Emma Harte’s loss of religious faith

Emma Harte’s loss of religious faith is a lasting response to her mother’s suffering and death, not a simple withdrawal from the religious life around her. She rejects God when her father calls her mother’s death God’s will, yet later encounters religious ritual with curiosity, respect, discomfort, and a strong sense of responsibility toward others.

The break after Elizabeth Harte’s death

When Elizabeth Harte dies after years of suffering, Jack Harte tries to console Emma by telling her that her mother is free at last and that her death was God’s will. Emma turns that explanation into an accusation: if God existed, she argues, he would not have allowed her mother to suffer for so long or to die. Her rejection comes in the immediate aftermath of loss, while she and Jack are still holding one another in grief. She then runs from the bedroom and the house, leaving Jack alone with his wife’s body. The scene makes the origin of her atheism personal and specific: it is a refusal to reconcile divine authority with the suffering she has witnessed.

Belief refused, but not forgotten

The rejection persists in Emma’s ordinary choices. Looking through her mother’s belongings, she finds the gold cross and chain Elizabeth had almost always worn. Unlike the garnets she intends to keep, the cross represents a God she no longer accepts; she drops it aside and refuses to attend Sunday school, despite her father’s annoyance. Her response is not a general repudiation of her mother. She handles Elizabeth’s possessions tenderly, but separates the memory of her mother from the religious belief associated with the cross.

Emma’s encounter with the Kallinski family’s prayer before a meal shows that atheism does not prevent her from recognizing the value of religious practice to others. At their table, she watches Janessa light candles and the family bow their heads as Abraham blesses wine and bread. Emma joins them respectfully, then reflects on the family’s affection and kindness and on the prejudice Jewish people endure in Leeds. The scene sets her disbelief beside an appreciation of religious community: she does not adopt the family’s faith, but their ritual and welcome deepen her opposition to antisemitism.

A daughter’s baptism and Blackie’s faith

Emma’s own daughter’s baptism brings her unresolved feelings into a practical family decision. She remains an atheist, but worries that the child might grow up to believe in God and resent having been left unbaptized. At the same time, Emma fears that approaching a vicar would expose the child’s illegitimate status and invite others into private matters she wants to keep concealed. Her concern is therefore both spiritual and protective: she wants to leave room for her daughter’s possible beliefs without surrendering control of the family secret.

Blackie offers to baptize the child himself. Though he no longer attends church, he tells Emma that he has never lost his faith and believes God’s presence and love can be felt within people. Emma is astonished, but recognizes that he means what he says. His conviction allows him to treat the baptism as an act of love rather than a matter of church, font, or clerical authority. The contrast is important: Emma does not recover her own belief, but she accepts the sincerity of Blackie’s and permits his faith to help meet a need she cannot resolve through her own convictions.

Faith as a responsibility to others

The difference between Emma’s disbelief and other people’s religious commitments remains visible later. When Laura O’Neill is gravely ill, Laura asks Emma to ensure that Bryan is raised as a good Roman Catholic and to care for him while Blackie is away at war. As a priest arrives to administer Extreme Unction, Emma experiences him inwardly as a harbinger of death and silently rejects the idea that Laura has sinned. Her private anger at the religious interpretation of suffering echoes the protest that followed her mother’s death, even as Laura’s request places a religious upbringing among the responsibilities Emma is asked to carry.

Across these episodes, Emma’s atheism remains firm but does not make her dismissive of other people’s faith. She rejects the explanations that once seemed to justify her mother’s suffering, yet she can respect the Kallinskis’ prayers, recognize Blackie’s belief, and take seriously Laura’s wishes for her son. Religion thus remains present in Emma’s life less as a source of personal consolation than as a practice bound up with memory, family care, and the differing beliefs of those she loves.