-
Conflict
Sarah Henry goes insane and it gets worse throughout the book. She actually suffered from severe postpartum depression, but during that time period, anyone with that condition was considered mentally ill. As Sarah gets worse, she turns on her family and treats them poorly. Eventually, she is even able to tell the future. It is hard to hold the family together when the children's mother is no longer capable of caring for the family. -
Exposition
In the beginning of the novel, Patsy Henry, the daughter of Patrick Henry, saves her baby brother, Edward, from drowning. Her mother Sarah Henry tried to drown her son. She was trying to get the baby to stop crying, but she left him in the water for too long. Thankfully, Patsy saved her brother, but she had to explain to her siblings what happened. Anne Henry, her younger sister, was skeptical that their mother accidently almost drowned Edward. Anne was right. -
Period: to
Timespan
-
Rising Action
Throughout the story, Sarah Henry's madness progresses to the point where her husband must hide her from the children and confine her to the cellar at the beginning of 1771. She is kept there for four years until she died in 1775. In the meantime, her daughter Anne goes down to the cellar to talk to her mother. Her mother then told Anne the person who would inherit her madness. Anne tells the rest of the family it would be herself, causing life to be hard for her. -
Turning Point
After Sarah Henry died, everything changed. Patrick Henry got remarried, this time to his son's girlfriend Dorothea, while his son, John, was away at war. Many of the slaves ran off, and one young slave girl named Neely was killed. Anne felt she should write John to let me know about the wedding, but she was not sure what to say. Anne also had another secret, but she could not yet bring herself to tell it. -
Falling Action
Finally, Ane knew she had to write to John. She wrote about her father being governor, and about the wedding. She also told John the secret she had kept secret for about four years. It was not she who would inherit their mother';s madness, but John. However, she hoped the prophecy would not come true. -
Resolution
John recieved Anne's letter, and he went mad, just as his mother said he would. He resigned from the army and returned home to his family. Dorothea and Patrick Henry had many more children. The story ends there, leading the reader to assume Anne got married in the future and that the Henry family lived happily for years to come.