The Death of Mrs. Westaway

“But she couldn’t afford to get ill.”

The opening chapters establish Hal’s desperate poverty. She cannot afford to be sick and risk missing any work; her own health is a ticking time bomb, waiting to thrust her into even deeper trouble. By establishing this dilemma early, the novel provides a sympathetic context for Hal’s later moral compromises.

“The truth was, her father was no one special.”

Hal spends most of the novel disregarding any chance that she could ever know her father’s identity, despite its importance. Her mother told her enough information to leave a psychological imprint on Hal: Hal believes that he is “no one special” (20), a trait which she then applies to herself. Her low self-esteem is partly due to an abject self-narrative: an unimportant father abandoned her at a young age.

“How could it be right that some people had so much, while others had so little?”

Hal’s decision to travel to Penzance and involve herself in the will takes on an ideological dimension. For a fleeting moment, Hal expresses envy for those who have far more money than she has ever had. She cannot understand how she has so little, while they have so much, even while she has tried to live a good life. Hal’s egalitarian thoughts are justified to an extent, but they also exemplify her need to give validating purpose to her actions.