55 pages • 1 hour read
Nancy E. TurnerThese Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “March 14, 1882”-“July 5, 1882”
Mama and Albert return from town with the land claims, and Sarah writes a letter inviting Jimmy Reed—a family friend briefly introduced in Chapter 1—and his fiancée, Ruthanne McIntosh, to travel from New Mexico Territory for a visit. The family’s house is almost complete, and together they travel to Tucson for more building materials, a stove, and some shoes for Harland.
At the dry goods store, Mama buys Sarah some material for a much-needed new dress, but Sarah longs for the expensive premade velvet dresses she sees in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Savannah declares that Sarah does not need such fancy clothing. While Sarah admires Savannah’s simplicity and goodness, she nevertheless knows she wants a velvet catalog dress like the one that belongs to the mysterious woman in The Duchess of Warwick and Her Sorrow By the Sea.
Captain Jack Elliot visits the Prines twice in Chapter 5 but does not bring Sarah’s book to either unannounced visit, which annoys her. Between his visits, Jimmy Reed arrives in Arizona Territory; his engagement to Ruthanne has dissolved, and he plans to start a horse ranch near the Prines’ farm. Sarah and Jimmy spend a couple of days together in Tucson, and she is pleased that he treats her like a lady. When Captain Elliot visits the Prines a second time, he brings a letter from Ernest; however, the palpable friction between him and Jimmy dampens the happy mood for Sarah. Before the captain leaves following dinner, he unexpectedly kisses Sarah, which leaves her uneasy. Albert begins to suspect something romantic between Sarah and Jimmy, but as Jimmy has not kissed Sarah yet, she rebuffs Albert’s questions and assures herself that Jimmy—unlike the captain—is simply a proper gentleman.
Chapter 6 Summary: “July 8, 1882”-“October 20, 1882”
Early in Chapter 6, Savannah gives birth to Clover Jeremiah Prine, her and Albert’s first child, after a daylong labor. That night, Sarah rides Rose out to Jimmy’s ranch to share the good news; however, a rainstorm picks up, and she’s forced to spend the night there.
As she and Jimmy are settling in, there is a knock at the door as a strange man lets himself in Jimmy’s house. The man, Moses Smith, is conspicuously well armed, which gives Sarah a bad feeling when he asks to wait out the storm in Jimmy’s horse shed. Jimmy tries to keep the man busy with conversation, but then Smith goes to sleep in front of the cabin door, blocking the only exit. Jimmy and Sarah, mistaken as husband and wife, are scared and bed down against the opposite wall, secretly arming themselves. In the morning, they rush Smith to leave; on his way out, he remarks that the storm must have dispensed with all evidence that Sarah lives there. She is embarrassed and ashamed.
Sarah receives a letter from Elliot, who refuses to return her book without payment of $60 or the trade of a draft horse. Sarah is annoyed and plans to write back. Jimmy proposes to Sarah, and she accepts; he begins planning for their wedding right away. Sarah soon receives a note from Elliot, reporting that The Duchess of Warwick is no longer for sale. Following Sarah’s engagement, the mood among the Prines shifts: Albert criticizes Sarah for reading too many books, Jimmy hints that he is annoyed by her correspondence with Elliot, and she receives a letter from Elliot’s fort discouraging her from writing to him.
Jimmy and Sarah are married, and the occasion is a happy one; however, their first night together is tense. They make love, but Jimmy won’t look at her and rolls over to sleep immediately after.
Chapter 7 Summary: “December 25, 1882”-“July 27, 1884”
Early in the chapter, Sarah discovers she is pregnant and shares the news with Jimmy. Savannah announces that she and Albert are having their second child. Several mares on Jimmy’s ranch give birth, including Sarah’s Rose. This keeps them both remarkably busy; despite her pregnancy, Sarah continues to work hard on their increasingly successful ranch. This is reflected by less frequent diary entries from Sarah, a pattern that continues through the chapter.
When Sarah finally gives birth to April Alice Reed in the late summer of 1883, her birth is difficult and exhausting, with labor lasting two full days. Shortly afterward, Savannah bears her second son, Joshua, in a much easier birth. Once both babies are born, Sarah marks the stark differences between her own married life and Savannah’s: While Savannah’s children sleep peacefully and give their mother little difficulty, Sarah’s daughter is temperamental and often cries. Savannah and Albert are openly affectionate with each other, and Sarah wonders what it would be like to be loved like Savannah is by Albert. Jimmy is not loving and grows increasingly bad-tempered following April’s birth.
