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.
Character Analysis
Sarah Prine
Sarah is Turner’s protagonist and fictional author for These Is My Words. The novel is structured as her diary, so all events are relayed through her first-person, limited point of view. These Is My Words is also a coming-of-age story, as the text follows Sarah through many major life events across the novel. She is 16 years old when the novel opens in 1881 and in her late thirties when it concludes in mid-1901. When the text begins, she is intent on educating herself and improving her writing, the basics of which she learned from her Papa and her family Bible. She is the third of five Prine children, all of whom are brothers. Before setting off in their wagon for “greener pastures,” she worked alongside them on her Papa’s horse ranch in New Mexico Territory. As a result of living and working “in the territory” with her brothers (8), Sarah is also unusually handy with a rifle. This is a talent that, particularly in her younger years, surprises many, but as Sarah says, “a girl has got to get along” (8). Her humble toughness and fierce loyalty to her loved ones are central traits of Sarah’s character that change little through each challenge she meets.
Sarah’s vocabulary and grammar become more standardized as the novel progresses, and she further educates herself. Particularly following her 18th birthday, an important part of this education for Sarah is learning how to be a lady. To that end, she hungrily reads books on decorum. Sarah desires pretty clothes and “ladies’ niceties” and to be wanted by a man for marriage (142). However, she learns that etiquette manuals cannot edify her in ways of the heart. She learns this lesson in practice through her difficult first marriage to Jimmy Reed. From this scarring experience, she learns to seek love in her relationships, rather than to be merely acceptable for marriage.
Because much of her understanding of womanhood comes from books, Sarah struggles for a significant portion of the narrative to understand and articulate her emotions, particularly her romantic interest in Captain Jack Elliot. However, as the novel progresses, we see her leave off her hurtful memories of Jimmy and grow to accept her love for Elliot. This process is slow, however, and is beset by her difficulty accepting his periods of absence for his military work. Particularly after the couple’s move to Tucson, she comes to accept Jack’s bravery and commitment to the military as she finds satisfaction in living at his fort and raising their children.
Captain Jack Elliot
Jack is a fierce soldier who is a formidable adversary in combat; he is brave, honorable, and respected by military personnel near and far. He is also very devoted to his military service; despite the dangers his work as a cavalryman presents, Jack refuses to leave the military. Sarah describes him as “always thinking he was somehow immortal” (379). It is only later in the novel, after his youngest child dies while he is away on a campaign, that Jack permanently quits his military career. Thus, his strongest trait and fatal flaw is his heroic bravery. Across the novel, Jack breaks up an Indian raid at a homestead near Sarah’s ranch, rescues her from an assault by Moses Smith, and saves a Tucson-bound train from a gang of criminals—among numerous other feats. Yet this instinct leads to his demise when he rushes into a burning building in which he mistakenly believes he hears a baby crying. Jack makes this mistake following the sudden death of his own youngest child. This error not only stands in stark contrast to all the feats he safely managed during his military career but also reveals the deep emotional toll that Suzanne’s death, years prior, had on Jack.
Jack is a quietly romantic man who, particularly before his marriage to Sarah, articulates his feelings only indirectly through acts of service. While Jack sets himself apart from other men Sarah has met, even after they are married, his complexity and air of mystery make her wonder if she will ever truly know him. Yet, despite his mystique, Jack is a round and dynamic character. Besides being a hardened soldier, he is also “widely admired by both dogs and children” (146); during their courtship, Jack bonds quickly with Sarah’s daughter as well as her dog, showing great affection to both. Although their courtship and early days of marriage are tumultuous, he also shows patience and tenderness toward Sarah. For instance, as he is trying to win her affections following Jimmy’s death, Jack appears at Sarah’s ranch to do repair work for her, asking only for a date in Tucson in return. After he departs, Sarah finds a gift from him: a wild rosebush planted by her front steps.
