Rhoda Howe Penmark

Rhoda Howe Penmark is introduced as a child whose poised, old-fashioned manner appears to reassure the adults around her, even as her private intensity and carefully managed responses unsettle that impression. Her longing for the Fern Grammar School’s Penmanship medal gives this contrast a concrete focus: after Claude Daigle wins the award, Rhoda is connected to the events that precede his drowning, while her calmness afterward leaves Christine Penmark struggling to understand what her daughter knows and feels.

Identity and Introduction

The adjectives most often applied to Rhoda are “quaint,” “modest,” and “old-fashioned.” Christine sees a child who can manage her hair without help and greets the morning already dressed, with two narrow braids looped back and fastened with small bows. The precision of the hairstyle, and the mother’s inspection of its firmly tied ribbons, establish an image of order and self-sufficiency. Christine wonders where Rhoda inherited her composure, neatness, and cool independence; the question quietly complicates the reassuring surface she observes.

At breakfast, Rhoda’s face holds what the narration calls an expression of solemn innocence. A faint dimple appears when she smiles at a thought of her own; then her smile becomes hesitant, revealing the small gap between her front teeth. These small physical details make her seem particular and recognizable rather than merely emblematic of childhood innocence. At the same time, the smile is associated with a private thought unavailable to the adults around her. Her self-possession is visible, but what lies behind it is not.

Ambition and the Penmanship Medal

Rhoda wants the Penmanship medal from the beginning and expects to win it. She has practiced faithfully, gripping her pen with determination and concentrating so hard that the tip of her tongue protrudes between her teeth. The medal is not a casual wish: the closing exercises make the award the most important prize in the pupils’ eyes, and Rhoda’s effort gives her confidence that it will be hers.

Instead, the award goes to Claude Daigle, a thin, timid boy in her class and her own age. The stated criterion is improvement during the school year, not simply the neatest handwriting. Claudia Fern explains that the judges, who do not know the children’s identities, select Claude because his work shows the greatest progress, even though Rhoda writes a clearer, neater hand. Her account emphasizes that Rhoda has worked hard and that the race was close, but it cannot undo the reversal between Rhoda’s expectation and the result. Christine remembers this disappointment the following morning and encourages her daughter to enjoy the school picnic, imagining that Rhoda may someday remember the day with pleasure.

The Encounter with Claude and the Drowning

Claudia Fern later recounts that she spoke to Rhoda about courtesy and fair play after the medal was awarded. Rhoda listens with a puzzled, calculating expression and says nothing. Less than an hour afterward, an older pupil sees Rhoda and Claude at the far end of the school grounds. Claude is upset and crying; Rhoda stands in front of him, blocking his way. According to the pupil, Rhoda shoves him and reaches for his medal. Claude breaks away and runs toward Benedict’s Old Wharf, with Rhoda following at a walk rather than running.

Christine asks whether the monitor could have been mistaken, but Claudia Fern defends the witness as a trusted, nearly fifteen-year-old school monitor who has been at the school since kindergarten. Rhoda later identifies the witness as Mary Beth Musgrove and acknowledges that Mary Beth said she saw her; she adds that even Leroy Jessup knows about the sighting. Rhoda offers a different account: she says she and Claude had invented a game in which she could catch him within ten minutes and touch the medal, after which he would let her wear it for an hour. She disputes that she took the medal, while not denying that she reached toward it. Asked whether she had the medal at the time Mary Beth saw her, she answers no. The accounts agree on the pursuit and the reach toward the award, but differ over what those actions meant.

When Claude’s body is recovered, a radio announcement reports that he had been wearing the medal when last seen, but it is missing from his body. The bottom has been searched without finding it. Christine returns to the apartment worried that Rhoda may have witnessed the recovery or the guards’ attempts to revive him. Rhoda enters placidly, asks for milk and a peanut-butter sandwich, and says she knows what happened. She also says that she suggested the guards look among the pilings and confirms that she was present when Claude’s body was brought from the water and laid on the lawn. Christine tries to comfort her and urges her not to remain troubled by the images, but Rhoda’s unconcern contrasts sharply with her mother’s fear that the death may have overwhelmed her.

Name, Family, and Narrative Significance

When Monica Breedlove asks whether Rhoda has a middle initial, Christine supplies her full name: Rhoda Howe Penmark. Rhoda was named for Kenneth Penmark’s mother, a formal woman of pronounced respectability who strongly opposed Kenneth’s marriage into the Bravo family. She described the Bravos as rootless and unconventional, and predicted dire consequences if her son persisted in what she considered a folly. The choice of Rhoda’s name was an attempt to flatter the older woman and win her tolerance, an effort that never fully succeeded. The family history gives Rhoda’s composed, conventional presentation an added irony: even her name was chosen as a gesture toward inherited respectability.

In these episodes, Rhoda’s significance lies in the gap between what others can observe and what they can establish. The careful braids, solemn expression, determined practice, and restrained smile make outward control a recurring feature of her presentation. The medal dispute then turns that composure into a source of suspense: a teacher reports aggression, a monitor’s account places Rhoda behind Claude as he flees, and Rhoda reframes the encounter as a game while conceding that she reached for the medal. After the drowning, her presence at the recovery and her calm return to ordinary requests do not settle what she understands. Instead, they sharpen Christine’s uncertainty and make Rhoda’s apparent innocence something to examine rather than simply accept.