53 pages • 1 hour read
Laura PurcellThe Silent Companions
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Elsie Bainbridge
Content Warning: The source material and this guide discuss violence toward women (including implications of rape and incest), child loss, miscarriage, violent death from murder and execution, the mistreatment of someone with a disability, animal abuse, substance use, mental illness, and racism against a Romani person.
Elsie is the protagonist. As the novel opens, she is grappling with the sudden passing of her spouse, Rupert Bainbridge. This bereavement renders her emotionally vulnerable, although she tries to project composure in the face of internal turmoil and is in general resilient and resourceful. Her pregnancy compounds her sense of emotional and physical strain: “It was only a shell. She was a shell, and another body, a foreign body, was growing inside” (132). This depiction of pregnancy as a strange and even traumatic experience reflects the novel’s use of Gothic horror as a lens for examining The Isolation and Oppression of Women: Compelled by her brother, Jolyon, to relocate to her late husband’s dilapidated estate, The Bridge, Elsie transitions from a grieving widow to a woman trapped by her responsibilities, which the novel’s supernatural elements symbolically evoke.
Elsie endeavors to cultivate a life at The Bridge by revitalizing the gardens and fostering amicable relations with the villagers. Nonetheless, she becomes increasingly apprehensive of a supernatural presence within the residence. The staff and Elsie’s sole companion, Sarah, begin to encounter peculiar phenomena, and the weight of leadership becomes a heavy burden. The unsettling events at The Bridge also stir up deep-seated psychological trauma stemming from Elsie’s abuse at the hands of her parents. Ultimately, Elsie winds up hospitalized and accused of arson and murder, though the novel leaves the truth of these accusations ambiguous. Elsie’s arc explores how grief can influence a person’s mental state and perceptions while also highlighting the harmful impact of isolation on the human mind. Her separation, both physical and emotional, at The Bridge intensifies her fears, contributes to her psychological unraveling, and represents the vulnerability of women in a patriarchal society, where female mental well-being is often misunderstood and mistreated.
Anne Bainbridge
Anne is the other main point-of-view character, whom Elsie and Sarah meet through her journal in The Bridge’s attic. Anne is the matriarch of the Bainbridge family in the 17th century, and her backstory provides context for the existence and nature of the silent companions while also paralleling Elsie’s narrative in key ways.
Anne’s actions and decisions trigger a series of events with long-term consequences for her descendants and the fate of The Bridge estate. Her struggle to control the supernatural forces she unleashes reflects the novel’s broader interest in fear, control, and women’s relationship to motherhood. Anne uses a potion to conceive a baby girl, which she later fears unleashed chaos: “I must have made a mistake. A proportion of a mixture, a word in the spell. I did not create a child. I made a monster” (255). Anne’s simultaneous love for and fear of her daughter, Hetta, prompts additional missteps; for example, her guilt causes her to allow Merripen to work in the stables and remain friends with Hetta, which ultimately results in the deaths of Merripen and his sister. Thus, Anne’s attempts to manage the consequences of her decisions and protect her family ultimately lead to more chaos and tragedy. Anne’s decision to bring the silent companions into the household is especially grievous and develops the novel’s commentary on The Violence of Class and Social Status. In her longing to impress the queen, Anne precipitates a disaster that spans generations, as these lifelike wooden figures—whether they corrupt Hetta or are corrupted by her—become central to the novel’s supernatural horror.
Anne’s experiences and fate anticipate and mirror Elsie’s. Like Elsie, whose murder of her abusive parents only emerges in the novel’s final pages, Anne keeps many secrets: She hides her use of witchcraft from Josiah, lies about her connection to Merripen, and conceals her fear over Hetta’s true nature. Anne is ultimately burned at the stake for her choices, which include murdering her daughter. This futile effort to contain The Bridge’s evil parallels Elsie’s burning of the companions, much as Elsie’s own fate—burned in the fire that consumes The Bridge and presumably hanged for murder—duplicates Anne’s. These parallels highlight the continuity of gender inequality, with Anne’s 17th-century experiences reflecting the era’s religious and societal restraints and Elsie’s 19th-century storyline demonstrating the ongoing limitations on women’s autonomy. They also highlight the cyclical nature of the trauma that results from such inequities.
