Origins and identity

Origins and identity in the novel are neither immediately known nor securely defined by birth. Sunday Small grows up without knowledge of her parents, carrying the status of a foundling and imagining that her mother might one day return. A parcel of baby clothes, a shawl shared with the children of Lady Lavinia Huntley, and a secret Zillah has kept for years gradually turn that imagined history into a family connection. The revelation does not erase Sunday’s workhouse childhood or its injuries; instead, it forces her to reconsider what she has endured and whom she can trust.

Foundlinghood and the life assigned to her

Sunday’s earliest known identity is the one imposed by her abandonment: she is a baby left on the steps of the workhouse, with no account of her parentage. The institution becomes the setting of her childhood and the framework within which she understands herself. Its divisions separate women, boys, girls, and men, while inmates’ work is allocated according to their place in the institution. Men and stronger boys pick oakum, crush bones, or work in the gardens; women and girls sew uniforms, cook, clean, and labor in the laundry. Sunday sees that the separations can devastate families, while the daily routines make workhouse membership a defining fact of life rather than a temporary circumstance.

Her experience of the institution also differs from the public account given by its guardians. Lady Lavinia Huntley asks whether the children are adequately fed because the guardians provide money for that purpose. Having left the workhouse, Sunday chooses to tell her what meals were actually like: often dry grey bread and greasy porridge, with thin soup and meat that was difficult to eat. She also describes the punishment cell, where she was once kept for three days without food or drink and emerged weak enough to need a night in the sickbay. Her testimony gives the workhouse child a voice against official appearances, and she hopes that speaking honestly may improve conditions for those still living there.

The institution does not simply shelter Sunday; it assigns her labor and limits her choices. Kitchen work is relatively welcome because it is warm and brings her into contact with local women whose conversations offer glimpses of family life. She privately prefers caring for the babies in the nursery, but knows not to tell Miss Frost, who might prevent her from going there. Sunday’s small acts of preference and concealment show a self developing inside a system that largely decides where she works and how she is treated.

The parcel and the first clues

The physical evidence of Sunday’s birth remains unopened for years. When she prepares to leave her room at Yew Tree Farm, she notices the brown-paper parcel tied with string that was given to her upon leaving the workhouse. It contains the clothes she wore as a newborn: a small nightgown and a fine lace shawl. Sunday had avoided opening it partly because the objects might have been handled by the woman who gave birth to her, and partly because she feared that examining them would end the hope that her mother might return. Their delicacy and apparent expense suggest that her mother could afford fine things, but they do not yet explain why the child was abandoned.

The shawl becomes more than a keepsake when Sunday recognizes that Mrs Lockett’s baby had worn an identical one, and that Stephen had one too. She recalls that Lady Lavinia Huntley had ordered baby clothes from an exclusive Mayfair shop before the birth of her first daughter. Lady Lavinia had lost two daughters at birth, and a third daughter had been born on Sunday’s own birthday. Sunday sees how the matching shawls, the birth dates, and the shared hair and eye color might connect her to Lady Lavinia. Yet the apparent existence of three small graves in the orchard at Treetops Manor seems to contradict the possibility that the third child survived.

The clues therefore produce uncertainty before they produce recognition. Sunday cannot easily reconcile the gentle woman she has come to care for with the possibility that Lady Lavinia knowingly abandoned a living daughter. She also understands that the conclusion would transform Lady Lavinia’s grief and the meaning of the graves. Rather than confront her with an accusation she might be wrong about, Sunday considers speaking to Verity Lockett, who has become almost a surrogate mother. At the same time, her circumstances at Yew Tree Farm prevent her from leaving immediately: Mrs Barnes can threaten her with arrest over an accusation of theft. Her search for identity unfolds alongside practical dependence, not apart from it.

Social labels, credibility, and belonging

Sunday’s uncertain parentage makes her vulnerable to other people’s judgments. At Yew Tree Farm, Bill uses her poverty and unknown origins to demean her when she refuses his proposal. He treats her lack of known family as evidence that she has little prospect of finding a better life. Sunday rejects both his proposed marriage and the premise that she should accept it because of her birth status. Her refusal is an assertion of choice before she knows the truth about her parents.

The workhouse’s treatment of Cissie Burns offers another view of how identity can be imposed through stigma. Sunday knows that Albert Pinnegar forced himself on Cissie, but Miss Frost presents Cissie as sexually irresponsible and arranges for her to be taken to Hatter’s Hall asylum under the promise that she would be cared for with her baby. When Sunday later tells Lady Lavinia what happened, she recounts Cissie’s fear and the way the institution’s accusation displaced the truth of the abuse. Cissie’s experience is not Sunday’s own, but it helps establish the hostile terms on which poor, unmarried women could be defined and disbelieved.

Sunday’s response to prejudice against Mickey offers a contrasting moment of recognition. At the cattle market, she sees people recoil from him, sneer, and treat him as though contact with him would taint them; one man spits at his feet. Sunday links the hostility to Pinnegar’s associates, places her arm through Mickey’s, and urges him to hold his head up and meet the onlookers’ gaze. The scene broadens the novel’s concern with identity beyond parentage: social identity can be assigned by others and enforced through public humiliation, while solidarity can refuse that assignment.

Zillah’s confession and the recovered history

The decisive explanation comes from Zillah, who has kept the secret because she feared what Ashley Huntley might do. After Ashley’s death, Zillah tells Verity Lockett that she intends to disclose everything to Lady Lavinia, asking Verity to accompany her. The delay has been bound to danger and conscience: Zillah does not want to carry the secret any longer, but she knows the truth may compound Lady Lavinia’s grief after the losses of Ashley and Stephen.

Zillah explains that the third baby was not stillborn. After the midwife had left, she hid the newborn in her room, wrapped a pillow in a shawl, and placed it in the grave already prepared by Matthews. Later, when no one was about, she carried the child to the workhouse, left her on the steps, and rang the bell, waiting until she knew the baby had been found and was safe. Because Verity had recently begun working there, Zillah expected to hear how the child was faring, but she did not tell Verity the child’s identity. The grave that seemed to disprove Sunday’s suspicions had concealed the substitution rather than the child’s death.

Zillah identifies Sunday Small as Lady Lavinia’s living daughter. The revelation transforms several earlier details at once: the shawl, the shared coloring, the birthday, and Sunday’s long-standing closeness to Lady Lavinia. It also distinguishes Zillah’s rescue from the abandonment Sunday had imagined. Sunday had indeed been left at the workhouse, but Zillah had arranged for her to survive, secretly watching for news through Verity rather than surrendering her to the grave.

Recognition and its limits

Sunday reaches her conclusion before Zillah’s confession. When the evidence falls into place, she recognizes the shawl and recalls Lady Lavinia’s lost daughters, but she remains unable to decide whether the woman she admires could have knowingly abandoned her. That uncertainty is crucial: discovering a likely origin does not immediately provide emotional security, and the reader learns the truth through an explanation that Sunday herself has had to assemble from incomplete signs.

When Lady Lavinia later comes to see her, Sunday is exhausted and rejects her, saying she has worked out who she is and does not want to see her. The discovery has preceded the mother’s explanation, so recognition arrives first as shock and anger rather than reunion. The scene preserves the difference between biological connection and earned trust: Sunday can know who Lady Lavinia is without being ready to accept her. In this way, the novel makes origins a powerful but incomplete answer to identity. Sunday’s past includes both the family history concealed from her and the life she has built among people who cared for her, including Verity Lockett and Tom Branning.