Sunday Small

Sunday Small’s life is shaped by two linked conditions: she is abandoned at Nuneaton Union Workhouse and repeatedly witnesses the vulnerability of children trapped within its routines. She answers that history not by surrendering to it, but by forming bonds, speaking against abuse, and imagining a safer home for others. The discovery that Lady Lavinia Huntley is her mother transforms her private longing into a family reunion and gives new purpose to the foundling home she has long hoped to establish.

Identity and Early Life

Sunday is found as a baby on the steps of Nuneaton Union Workhouse. Verity Lockett later tells her that, among the infants in the nursery, Sunday was the only one who cried. The detail gives her origin a stark solitude: she enters the institution without a known family, and the story of her arrival is mediated by one of the few adults who showed her affection. Sunday remembers Verity as beautiful in character as well as appearance, and as a teacher who also helped in the nursery and sick wing. Her attachment to Verity is consequently more than gratitude for instruction; it is the rare experience of being cared for by an adult.

In November 1880, Sunday is living within the workhouse’s divided and regulated world. Women, boys, girls, and men occupy separate sections, and the residents’ work is assigned according to gender and perceived ability. Men and stronger boys pick oakum, crush bones, or tend the gardens; women and girls sew uniforms, cook, clean, and work in the laundry. Residents rarely come together except at Sunday church, and Sunday has seen how separation can devastate families. After meals, Miss Frost reads out the day’s duties, making the routine of institutional control part of ordinary life.

Her own childhood is marked by hunger and punishment as well as labor. When Lady Lavinia Huntley asks whether the workhouse residents were always properly fed, Sunday describes having been confined for three days without food or drink. Verity Lockett eventually found her, and Sunday was so weak that she spent the night in the sickbay. She also recalls two little girls who were locked away and never seen again; Miss Frost said they had died of influenza, but Sunday cannot remember anyone saying they received a proper funeral. These experiences leave her with direct knowledge of how discipline and neglect can disappear behind official explanations.

Imagination, Solidarity, and Work Beyond the Institution

Sunday’s loneliness finds an outlet in a recurring fantasy: that her mother will come for her and take her to a beautiful home where there is plentiful food, flowers, green grass, and no more hunger. She convinces herself that her mother must have wanted to keep her but was prevented by illness or some other circumstance. The imagined rescue is not merely a wish for comfort; it gives Sunday a story in which abandonment is temporary rather than proof that she was unwanted. She falls asleep imagining that they will live happily ever after.

Her bonds with Daisy Branning and Tommy Branning turn that solitary hope outward. Sunday vows that the three of them will escape and that they will get Cissie Burns out of her situation. When Cissie protests that she could not have become pregnant by a male inmate, since the men and women were kept apart, two men force her down and prepare to take her away in a straitjacket. Sunday rushes forward as Cissie struggles. The evidence of Sunday’s intervention is brief, but her action belongs to a larger pattern: she does not accept the institution’s treatment of vulnerable girls as beyond challenge.

A night helping in the nursery strengthens this sense of purpose. After watching the sleeping infants, Sunday resolves to volunteer there whenever she is allowed. She has gone without sleep, but the experience leaves her determined to make a difference in the lives of these babies and others like them. She begins to imagine opening a foundling home of her own, where children without families might receive the care she herself lacked. That ambition later becomes the practical destination of her story.

Lady Lavinia Huntley offers Sunday a position with Biddy Spooner. Biddy is eccentric, but the arrangement gives Sunday a way out of the workhouse and into a household where she can work. Biddy agrees that Sunday may have Sundays off, but also decides that Sunday is a foolish name and proposes calling her Sunny. Sunday is visibly shaken during a later exchange with Miss Frost but manages to answer steadily. The contrast between the name imposed on her and the name she carries underscores a life in which other people repeatedly try to define her, even as she builds a sense of self through her choices and loyalties.

Speaking Out and Protecting Others

Sunday’s move beyond the workhouse does not end her connection to its residents. Lady Lavinia asks her directly about what she has seen there, including food and punishment. Sunday explains what happened during her confinement and speaks about Albert Pinnegar’s conduct toward girls as they grew older. She challenges the suggestion that a male inmate could have been responsible for a girl’s pregnancy: the residents were separated by a high wire fence except during church or their daily airing. She then acknowledges that Pinnegar had also attempted to assault her. Her testimony connects personal danger to the institution’s broader failure to protect girls, and makes her past experience available as evidence rather than leaving it as private shame.

Sunday’s protectiveness becomes especially intimate when she embraces Daisy and feels the small mound of her pregnancy. She steps back in shock as Daisy looks at her in fear, then reassures her that those around her are doing their best and that she may feel differently when she sees and holds her baby. Sunday’s response is compassionate rather than condemning: she understands Daisy’s fear without treating it as the whole of her future. Daisy’s pregnancy also makes the stakes of Sunday’s promised protection painfully immediate.

After Daisy’s death, Tommy Branning leaves the household. In a message, he says that life there has become difficult since his sister died and that he sees her everywhere. He considers learning carpentry or going to sea, promises to visit, and asks Sunday to make sure the animals are fed. Sunday is deeply hurt by his departure. His words make clear that the household had given Daisy and Tommy a home, but cannot erase the loss that now drives him away. Sunday is left to face that grief while continuing to care for those still around her.

Threat, Birth Revelation, and Resolution

Sunday remains afraid that Pinnegar will not leave her alone. She believes that the fire, the attack on Nell, and the harm done to Biddy Spooner’s animals are connected to him. Although she is happy in the household, she decides to move away from town so that her presence will not put the people she loves at risk. The decision is an act of protection, but also a painful reversal: the home she worked to make for herself is threatened by the continuing reach of the workhouse’s former authority.

Sunday’s understanding of her origins changes when she recognizes the Lacy baby shawl. She had been left at the workhouse wearing one identical to the shawl Verity Lockett’s baby wore; Verity had received hers from Lady Lavinia Huntley, and Stephen Huntley had also had an identical one. Sunday begins to suspect what the resemblance means. Zillah later confirms to Lady Lavinia that Sunday is her daughter by birth. The revelation answers the question at the center of Sunday’s childhood fantasy, though it arrives only after years in which she has had to imagine a mother who would claim her.

Miss Frost’s crimes bring Sunday into immediate danger once more. While Sunday is held captive, Miss Frost confesses that she killed Albert Pinnegar and pushed Daisy, who was pregnant, into the canal. Police constables arrive and seize the knife; Tom Branning kneels to free Sunday from her bonds. The rescue does not undo Daisy’s death, but it prevents Miss Frost from carrying out her threat against Sunday and makes the truth of the crimes explicit.

Sunday and Tom become engaged, and Sunday accepts Lady Lavinia’s offer of Treetops Manor as a home for foundling children. On Mothering Sunday, Tom encourages her as she walks along the church aisle to Lady Lavinia. Mother and daughter leave together, talking animatedly and absorbed in their reunion. Sunday agrees that she and Tom will take up the offer when they marry, on the condition that Lady Lavinia stays to advise them. Tom, she says, can manage the practical odd jobs, while she will do what she can; she recognizes that the two are still young and will need guidance. The plan gives concrete form to the wish born in the nursery: Sunday, once an abandoned child, intends to help make a secure home for children who might otherwise begin as she did.