Monday, 23 February 2015

In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, how many meetings did Kit Tyler miss?

Kit Tyler does
not miss any formal prayer meetings under the strict surveillance of her pious Uncle Matthew;
however, she does miss a Thursday Lecture, which is the day that people are publicly punished in
Wethersfield. Kit is terrified of seeing what will happen to Nat, who is being punished for
illuminating jack-o-lanterns in the house of William Ashby.

An hour before
the meeting is due to start, Kit sneaks out alone and goes to see Nat, who is locked up in the
stocks with some of his fellow sailors. Kit attempts to comfort Nat and offers to bring him
food, but Nat is too proud for that and says, 'You can stop trying to be a lady of mercy. 'Twas
well worth it. I'd gladly sit here another five hours for a sight of Sir William's face that
evening." Unimpressed by this childish display of bravado, Kit leaves the square with
"[h]ead held high," trying "to keep a ladylike pace." Embarrassed that her
very public "foolish concern" might be the subject of the town gossip, Kit wanders to
the meeting house, where she sees the formal notice of Nat's punishment: he must pay a fine of
forty shillings, remain in the stocks "from one hour before the Lecture till one hour
after," and must never return to Wethersfield "on certainty of thirty lashes at the
whipping post." 

Kit decides right then and there that she will not go
into the Meeting House to hear Nat's sentence read to the entire town since "[s]he could
not bear to sit there and hear that sentence read aloud," or "face the family, or the
whispering and staring that would turn her own family pew into a pillory." This is, as the
book says, "the first time since she had come to Wethersfield in the spring that she had
dared to miss a Thursday Lecture."

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