Lizzy’s separation from her father and feeling of abandonment after he left her

Lizzy’s separation from her father and feeling of abandonment after he left is a defining rupture: her father leaves her at a convent in Santa Fe while he continues toward Colorado, and does so without telling her goodbye. The parting is devastating not only because it separates her from the parent she expects to accompany, but because its concealment confirms a fear she has already begun to recognize. The account follows that change from anxious suspicion, through the moment the wagons depart, to Lizzy’s later written appeal to return home.

Identity and Circumstances

The separation follows Mama’s death on the journey west. Beside her mother’s grave, Lizzy asks her father whether he intends to leave her in Santa Fe and go on to Colorado alone. He is occupied with the cross over the grave, using a rock as a hammer; when she asks again whether he will leave her, he responds with a question rather than a promise. Lizzy recognizes the difference. His voice has the indifferent quality she associates with lying, and she understands that his words do not answer her.

That evasion gives the loss a period of anticipation. The next morning, as the party prepares to move on from Mama’s grave, Lizzy notices that her father scarcely speaks to her or looks at her. Whenever their eyes meet, he looks away. The outward business of departure continues—chores are done, wagons packed, animals hitched—but Lizzy’s attention fixes on the distance opening between them. Her father’s silence does not explain what is coming; it makes the unspoken decision increasingly difficult to ignore.

Foreboding and Concealment

Lizzy describes the fear as familiar from the time Mama fell sick. It is joined by what she calls knowing: a recognition she feels in her bones, although she resists acknowledging its meaning. The parallel connects the impending separation to the earlier experience of losing her mother. In both cases, fear arrives before the final confirmation, leaving Lizzy to endure the knowledge without the power to prevent what follows.

At the convent, she tries to get out and insists that her father is waiting for her. She accuses those around her of wanting her to stay and imagines that the arrangement may have been made with him. Her desperate pounding on the door and repeated calls to her father show how strongly she still believes the parting might be stopped if she can reach him in time. Her understanding breaks through when Mother Magdalena holds her and tells her that he has decided to leave her with them. He could not tell her himself, Mother Magdalena explains, and believed this was best.

The revelation confirms what Lizzy had sensed but could not accept. She has been aware of the decision for days, yet has refused to name it; now the uncertainty becomes a fact. Her pleas are not merely for permission to travel onward. She insists that her father needs her and asks to be allowed outside at least to say goodbye. The explanation that he could not tell her does not soften the abandonment, because the essential fact remains that he has gone without giving her that final exchange.

Departure and Immediate Aftermath

The sounds of the caravan leaving make the separation irreversible. Lizzy hears the calls used to direct the animals and realizes that the wagons are moving. She sobs and begs, then abruptly stops as she recognizes the departure. When she cries out, Mother Magdalena restrains her; Lizzy breaks free and strikes Elinora in the face, accusing her of being pious and blaming her for the betrayal. Elinora had known about the plan, Lizzy believes, and may even have persuaded her father to leave her. The account presents this as Lizzy’s suspicion, not as an established explanation for the decision.

Elinora sobs, and Lizzy takes a fierce, immediate satisfaction in hearing it. Elinora, in turn, challenges why Lizzy would want to follow a father who had sneaked away without saying goodbye. The exchange exposes the conflict inside Lizzy’s reaction: she is furious at the way her father has left, yet continues to want to go with him. After the last jingling harnesses and creaking wagon wheels fade, Lizzy hears another scream and recognizes it as her own. The departure is registered first through sound—commands, wheels, silence—and finally through the voice of the person left behind.

The next morning, the physical consequences of the night remain. Lizzy’s throat hurts from screaming, her head aches from lack of sleep, and her heart feels wounded by betrayal. She is ashamed at the thought that everyone in the caravan knew her father intended to leave her. Her anger toward Elinora persists, but the event has widened into a broader humiliation: Lizzy feels that the adults around her knew what was happening while she was excluded from the truth.

The Separation’s Continuing Effects

In a letter to Uncle William, Lizzy returns to the episode directly. She says her father ran off in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye and that she has heard nothing from him since. She claims not to care whether she hears from him again, but in the same letter asks Uncle William to arrange for her to come home. That contradiction makes the continuing injury visible: her declaration of indifference coexists with a practical appeal to another family member for rescue from the life imposed on her.

Lizzy tries to make the appeal persuasive by describing herself as increasingly capable. She says she can live in the house in Independence and run it for Uncle William, points to her chores and lessons, and explains that although she has projects to finish, she would be ready to leave when he sends for her. She notes that wagons regularly travel north and that the nuns could find her a suitable family to accompany. Her proposal is specific and resourceful, but it also shows that returning home depends on someone else arranging her passage.

The separation therefore changes both Lizzy’s sense of family and her account of herself. Her father’s silence makes her feel betrayed and excluded; her request to Uncle William answers that helplessness with a plan grounded in the work and competence she can claim. Yet the letter does not resolve the rupture. Lizzy asks to be sent for while insisting she no longer cares about the father who left her, preserving the tension between her hurt and her longing to belong somewhere beyond the convent.