Jack is the type of character, Sarah reports, who fills a room with his presence and seems to leave it empty when he departs. He is self-assured and exasperatingly proud, which fashions him as one of the greatest challenges Sarah meets during her already difficult early adulthood. Early in their acquaintance, Jack bargains with Sarah for her books, igniting great frustration in her; yet it is also Jack who comforts her when she is distraught by the dangers of wagon travel and the pressures of caring for her family. For all his dynamism and mystery, during their marriage, Sarah notes that it is Jack’s “little routines every night” that establish a comfortable rhythm to their life together (300).
Savannah (Lawrence) Prine
Savannah is the eldest of the Lawrence sisters and the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence. The Lawrences are a Quaker family the Prines meet during their first wagon expedition. Savannah is well-educated and becomes best friends with Sarah early in the novel, lending her materials to help with the development of her writing. In Chapter 2, Savannah marries Sarah’s brother Albert and becomes her sister-in-law and a significant character in her life for the rest of the novel.
From the start of their friendship, Savannah is a foil for the rough-and-tumble Sarah Prine, who envisions her as a paradigm of virtue, feminine gentility, and beauty. Sarah describes her as having a “fine figure,” beautiful “wavy dark hair,” and blue eyes (26); this portrayal contrasts with Sarah’s thin and athletic physique, “cantankerous” hair, and otherwise plain appearance. Savannah’s character particularly stands in strong contrast with Sarah in terms of her temperament and personality: While Sarah is bold and outspoken, Savannah “don’t laugh out loud nor talk free to people but holds her peace until it seems lady like to answer” (24). Savannah’s reserve and “good and simply ways” are qualities that Sarah, particularly in her younger years, seeks to emulate (125). She describes Savannah as having a “peaceful and reverent way” (380) about her, which she deeply respects; even later in the novel, when Sarah faces great difficulty, she tries to cope by imagining how Savannah might react.
Despite her shyness and simplicity, however, Savannah is also a character of quiet strength and nobility. For example, she overcomes her reticence at several key points in the narrative. She sticks up for Sarah to the pacifistic Lawrence family after she kills the men who raped Ulyssa. Also, long before Sarah begins reading ladies’ etiquette manuals, Savannah offers her the novel’s earliest advice on intimacy and marriage: “You will know some things by heart, if you marry for love” (74). Savannah never allows her differences from Sarah to drive a wedge between them, and they are equally loyal to each other. She is a complex character and reflects the novel’s theme of External and Internal Processes of Growing Up.
Mama Prine
Mama is Sarah’s mother, and Sarah never mentions her first name. Mama is a woman with minimal dialogue, but her supportive presence is nonetheless significant to Sarah and the narrative. For instance, Mama never learned to read or write; however, she wants her children to have these skills, so she makes Papa teach Sarah letters from their family Bible. As a punishment—and an occasion to practice her reading—on their wagon journey, Mama makes Sarah read to her from the Old Testament. Particularly following Sarah’s marriages to Jimmy and then Jack, she often reports going to Mama for advice.
In Sarah’s diary, their connection is not depicted as a particularly affectionate bond. Sarah and Mama love each other, but their relationship hinges on duty and practicality, providing for and supporting one another throughout the novel. For example, following Papa’s and Clover’s deaths in Chapter 1, Mama becomes “a hollow ghost of a person” who refuses to talk, eat, or care for herself without prompting from Sarah (20). Only after Sarah falls ill with pneumonia in Chapter 4 does Mama return to herself and begin caring for Sarah and the other children again. When Sarah later asks Mama about her “peculiar” behavior, she supplies little explanation: “I just slipped away. Then when I thought I would lose you, I saw I would have to come back and take hold of things” (84). Little is revealed about Mama’s emotional states or perspective, but her duty-bound love for her daughter stimulated her out of inert mourning.
Mama’s condition in the novel’s early chapters, combined with her inability to read and her lack of a name, position her at a particular remove from both Sarah and readers. Though Sarah reports speaking to her on matters of marriage and pregnancy, this distance is further highlighted by the fact that the novel rarely offers accounts of their conversations. This remove illustrates Mama’s flatness as a character: While she is a constant and significant figure in Sarah’s life, little is revealed about her character traits, and she exerts minimal influence over the plot.
