside textile mills of the period. Both Betsy and later Rachel develop persistent, worsening coughs from breathing in the tiny particles of lint constantly being sloughed off into the air. It is a reminder that the health and safety threats to Lyddie and her coworkers are both plainly apparent and insidiously hidden.

“She was so hungry to hear the story again that, exhausted as she was after her thirteen hours in the weaving room, she lay sweating across her bed mouthing in whispers the sounds of Mr. Dickens’s narrative. […] During the day at the looms, she went over in her head the bits of the story that she had puzzled out the night before. Then it occurred to her that she could copy out pages and paste them up and practice reading them whenever she had a pause. There were not a lot of pauses when she had three machines to tend, so she pasted the copied page on the frame of one of the looms where she could snatch a glance at it as she worked.”

Lyddie is propelled by her sole objective of returning to the family farm. She endures the rigors of her role in the weaving room with the knowledge that her status is temporary. Amidst the drudgery of her demanding schedule, Lyddie finds her attention captured by the story of Oliver Twist, which inspires her to develop greater reading comprehension. It is a testament to Lyddie’s resilience and motivation that she becomes innovative in copying pages from Oliver Twist so that she can devote any spare time she can glean while tending her looms to preparing herself for the future.

“So it was that when the Concord Corporation once again speeded up the machinery, she, almost alone, did not complain. She only had two looms to tend instead of the four she’d tended during the summer. She needed the money. She had to have the money. Some of the girls had no sooner come back from their summer holidays than they went home again. They could not keep up the pace. Lyddie was given another loom and then another, and even at the increased speed of each loom, she could tend all four and felt a satisfying disdain for those who could not do the work.”

Lyddie is teased by her fellow boarders at Number Five when she first arrives in Lowell; they are entertained by her naiveté and provincial manner of speaking. Lyddie has a distinctive advantage over most of her peers, however, irrespective of how long they have been working in the factory. Lyddie has spent most of her life performing grueling physical labor on the farm. Her physical endurance and emotional resilience allow her to disregard factors that eventually overwhelm her peers.

“Oh! Isn’t it a pity such a pretty girl as I

Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?

Oh! I cannot be a slave,

I will not be a slave,

For I’m so fond of liberty

That I cannot be a slave.”

This song, sung by Betsy, originated 10 years before as a hymn to the labor movement activities that resulted in the mill workers’ strike of 1836. It foreshadows Betsy’s waning tolerance with conditions at the Concord Corporation and makes a profound impact on Lyddie. When she hears the lyrics, Lyddie has already been reflecting on what it means to be a slave, beginning with her conversation with Ezekial. The connection between their work at the mill and slavery is greatly injurious to Lyddie. She acknowledged the comparison between slavery and her role at Cutler’s Tavern, but she characterizes her work at Concord Corporation as one of independence that allows for self-determination, and she takes exception to what the song implies.

“No matter how fast the machines speeded up, Lyddie was somehow able to keep pace. She never wasted energy worrying or complaining. It was almost as if they had exchanged natures, as though she had become the machine, perfectly tuned to the roaring, clattering beasts in her care. Think of them as bears, she’d tell herself. Great, clumsy bears. You can face down bears.”

Lyddie progresses to a level of proficiency that allows her to take responsibility for operating four looms at once. Each time she faces a challenge, she reminds herself that she survived her encounter with the bear through instinct and levelheadedness. In referring to Lyddie as the machine and the machines as dangerous, unpredictable living creatures, Paterson not only reveals how focused and even emotionally detached Lyddie has become but also reminds the reader of the constant danger inherent in working with heavy machinery.

“Was she thinking of Triphena when it happened? Or was she overtired? It was late on Friday—the hardest time of the week. Was she careless when she replaced the shuttle in the right-hand box or had there been a knot in the weft thread? She would never know. She remembered rethreading the shuttle and putting it back in the race, yanking the lever into its slot…Before she could think she was on the floor, blood pouring through the hair near her temple…the shuttle, the blasted shuttle.”

When she is hit by the shuttle, Lyddie is humbled because she cannot trace the accident to its origins. Lyddie has distinguished herself among her peers for her aptitude as a loom operator, but this uncharacteristic error reflects that even she is capable of making mistakes if she is not focused. It further speaks to the physical exhaustion that has been mounting in Lyddie; unlike her peers, she signed a contract as a new employee that has not allowed her to take a summer holiday. In this scene, the cumulative effects of strenuous labor catch up with Lyddie.

“She’ll never come back, Lyddie thought sadly as she watched the buggy disappear around the corner, headed for the depot and the train north. She’ll never be strong enough again to work in a mill thirteen, fourteen hours a day. When I’m ready to go myself, she thought, maybe I could sign that cussed petition. Not for me. I don’t need it, but for Betsy and the others. It ain’t right for this place to suck the strength of their youth, then cast them off like dry husks in the wind.”

