Sunday resists Pinnegar’s sexual assault

Sunday Small’s resistance to Albert Pinnegar’s sexual assault is an act of self-protection made brutally difficult by her concern for Daisy Branning. She first tries to stop him and later threatens to expose him, but when he promises to turn his attention to Daisy, Sunday submits to further unwanted contact rather than risk her friend becoming his next target. The scene makes clear that her apparent surrender is not consent: Pinnegar has arranged the circumstances so that her care for another vulnerable girl becomes leverage against her.

Encounter and conditions

Pinnegar’s assault follows weeks in which he has tried to win Sunday’s compliance with treats she firmly refused. He is accustomed to girls being too frightened to reject his advances, and regards Sunday’s resistance as a challenge rather than a boundary. On this occasion, Miss Frost has left Sunday working in Pinnegar’s office and told him not to hurry her return. Pinnegar locks the door, leaving him alone with Sunday and able to control when she can leave.

When Pinnegar approaches from behind and touches her, Sunday immediately pulls away and puts the desk between them. She tells him to leave her alone and warns him not to touch her. His pursuit turns the office into a space in which ordinary escape is difficult: he moves around the desk after her, then grabs her dress. Sunday struggles, manages to break away briefly, and strikes him in the groin. This gives her a moment to reach the door, but she has not yet managed to unlock it, and Pinnegar is recovering.

Her resistance is practical as well as physical. Sunday threatens to tell Verity Lockett what Pinnegar has done and to bring the Board of Guardians into the matter. She understands that an accusation could cost him his position, and his hesitation suggests that the possibility unsettles him. But Sunday’s appeal to authority cannot provide immediate protection: she remains locked in the office with him, and must rely on his fear of consequences to create an opening.

Daisy as leverage

Pinnegar answers the threat by naming Daisy as someone he could target instead. He presents Sunday with a cruel choice: accept his attention herself or leave other girls exposed to his advances. Sunday believes he means it. Because she cannot bear to place Daisy in danger, the threat defeats the escape she had begun to secure. Pinnegar has made Sunday’s loyalty to her friend part of the mechanism of his abuse.

He then continues to touch Sunday despite her refusal. The narration stresses her disgust and fear, and describes her keeping still while he assaults her. He eventually tells her to return after lunch and turns away; the encounter ends not because Sunday has won lasting safety, but because Pinnegar chooses to stop for the moment. She has resisted, escaped the possibility of further immediate escalation, and made clear that she knows his conduct is wrong. Yet his threat has also shown how readily he can make her fear for someone else constrain what she feels able to do.

The episode is especially painful in light of what Sunday has already seen happen to Cissie Burns. When the asylum carriage arrives for Cissie, she recognizes it and protests that she had been promised a place where she could care for her baby. Miss Frost remains impassive, and, when Cissie names Pinnegar as the man who made her pregnant, Miss Frost attacks her character rather than offering protection. Cissie is taken away. Sunday therefore has direct reason to doubt that the adults responsible for the workhouse will protect a girl who accuses Pinnegar, or that an accusation will prevent another girl from being harmed.

Concealment and its cost

After Pinnegar lets her leave, Sunday hurries to the washroom and tries to clean herself. She changes into her other dress and plans to explain the damage to the first one by saying it caught on a nail. This decision allows her to continue through the day without making an immediate disclosure, but it also leaves the incident concealed. She is distressed and fears what Pinnegar may do next; Cissie’s experience has taught her that his conduct may escalate beyond what has happened to her that morning.

Sunday also believes she has few credible avenues for help. Verity Lockett, the one person whose presence had comforted her, is away recovering after the birth of her baby and will return only occasionally. Sunday thinks the Guardians would not believe her. She is also afraid that speaking up could expose other girls to retaliation, a fear Pinnegar has deliberately intensified by naming Daisy. Her silence is thus not indifference or uncertainty about the wrong done to her; it is a response to isolation, institutional distrust, and a threat directed at her friend.

Disclosure and significance

Later, when Lady Lavinia Huntley asks whether Pinnegar was a kind master, Sunday’s panic briefly returns. Thinking of Cissie, she gives an account of Pinnegar’s conduct and explains that he forced Cissie, who suspected he was the father of her baby. Sunday recounts the false assurance that Cissie would be sent somewhere suitable, the arrival of the asylum carriage, and Cissie’s removal. Her disclosure makes the connection between the two girls explicit: Cissie’s fate is not an isolated story to Sunday, but the reason Pinnegar’s threat against Daisy could silence her in the locked office.

The episode distinguishes resistance from simple victory. Sunday fights back, tries to reach help, and invokes the Guardians’ authority, but those actions do not undo Pinnegar’s power or give her confidence that the institution will act. Her decision to protect Daisy comes at a cost to herself, while her later account to Lady Lavinia Huntley breaks the silence that had helped keep Pinnegar’s abuse hidden. Through Sunday’s experience, the workhouse is shown not only as a place where a powerful man can exploit girls, but also as a system in which fear of disbelief and retaliation can make a victim feel responsible for preventing the next assault.