Biddy Spooner—Jacob Bartlett

Biddy Spooner and Jacob Bartlett’s relationship is defined by a decisive act of care: when Jacob’s mother left him as a very young child, Biddy and her husband took him in and brought him up as their own. The novel presents their kinship not merely as a matter of blood, but as a lasting household bond created through the care they gave him.

Family History

Jacob is Biddy’s nephew, the son of her sister. Annie explains to Sunday Small that Jacob’s mother had been born outside marriage and left him when he was still very young; no one had seen or heard from her since. The account establishes both the rupture at the beginning of Jacob’s life and the absence of his birth mother from the family that raised him.

A Home Made Through Care

After Jacob’s mother disappeared, Biddy and her husband raised him as their own. Annie says the couple could not have children of their own and that Jacob fulfilled a need in their lives. The account does not describe a formal adoption; it emphasizes instead the practical and emotional reality of his upbringing within their household. When Biddy introduces Jacob to the people staying in her home, she presents him as her nephew, while Sunday has already encountered him there as a familiar member of the household.

Belonging and Contrast

Jacob’s history briefly unsettles Sunday, who privately compares his abandonment with her own childhood after being left at the workhouse. The contrast is specific: Jacob, too, was left by his mother, but Biddy and her husband took responsibility for raising him. Their relationship therefore gives the story an example of family belonging sustained by care despite an absent parent, without erasing the circumstances of Jacob’s birth or his mother’s departure.