When Betsy leaves, Lyddie can appreciate the injustice of her friend’s predicament. Betsy worked for Concord Corporation for 10 years, largely to pay for her brother’s education, but by the time Betsy was nearly ready to pursue her own education, her work environment had made her too sick to do anything but convalesce at her uncle’s farm in Maine. Lyddie too has worked on behalf of her family, enduring hazardous conditions at a grueling pace, and with Betsy’s illness she has begun to feel camaraderie with her peers and a sense of loyalty to them, in contrast to her previously disdainful outlook toward those who could not keep up with the increasingly unrealistic expectations of the Concord Corporation.

“‘No!’ her voice was so sharp that the roomful of girls stopped everything they were doing to stare. Even little Rachel twisted in her arms to look at her with alarm. She went close to Judah and lowered her voice again to a fierce whisper. ‘No one can sell that land except my father.’ […] She wanted to scream at him, but how could she? She had already frightened Rachel. ‘You got no right,’ she said between her teeth.”

It is in this moment that Lyddie feels her greatest frustration with her mother’s family. She has never respected her uncle Judah or Aunt Clarissa, but their willingness to dispossess her and her siblings of all that they stand to inherit from their father defies belief for her. Judah has just announced that he and Clarissa have placed Lyddie’s mother in an asylum, and he is leaving Rachel with Lyddie without warning or preparation. Lyddie has the sense that her father never would have allowed these events to transpire, and as much as she pities her mother, she begrudges Mattie for giving up on her children and their home and allowing her sister and brother-in-law to take charge of their fate.

“What made her do it? Illness? Desperation? She’d never know. But she raised her booted foot and stomped her heel down with all her might. He gave a cry, and, dropping his arms, doubled over. It was all the time she needed. She stumbled down the stairs and across the yard, nearly falling at last into the door of Number Five. He had not tried to follow.”

Lyddie had at first attributed Mr. Marsden’s extra attention to her to his appreciation of the quality of her work, but she soon becomes uncomfortable with his habit of touching her. In the 1840s, sexuality was not discussed as openly as in the 21st century; thus, many young women received no warnings or advice on how to handle inappropriate advances. Further, Lyddie is far less worldly than many of her coworkers, and even when she does parse out Mr. Marsden’s intentions, she is at a disadvantage because of the imbalance of power between her—a young, inexperienced teenage girl—and her overseer, a white man perceived to be of good moral standing.

“She tried not to feel angry at Charlie for not writing to her himself. He had, after all, done the sensible thing. To the law and their uncle, they were only children. Judah would have to listen to Quaker Stevens. He was a man of substance. She was glad to know that Luke had gotten safely home. She had finally realized that the freight he had come to fetch was human. The letter meant, though, that she could wait no longer. Something would have to be done about Rachel.”

Lyddie asked Charlie to try to persuade their uncle not to sell their farm; although she is the eldest of the Worthen children, she recognized that Charlie’s gender meant that his argument would carry more weight with her uncle. Though she understands why Charlie did not challenge Judah’s decision, she is disappointed that Charlie seems to have abandoned their dream of returning home together, and she is offended that he did not feel the need to dignify her letter with a response stating his intentions. Lyddie is not the only Worthen sister affected by the sale; if Charlie had fought the sale, Lyddie would have been able to keep Rachel and continue raising her. With no home to bring her younger sister back to, Lyddie loses Rachel for good as Charlie and the Phinneys decide Rachel’s future without her.

“What had Charlie said to the man to make him dare write such a letter? Do they think they can buy me? Do they think I will sell myself for that land? The land I have no one to take to anymore? I have nothing left but me, Lyddie Worthen—do they think I will sell her? I will not be a slave. Nor will I be his freight—some homeless fugitive that Luke Stevens must bend down his lofty Quaker soul to rescue.” 

Lyddie is furious that Charlie has tried to sway the course of her future in encouraging Luke Stevens to propose marriage to her. For Lyddie, Charlie is a child, someone she is responsible for, not the inverse. She also resents the notion that Luke’s offer could be construed as an arrangement of convenience that would allow her to keep her land in a kind of compromise. Luke’s dedication to abolition is a virtue she has come to admire, but to her the refrain of “I cannot be a slave” resonates because she feels there could be a comparison between herself and the people Luke helps gain their freedom. Lyddie finds the notion patronizing, and the offer of becoming a wife suggests to her an exchange of one type of powerlessness for another.

“Lyddie stood there, openmouthed, looking from Diana’s thin face to the other woman’s robust one. Too late. She’d come too late. She was always too late. Too late to save the farm. Too late to keep her family together. Too late to do for Diana the only thing she knew to do. […] They hurried down the dimly lit streets toward the Concord boardinghouses without speaking. Lyddie wanted to explain—to say she was sorry, to somehow make it up to Diana, but she didn’t know how to do it.”

