Anna and self expression

Anna narrates her story in a linear fashion from the beginning, when she meets Walter, to the end when she has an abortion and falls ill. However, Anna interrupts the progression with recollections of the past, usually from her own thoughts, but also from her conversation with Hester in Part 1, Chapter 6. These interruptions fill in some of the holes in Anna’s past and give the reader a better sense of the experience of Constance Estate as Anna and Hester remember it differently. The recollections and breaks into the past are described with a syntax that resembles Virginia Woolf’s style of writing. For example, on page 41, Anna begins thinking about her home in a series of run-on sentences and fragmented descriptions and dialogues that represent a personal description. The same occurs in Part 3, Chapter 2 when Anna recollects the road to Constance Estate. The descriptions are narrated almost “colloquially”, as far as literature can be considered colloquial, which is interesting because Anna’s participation in dialogue with other characters is more formal and not nearly as descriptive. During her conversation with Walter about Constance Estate in Part 1 Chapter 5, Walter concedes, "I'm sure it's beautiful", to which Anna responds simply, "Yes," and then changes the subject, "On the other hand, if England is beautiful, it's not beautiful. It's some other world. It all depends, doesn't it?" (52). Anna not only changes the subject from the Estate to England, but is not very clear about what she wants to say. In her narrative descriptions, however, Anna is more descriptive. She remembers the moss on the Estate house, as well as the roses, orchids and honeysuckle. She even remembers a specific slave's name, "Maillotte Boyd, aged 18, mulatto, house servant", but only reckons to Walter that "I saw an old slave list at Constance once", and "All those names written down, It's funny, I've never forgotten it". It is almost as if she has these thoughts constantly running through her mind, which the reader has limited access to through her narration, and which the other characters have even less access to because of her cautiousness and self-conscious behavior in formal conversation. This is precisely the case in the fourth and final part of the book, when Anna’s thoughts and observations are lengthy and italicized, but all she can manage to say to her peers is “I’m giddy” and “I fell”.

I’m wondering how the way Anna struggles to put her thoughts into words and therefore her inability to turn her words into actions can be attributed to her being a woman, psychologically, socially, geographically, etc.?