Toliver's Secret

“In the bedrooms upstairs lived six British officers who had moved into Grandfather’s house when the redcoats took New York three months ago. Ellen disliked those officers. Always sniffing snuff up their proud noises and sneezing daintily into white kerchiefs when they weren’t striding about giving orders.”

This quotation provides exposition about the temporal and geographical setting of the novel. Since the British took over New York in the late summer of 1776, the novel takes place toward the end of that year. It also refers to a historical event called the 1765 Quartering Act, which went into effect upon the British occupation of New York and declared that business owners and other residents must provide lodging for the British. Taking over the colonists’ living quarters, combined with the British officers’ superior attitudes, earns them Ellen’s dislike, which also begins to explore the theme of The Impact of War on Individuals and Families.

“‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Grandfather. ‘Just stand up for yourself, Ellen. That’s what I did—when I was a boy and small for my age.’

Ellen doubted she could stand up for herself when Dicey went blustering about like a tough butcher-boy.

‘Ellen’s not a boy,’ Mother said quietly. ‘She can’t roister about like a boy.’”

Grandfather doesn’t perceive Traditional 18th-Century Gender Roles the same way Ellen and Mother do. Grandfather doesn’t think that gender determines how one should act in a situation: He believes a boy and a girl can stand up to a bully in the same way. Ellen and her mother have more binary ideas about what types of things girls can do. Ellen uses a simile to compare Dicey’s “bluster” to the actions of a boy, implying that boys and girls inherently act differently.