Chapter 20 starts off at the end of November and into December. In order to stay warm in the cold extreme Grace describes to Dr. Jordan that she and Mary would take their clothes into bed with them so that they would keep warm before putting them on and they would also heat bricks to put them in their bed. This concept of staying warm is almost obsolete in our age of well insulated houses and heat that blasts through the house 24/7, but since I live in a house where almost everything modern is obsolete, I'm familiar with some of these concepts. In the dead of winter, I discovered the method of keeping my clothes under my sheets to keep it warm for when I put it on, and sometimes when that doesn't work, I've had to changed underneath the blankets just to avoid hypothermia. I can safely say that I haven't had to go as far as heating a brick to put in my bed, but I've come pretty close to that, as I am the proud owner of a Magic Bag and a microwave.
I wish I could say that the contents of chapter twenty is a happy transition away from reminiscing on cold, but it isn't. Chapter twenty was all about Mary Whitney's tragic end and it then elaborated on what we know of Grace Marks so far. Mary's health quickly begins to decline in the chapter and it isn't immediately revealed why. I'll admit to cheating by saying that I knew Mary's fate before reading this chapter. I knew that she had become pregnant by the son of the housekeeper, who had later abandoned her with only five dollars to support herself. In the nineteenth century, it was socially unacceptable to have a child out of wedlock, and it was especially unacceptable in Mary's case as she was merely a servant to the Parkinsons' and their son was her superior. Grace watches Mary go through this less than ideal situation, feeling utterly useless as she only knows what she is going through with the pregnancy, but Mary's concept of raising the child on her own - especially out of wedlock - is completely foreign to Grace. Mary later realizes that it would be too difficult to raise a child with no husband, no money, and no permanent place to live and decides to get an abortion. There are many things we take for granted in the twenty-first century that the people in the nineteenth century had to live without. Abortions were considered to be very risky in the nineteenth century, unlike today where abortions (as highly debated as they are) are a simple procedure where you walk in and walk out with only a few manageable side effects. While reading about the painful, not only physically but mentally, process that Mary had to go through with the abortion, it made me thankful for the medical advancements that we have today, and it made me realize what a strong character Mary Whitney was. Not only did she act as the family that Grace never had, but she was very opinionated on equality, she followed her heart and she also knew how to use her head. She always thought it was unfair that while they had to spend their lives at the bottom of the social chain cooking, cleaning, living in poor living conditions and having to endure the sexual harassment of the men in the household, the rich were living in the luxury and service that people like Mary and Grace provided them while also having to pay them very little. I thought that Mary was a very essential character in the book because she was the older, more knowledgeable and more experienced person who helped Grace throughout her whole life struggles. I understood Grace's pain as she was forced to listen to the only person who had ever truly cared for her scream in agony while not being able to do anything about it. Mary had not only suffered during the procedure, but she suffered greatly after as well. She remained ill for days after to the point where she went as far as creating her own will, leaving everything that she's ever owned to Grace. Even if I didn't know what happened already, I would've seen this as Mary's story coming to an end. The next morning, Grace finds Mary lying in bed, staring up at the sky as if she was focusing on going to Heaven as she died. Just as the end of Mary's story begins, Grace's story begins as the death of Mary begins Grace's journey onward to a new job offered to her by Nancy Montgomery where her employer would be none other than Thomas Kinnear.
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