Sarah Bainbridge
Sarah Bainbridge is Rupert’s unmarried cousin who becomes a companion for Elsie after his death. Sarah represents the plight of women during the era, as her parents sent her away when she was a child to be a paid companion to an older woman. Though Sarah is of a higher social class than Elsie, she is unmarried and childless, which makes her an outsider; she does not fit the societal expectations of the time, but she does not have the financial resources to simply live as she likes, so she occupies the acceptably “feminine” (nurturing, selfless, etc.) role of companion. That the word used to describe the lifelike effigies at The Bridge is also Sarah’s job title highlights her liminal class and gender status, as well as the anxieties surrounding it.
Though Elsie initially resents Sarah’s presence and considers her dull and unintelligent, Sarah becomes Elsie’s ally as they experience the supernatural phenomena in the house. Sarah supports Elsie after the death of Rupert and tenderly cares for her after the miscarriage. Moreover, Sarah’s curiosity and her study of Anne’s diary help the two women understand more about the family’s history and why the silent companions may have sinister intentions. While Elsie attempts to find rational explanations for the phenomena, Sarah leans into her spirituality and suggests having a séance or asking Mr. Underwood to perform an exorcism. If (as Dr. Shepherd later suggests) Sarah represents one facet of Elsie’s personality, it is therefore her unconscious fears and anxieties.
The end of the story leaves Sarah’s fate a mystery while further complicating her character. Finding Sarah becomes Elsie’s only hope for rescue from the psychiatric hospital and possible execution, as only she remains alive to corroborate Elsie’s story. However, Sarah’s miraculous return turns into a nightmare when Sarah instead accuses Elsie of committing the murders. Elsie concludes that Hetta has taken possession of Sarah’s body—a symbolic choice, as both women are excluded from society due to circumstances beyond their control. Inhabiting the body of Elsie’s closest ally also creates a perverse and sinister twist, as it leaves Elsie utterly alone with no hope of survival. However, the potential unreliability of Elsie’s perspective renders the ending somewhat ambiguous: It is possible Sarah is simply speaking as herself.
Hetta Bainbridge
Hetta Bainbridge is the only daughter of Josiah and Anne Bainbridge. Hetta, conceived through magic, is both miraculous and an enigma because she is born unable to speak. Although Anne adores her daughter, Josiah rejects her due to her disability and (Anne fears) because he detects Anne’s duplicity. Furthermore, as a daughter, she is useless to him because their line will pass through the sons. Hetta therefore represents the marginalization and mistreatment of both women and people who are different or disabled. A child of nature, Hetta is happiest outside of human society entirely, in the garden: “Small white flowers wound their way over her shoes; unruly twigs seemed to reach out and embrace her” (92).
Hetta’s spirit is implied to be at work in the 1865 timeline, where she inhabits the silent companions and uses them to exact retribution on the household that previously disregarded her. Just as Elsie’s past haunts her, Hetta’s awful fate haunts The Bridge, signifying the long-term consequences of past wrongs. Her sad end and the curse she represents affect both her immediate family and future generations, particularly Elsie and Sarah.
Jolyon Livingston
Jolyon is Elsie’s younger brother (and possibly her son), whom she protected from their parents’ abuse. After the death of both their parents, she became his primary caregiver; though societal standards would typically dictate that he should have authority over her, Elsie was considerably older than Jolyon, who initially allowed her to participate as his equal in managing the family business. This led to an advantageous meeting between Elsie and an investor, Rupert Bainbridge, leading to their marriage, which relieved Jolyon of his patriarchal responsibility to his sister.
With Rupert’s untimely death, Jolyon steps back into an authoritative role over his sister, suggesting she move to The Bridge to fix what he calls “a stain on [their] name, on the factory” (24). Jolyon admonishes Elsie for not behaving like a “proper” widow and reminds her of her responsibility to uphold specific social standards. Her banishment to the rural estate and the burden of her social standing contribute to Elsie’s physical and emotional isolation, which adversely affects her mental health.
Jolyon is absent for much of the story, but Elsie remains connected to him through her traumatic childhood memories. Ultimately, Jolyon refuses to believe something sinister is happening inside the house and instead becomes convinced his sister has inherited a mental illness from their mother and should be in a psychiatric hospital. Instead of protecting his sister from evil as she did for him, Jolyon seals both their fates by forcing her to yield to his authority.
