Rats

Rats are a recurring sign of the unsafe living conditions endured by Sunday Small, appearing both in the workhouse punishment cellar and in the room she is given at Yew Tree Farm. Their presence is concrete rather than symbolic alone: they move through the spaces where she is confined or expected to sleep, making neglect something she must face at close quarters.

Rats in the Workhouse Cellar

In the workhouse punishment cellar, rats are among the creatures that make confinement physically threatening. The room contains only a bucket for necessities, with no bed or blanket; once its door is shut, it is pitch-black, cold, and damp. Sunday Small tells Lady Huntley that mice, rats, and spiders run over anyone who falls asleep there. The animals intensify the punishment’s deprivation: even sleep offers no relief from the conditions of the cell.

Sunday Small says she was kept in the cellar for as long as three days without food or drink. She was so weak when Mrs Lockett came to fetch her that she needed to spend the night in the sickbay. Rats belong to the immediate circumstances of this punishment, not to an isolated encounter: their movement over prisoners helps convey how little protection or comfort the institution provides to those locked away.

Rats at Yew Tree Farm

Later, at Yew Tree Farm, Sunday Small finds what looks like rat droppings on the floor of the room under the eaves. The room is already cold and insanitary, furnished only with a straw mattress, a jug and bowl, and a rickety chest of drawers. Although every instinct urges her to flee, she squares her shoulders and returns downstairs to begin her duties. The droppings make the threat to her sleeping space visible before she encounters a rat directly.

After laying out bread laced with arsenic, Sunday Small wakes to find a rat dead only inches from her mattress. It is almost as large as one of the farmyard cats. Bill treats the discovery as a joke and taunts her while fetching the body down, leaving her close to hysteria. The rat is dead, but the incident does not end her distress: afterward, Sunday Small can hardly sleep.

Fear and Material Neglect

The episodes place rats in two different forms of insecure shelter: a locked cellar used for punishment and a makeshift attic room at a farm where Sunday Small works. In both, the animal’s presence marks the failure of basic protection. In the cellar, rats can reach people who are trapped in darkness; at the farm, droppings and a body beside the mattress show that even the place where Sunday Small is meant to rest is not clean or secure.

Sunday Small’s response also changes with her circumstances. In the cellar, she describes the rats as part of an ordeal imposed on her, with no means of removing herself from the room. At the farm, she attempts to kill a rat with poisoned bread, but the dead animal and Bill’s mockery leave her more frightened rather than reassured. The two encounters make clear that the threat is not only the animal itself but the conditions that leave Sunday Small exposed to it.

Narrative Significance

Rats give physical form to the neglect surrounding Sunday Small without becoming independent characters in the story. Their brief appearances connect institutional punishment to the poor, insanitary accommodation at Yew Tree Farm, extending the sense of vulnerability beyond the workhouse. The dead rat near the mattress is especially consequential: an attempted remedy becomes another source of fear when Bill uses the discovery to taunt her, and Sunday Small’s resulting sleeplessness shows that the farm’s conditions continue to affect her even after the animal is gone.