Liz Hartman

Liz Hartman’s importance lies in the contrast between the desire she awakens in Father Jason Crowder and the agency she displays when her family is endangered: she is at once the object of his private fixation and a mother who acts under pressure to protect her children and separate them from Ron.

Identity and Introduction

Crowder introduces Liz through his own compromised perspective. He admits that he is attracted to women but frightened by their power over him, and that priestly celibacy had seemed a natural response. Liz, a married woman, makes that discipline more difficult. Before turning to the stormy night when Danny Hartman brings him into the Hartman family crisis, Crowder singles her out for her mesmerizing green eyes and the way her clothes hug her body. His desire is established before the reader meets her directly, making his gaze part of her introduction rather than a neutral description.

Liz is Ron Hartman’s wife and the mother of Casey and Carolyn. Danny, Ron’s brother, first clarifies that Liz was the one who called him for help: Ron took over the phone when she became too choked up to continue. When Crowder and Danny arrive at the Hartman house, Liz recognizes Crowder from church. She is around forty, blonde, and dressed in a snug light-blue T-shirt and jeans, but her appearance is immediately overshadowed by her distress. Her forehead is creased, her eyes are red and wet, and Crowder recognizes that she scarcely notices him. Although he has lingered after Mass hoping to speak with her and imagined a deeper connection between them, he acknowledges that this may be wishful and dangerous thinking. The difference between his imagined intimacy and her urgent concern is present from their first encounter.

Motherhood Under Pressure

The crisis first reaches Crowder through Danny’s account of the violence at home. Casey Hartman had been striking the floor with such force that the windows rattled and the wood became dented and bloody. Liz was the first to approach her son, trying to seize his hands and stop him from injuring himself. Casey instead cut her along the hairline and hit her in the face. When he threw Ron Hartman across the room and attacked Carolyn, Liz went straight toward her daughter. Danny remembers her intervention with admiration, even as he cannot explain why she married his brother.

At the Hartman house, distress is written across Liz’s face before she explains anything. She thanks Danny and Crowder for coming, then stands behind Carolyn, rubbing her shoulders while fighting back tears. The child’s coloring book lies open but unused; Ron drinks and tells Carolyn it is time for bed, while Liz’s face stiffens without interrupting the comforting gesture. Once Danny carries Carolyn away, Liz asks Crowder what he makes of what happened. The question places her in the position of seeking help amid a family emergency, not of returning the attention Crowder has privately invested in her.

When Jack Bittner attacks Casey during the exorcism, Liz joins Father Sutherland, Ron, and Crowder in trying to pull him away. Casey’s voice then exposes Bittner’s sexual fixation on his daughter’s friends, a revelation that turns the struggle into another confrontation with male violence. Later, as the Casey-thing mutilates itself against its restraints, Liz rushes to hold her son, apparently hoping to restrain him by force. He strikes her at the temple and hurls her against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Crowder sees her motionless body and attacks the possessed figure, making his response an immediate effort to subdue the creature that has injured her.

The danger spreads to Carolyn as well. When she begins thrashing violently, Liz rushes to her daughter’s bed with Danny, Crowder, and Father Sutherland; she holds the girl’s face while the others restrain her body and try to prevent serious injury. Liz’s role in the emergency is repeatedly physical and protective: she moves toward the child in danger even when the force involved has already hurt her. Afterward, when Casey appears with an arm around Carolyn, Liz looks at Crowder apprehensively as he wipes blood from his face. Danny tells her that Father Sutherland did not survive, and the family’s rescue is shadowed by the death and the unanswered question of what will happen next.

Marriage, Desire, and Separation

Liz’s marriage to Ron is revealed as a source of betrayal rather than the secure family bond Crowder initially observes from the outside. In a private conversation with Crowder, she insists that she has never been unfaithful, while saying that Ron has repeatedly strayed and no longer tries to conceal his affairs. She describes his conduct as entitlement reinforced by his role as breadwinner, and speaks through tears. Crowder calls Ron an idiot; Liz wipes her eyes and thanks him. The exchange gives her a voice apart from Crowder’s attraction: she is not simply the married woman he imagines himself drawn to, but someone naming the injury within her marriage.

That fracture becomes explicit after the crisis. When Carolyn asks to sleep in Anna’s room and Ron asks whether they should pack, Liz tells him he will never go near the children again. The blunt boundary marks a decisive change in the family’s arrangements: rather than return with Ron to the home where the children were endangered, Liz takes them to the Tomlinsons. On the drive to Saint Joseph Hospital, Danny and Crowder agree with Liz on a shared account of the night, including the demon possessing Casey and Jack Bittner’s suicide; they also agree to say that Father Sutherland died by suicide after attacking Crowder. Liz accepts the account and agrees to repeat it. Their coordination protects Crowder from immediate suspicion, while the fabricated explanation leaves the crisis’s true events concealed from others.

Liz’s position in the story is also shaped by the desires men project onto her. Crowder’s early descriptions linger on her green eyes and fitted clothes, and he admits that his sense of a deeper connection may be wishful thinking. Much later, Danny describes staring at her body and fantasizing about mutilating it. His account turns the protective brother-in-law into another source of threat, making clear that Liz’s attractiveness, as seen through male eyes, does not constitute intimacy or consent. Against these competing fantasies, her clearest acts are practical and self-directed: she seeks help, protects her children, and bars Ron from approaching them.

Narrative Role and Significance

Liz’s story is shaped by a tension between being watched and acting for herself. Jason Crowder first presents her through the details that attract him, while Danny Hartman’s later speech reduces her to a body he covets and imagines harming. Yet neither man’s fixation defines what she does: she calls for help when Casey is in crisis, moves toward her children when they are in danger, and ultimately draws a firm boundary against Ron. Her account of Ron’s repeated infidelity also gives her a voice beyond the role of wife and mother, naming the unequal entitlement she has endured. In the aftermath, she agrees to Danny and Crowder’s shared version of the night, participating in a concealment that protects them from immediate scrutiny even as the truth remains hidden. The contrast is central to her portrayal: Liz is vulnerable to violence and to other people’s fantasies, but she is not merely their object; at the decisive moment, she makes choices about whom she will protect and whom she will keep away from her children.