Sarah and Jimmy’s marriage quickly deteriorates; he criticizes her inability to complete her chores and complains about her cooking. He spends an increasing amount of time at his work and away from her in Tucson. While Sarah is proud of their beautiful and profitable ranch, late in the chapter, she registers a deep sadness that she cannot explain.
In the chapter’s final entry, Jimmy sustains grave injuries in an accident while rounding up his horses. The family attends to his wounds, but Jimmy dies three days later. In his final moments, Jimmy asks Albert to write to Ruthanne McIntosh and tell her that he always loved her.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Following their trip to Tucson for supplies, Sarah begins reading a book called The Happy Bride, an etiquette and advice manual for young women; books of this genre were very popular in both Europe and the US during the 19th century. The book teaches her “how a girl should act” and “what men expect” from a marriage-worthy woman (87). The Happy Bride encourages Sarah to keep an air of dignified detachment in the company of men, a lesson she finds easy to follow when she is with Jimmy Reed. Unlike Captain Elliot, who makes her feel uneasy and ashamed of herself, Sarah feels perfectly at ease around Jimmy. This is largely because she and Jimmy grew up together and she registers no romantic interest in him.
Contrary to Savannah’s advice, however, Sarah does not mention any lessons in The Happy Bride on love or the importance of marrying for love. She cherishes the book’s many maxims on piety and purity, hoping they will help her to be more like Savannah. In this section of the novel, Sarah still longs to be a proper lady—even if she cannot have the dresses she sees in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Importantly, her aspirations to ladyhood inspire Sarah’s acceptance of Jimmy’s marriage proposal, despite her lack of romantic interest in him. Feelings of love aside, according to The Happy Bride, it is her duty as a marriageable woman to marry a man like Jimmy, who defers to her wishes and sees her as a lady. However, the book’s lessons are unsustainable, as even after her engagement, Sarah regularly thinks of and dreams about Elliot.
Although Sarah continues her correspondence with Elliot while Jimmy is building their home, she does not seem to perceive any romantic interest on his part of hers behind it. In fact, her limited narrative point of view reveals that she does not see their correspondence as the ongoing flirtation others perceive it to be; this attitude is reflected in other characters’ quiet annoyance with her letters to Elliot. However, her limited self-awareness in this regard reflects a level of denial on Sarah’s part. Thus, her latent interest in Elliot registers in her diary as something that subtly hangs over her consciousness, rather than something she can admit or to which she can attest. Rather than directly pursue or try to understand her interest in the captain, Sarah projects her feelings onto the book that Elliot refuses to return to her. This internal struggle parallels her feelings about the velvet dress she sees in the dry goods store’s catalog, as compared to the dress she makes for herself from the fabric Mama purchases. Like Elliot, the catalog dress is alluring but inappropriate and frustratingly inaccessible; like Jimmy, the dress she makes for herself is lovely and serviceable but not what she really wants. Sarah is instructed to want a man like Jimmy; as she aspires to do what she believes is right, Jimmy is the man she accepts.
Sarah’s marriage to Jimmy becomes a particularly poor fit following the birth of their daughter April. This stands in contrast to the many other births that occur in Chapter 7: The mares’ foals bring increased prosperity to the ranch, and Savannah’s child’s birth brings her closer to Albert, but Sarah feels alone, harried, and hollowed out once April is born. Sarah’s diary entries also become increasingly less frequent in Chapter 7; when she does write, it is usually to report her difficulties with motherhood and with her marriage. Toward the end of this section, Sarah sinks deeper into a state of sadness over what her life has become, contrasting the peaceful atmosphere at the Prine family home to the tensions in her own house. While Savannah, Albert, and Mama’s house is “not as orderly and white painted and fancy as our ranch” (124), it is a warm and happy place where love is evident. Despite supposedly learning from The Happy Bride all she needed to know about being a lady and a good wife, she nevertheless cries for herself—rather than in grief at the loss of her husband—following Jimmy’s death. Sarah finds herself robbed of a beautiful married life like Savannah’s as she realizes that neither she nor Jimmy married for true love.
