46 pages • 1 hour read
Joan W. BlosA Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1979A 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 13-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
These journal entries cover June 13 to July 17, 1831. Catherine selects a design for the new quilt called Mariner’s Compass because she has the fabric for the background already and because she likes the story behind the pattern: It was made by sailors’ wives to preserve their loved ones and bring them safely home. The work is tedious, and Ann reminds her that if she hadn’t given the old quilt away, she wouldn’t have to do it. Ann is picky about how Matty and Catherine do their chores, but she also takes Catherine’s side against Daniel, and she gives Catherine a beautiful set of cuffs and a collar.
On July 4, the family spends the day in town, watching the militia parade, hearing a fife and drum band perform, and listening to firecrackers. A judge who has come to speak praises the contribution of two elderly soldiers dressed in the Continental Army’s uniform; they turn out to be Hessians who fought for the British. At the midday meal, Father reports hearing about burns and a maiming through misfired firecracker explosions.
Daniel decides that Matty and Catherine should call Ann “Mammann,” combining “Mamma” and Ann. Ann thinks that they are saying the French word for one’s mother, maman, and is pleased. Catherine, too, is pleased and calls her “Mammann” that night, the first time she has directly addressed her stepmother.
The family learns that a boy has died of burns suffered on the Fourth of July. Father says that this will always happen as long as people celebrate the nation’s freedom, but Ann retorts that there must be some other way to show joy.
Catherine notices that Cassie and Daniel are plainly attracted to each other. Asa’s interest in Sophy continues as well.
Chapter 14 Summary
Chapter 14 covers the time from July 25 to August 20, 1831. Teacher Holt and Aunt Lucy are planning their wedding. Ann reflects that joyful times are as important to maintaining one’s faith as times of sorrow. Both have their place, and neither should be questioned. Sophy is the only one not happy for Aunt Lucy; she is fearful about going to Lowell to work in the mills. Cassie protests that Sophy will be learning new things, while at home they will go on as they always have.
Joshua shows up to walk Catherine, Cassie, and Sophy home from school. Joshua and Catherine decide to walk through the woods, though Catherine is more taken by a beautiful oriole, wishing she could draw it, than by Joshua’s presence.
Father tells a story about a poor woman who asked a neighbor for a bit of butter. Learning that the neighbor had none, she flew into a rage and cursed her. When the neighbor did make butter, it wouldn’t churn properly. She used the heated hook from a pot to purify the milk, and the butter came. Later, when the poor woman was dying and her body was prepared, people saw a burn in the shape of a hook. The story haunts Catherine.
Cassie, Catherine, Ann, and Mrs. Shipman pick whortleberries and then wash in a cold pond. Cassie takes a chill and later comes down with a fever. Ann disapproves of the doctor’s treatment with leeches. Cassie takes a turn for the worse, and Ann says that death must be fought. She writes to her bookseller in Boston to ask for a book of remedies. Father tells the story of the poor fisherman and his greedy wife who, granted wishes, wishes “too high” and becomes poor again.
Cassie dies on August 20, 1831. Catherine sets off the news with a black box in her journal.
Chapter 15 Summary
These journal entries cover August 22 to September 5, 1831. Catherine, Matty, and Sophy are among 12 girls chosen to be in Cassie’s funeral. Dressed in white, they carry wildflowers. The beautiful day contrasts sharply with everyone’s grief. Ann is often at the Shipmans’ house, helping out. Aunt Lucy dyes her beautiful dresses black for mourning. Ann wonders how the Shipmans bear their grief, and Father—who usually says that country folk must learn to accept what comes—just sighs and agrees. Mrs. Shipman recalls the peaceful look on Cassie’s face after she died and says that they, too, should be trusting, to prove their faith. However, Ann waits anxiously for her book of remedies, wondering if it will tell her how to combat an illness like Cassie’s. Catherine thinks that both women are wise, though their ideas are very different, and she wonders whom she should believe.
At church, the preacher’s sermon recalls the Wiley Slide. Five years before, an avalanche buried a family just after they decided to flee their house, leaving the house untouched. At Daniel’s sobbing reaction, Catherine remembers that he loved Cassie, too.
Chapters 13-15 Analysis
Hessians, German mercenary soldiers who fought with the British in the Revolutionary War, are mentioned twice in the novel. The patch of scarlet on the quilt that Catherine gave to the fugitive came from a patch from a Hessian’s red army coat left behind in battle. Matty will later misremember the word “Hessian” as “Russian.” Many Hessians, like those whom the judge mistakes for Continental Army soldiers in Chapter 13, stayed on in America as settlers. Both mentions are reminders of how young the nation was in 1831. The Revolutionary War did not formally end until 1783, not quite five decades earlier.
The Fourth of July celebration reinforces the point that the US is a young nation at the time in which the novel is set, finding itself as it comes of age, like Catherine. This celebration also advances the theme of the Acceptance of Hardship Versus Action. After a boy dies from burns suffered on the Fourth of July, Ann disagrees sharply with Father over the necessity of celebrating the holiday with dangerous fireworks.
Blos also explores this theme through Cassie’s death as Catherine’s two mother figures view her death in very different ways. Mrs. Shipman piously thinks that acceptance is a sign of faith in God. Ann, however, tells her husband that one must fight death. The loss of Cassie is so great in their tight-knit community that even stoic Charles is moved to agree with her. Charles, so reliant on intelligence and acceptance before Cassie’s death, is now changed by it. He stops telling Ann that country people have to learn to deal with hardship and quietly acknowledges the depth of their neighbors’ grief.
These chapters also continue to explore the idea that Joy and Sorrow Unite Humankind. Catherine grieves Cassie’s death deeply, as reflected in her journal entries. She cannot write about it coherently on the day Cassie dies, ending a sentence beginning with “I—” merely with the date of Cassie’s death. When the preacher mentions the Wiley Slide, however, she realizes that other people have suffered even greater losses. The Wiley Slide was a real event in which Samuel Willey (not Wiley), his wife, his five children, and two hired men ran from their house to avoid a landslide and were caught in the falling rocks and debris. Only their dog, left behind in the untouched house, survived.
Father’s stories sometimes provide a moral, as when he tells his daughters the story of the foolish man who mistook a tangle of roots for a headless woman. He tells his story of the Old Man of the Sea (also called the Fisherman and His Wife) to remind his girls that there is no wealth to be gained without labor. The story from his youth about the poor woman who died with a burn in the shape of a hook, however, does not come with a moral. Since Cassie dies just two weeks after this scene, the story is a reminder of the senselessness of sudden death.