Lyddie is fiercely independent, but by the end of the novel she has developed a sense of duty and loyalty to the coworkers she has come to call her friends. So many of them have departed over changes in expectations, reductions in wages at the mill, or personal circumstances. Lyddie does not know that she is about to lose Diana too, due to Diana’s unexpected pregnancy. Though Lyddie’s own physical strength and emotional tenacity have propelled her to keep rising to the challenges of their occupation, she realizes that without Diana, Betsy, and, to her surprise, Brigid, it might have been impossible for her to navigate past her early inexperience and insecurities and her later injury and illness. Everyone Lyddie has grown close to has been taken away from her in some form or another, and Lyddie does not want to make the mistake of failing to show her appreciation for Diana.

“Between them, she and Brigid coached several of the new spare hands […] Still, [Brigid] was more patient with them than [Lyddie] had ever been with poor Brigid at the beginning. She had to be. Brigid herself was a paragon of gentleness, teaching the new girls all that Lyddie and Diana had taught her, never raising her voice in irritation or complaint. Lyddie watched her snip off a length of thread from a bobbin and lead one of the clumsier girls over to the window and show her in the best light how to tie a weaver’s knot. It was exactly what Lyddie remembered doing, but she knew, to her shame, that her own face had betrayed exasperation, while Brigid’s was as gentle as that of a ewe muzzling her lamb.”

Lyddie perceived Brigid’s initial incompetence in weaving as a sign of weakness. It was only when Brigid confessed her fear that her mother was dying that Lyddie acted out of frustration and gave Brigid the money for the doctor. Lyddie’s intentions were not pure, but she noticed a change in Brigid, a new commitment to her work and a gratitude toward Lyddie that solidified her bond to the older girl. As Lyddie watches Brigid now, she is impressed by her ability to act with grace and compassion in teaching the other weavers. She gains respect and admiration for Brigid, and she appreciates and wants to pass on what Diana did for her. 

“If only she had not come back up the stairs. Monster! Would I have wished to leave that poor child alone? Better to feed Rachel and Agnes to the bear. And yet, Brigid was not a helpless child. She might have broken loose—stomped his foot, or…Well, it was too late for that. Lyddie had gone back. She had, mercy on her, picked up that pail of filthy water and crammed it down on the overseer’s neat little head. All she had need to do was speak. When she had called his name, he had turned and let Brigid go. But no, Lyddie could not be satisfied. She had taken that pail and rammed it till the man’s shoulders were almost squeezed up under the tin.”

Lyddie surprises herself when she crams the bucket of water over Mr. Marsden’s head, her actions impulsive and instinctual. While Lyddie has some conflicting feelings in the aftermath, her actions reveal a great deal about how her mindset has changed since she started working at the mill. Her role as protector of Charlie, Rachel, and Agnes has transferred to Brigid; Lyddie displays a kind of selflessness in reacting more harshly to Mr. Marsden’s attempted assault on Brigid than she did to his assault on her. Lyddie only wanted to get away from Mr. Marsden in stomping on his foot; in slamming the bucket down over his head, she wanted to teach him a lesson. Lyddie is willing to tolerate the strenuous expectations for productivity in the mill, but she is not willing to endure indignities against her person.

“She did not like Mr. Marsden. She had never liked him, but she had tried to please him—tried to win his approval by being the best. And though she needed to know what it was exactly that he was accusing her of, she knew he had not told the agent of those encounters. So, it was something else she had done wrong. She would have asked Mrs. Bedlow, but she was afraid the word would come out ‘turpentine’ and Mrs. Bedlow would laugh. She couldn’t bear to be laughed at, not just now. […] As soon as she was out of sight of the bookshop window, she rested her parcels on the sidewalk and opened the dictionary. It took her some time to find the word. The pages were thin, and her fingers calloused and clumsy, and she did not know the spelling. But she found it at last. What? She would have howled in the street had it not been so crowded with passersby. She was not a vile or shameful character! She was not base or depraved. She was only ignorant, and what was the sin in that? He was the evil one to accuse her of such. She had done nothing evil, only foolish.”

The theme of power dynamics pervades Lyddie’s experiences. She is first at the mercy of her mother’s decision to lease out the farm and send her into servitude; then she is obligated to uphold the rules of the mill and boardinghouse. Lyddie becomes more worldly during her time in Lowell, but her unfamiliarity with the term “turpitude” places her at a disadvantage, unable to defend herself when Mr. Marsden lies about her character. This lost opportunity only encourages Lyddie’s desire to acquire more knowledge and is likely a contributing factor to her forthcoming decision to pursue a college education at Oberlin and the empowerment that will come from that education.