Harriet Said: Analysis of Major Characters
"Harriet Said" features a complex interplay of characters set against a backdrop of adolescent exploration and manipulation. The narrator, a thirteen-year-old girl grappling with feelings of inferiority, returns home from boarding school and rekindles her friendship with Harriet, a fourteen-year-old girl who exhibits a blend of cruelty and fondness towards her. As she delves into a tumultuous relationship with Mr. Biggs, a middle-aged, married man, the narrator experiences conflicting emotions of fascination and disgust. Harriet's dominant influence leads the narrator to engage in increasingly risky behavior, culminating in a tragic incident that results in Mrs. Biggs's death.
Mr. Biggs, characterized by his physical frailty and emotional weakness, becomes a pawn in the girls' psychological games, ultimately succumbing to their manipulations despite his attempts to assert himself. The narrative explores themes of power dynamics and moral ambiguity through the interactions of these characters, particularly highlighting Harriet's sadistic tendencies and her ability to control those around her. Each character reflects the complexities of human relationships, particularly through the lens of adolescence, where innocence and malevolence often coexist. Overall, "Harriet Said" invites readers to engage with the darker aspects of youth and the consequences of manipulation, leaving them to ponder the ethical implications of the characters' actions.
Harriet Said: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Beryl Bainbridge
First published: 1972
Genre: Novel
Locale: Formby, England
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The mid-twentieth century
The narrator, a thirteen-year-old middle-class English girl. Home for the summer from the boarding school to which she has been sent as a “problem child,” she resumes her interrupted friendship with a neighbor girl, Harriet, whom she admires and to whom she feels inferior. Plain and heavyset, she is flattered when a married man in their seashore town, Mr. Biggs, shows a sexual interest in her. Under Harriet's guidance, she plots the seduction of this man, toward whom she has ambivalent feelings of fascination and disgust. She is vaguely repelled by his physical evidences of middle age and reacts with contempt at his fear and helplessness when they are locked in a church one night. Several nights later, however, she allows him to consummate their relationship on a deserted dune. Her indifference toward his feelings and her possibly destructive effect on him parallels her curiously detached attitude toward her parents, toward whom she admits an inability to feel love. Two weeks before the end of her vacation, she and Harriet pay a call on Mr. Biggs; when his wife comes home unexpectedly, the narrator, although intending only to stun her, inadvertently kills her at Harriet's command.
Harriet, the fourteen-year-old friend of the narrator, whom she dominates with alternating fondness and cruelty. She dictates what the narrator must write in their joint diary, a journal of their sexual fantasies and experiences. Although she masterminds the narrator's relationship with Mr. Biggs, she is somewhat jealous of his obvious attraction to her friend, prompting her decision that he must be humbled. She orchestrates a voyeuristic excursion to the Biggses' house and later maliciously and sadistically locks the narrator and Mr. Biggs in the church. When at one point she comes upon Mr. Biggs lying prostrate in his parlor, weeping at the feet of the narrator, she laughs viciously at his humiliating posture. Extremely self-assured, she is adept at manipulating adults, even her parents, and uses this talent to triumph in her psychological warfare against the Biggses. When her friend murders Mrs. Biggs, Harriet succeeds in forcing the drunken and defeated Mr. Biggs to take the blame.
Peter Biggs, whom the girls nickname the Tsar, a fifty-six-year-old married man who pursues the narrator. He is both physically and psychologically weak. Balding and frail, he allows himself to be dominated by his wife, whom he married thirty years earlier because, as he explains to the narrator, she won a house in a church raffle. His approaches to the narrator are at first tentative as he tries to drive a wedge between her and Harriet, whom he intensely dislikes but is forced to accept as the inescapable companion of his par-amour. Ironically, he does not perceive that the narrator is not completely a naïve dupe of Harriet, and he succumbs to her schemes. He seems unable to resist his impulses. Even after several embarrassing consequences resulting from their clandestine meetings, such as having to explain away an injured arm suffered in the escape from a church through a window, he persists in his infatuation. His matter-of-fact sexual conquest of the narrator does not provide him with the satisfaction he anticipated. The gradual recognition of his powerlessness in all of his relationships leads to self-loathing and total disillusionment, which make inevitable his acceptance of sole guilt in his wife's death.
Mrs. Biggs, a fat, middle-aged woman who is openly suspicious of the girls' actions. When they peer into the Biggses' parlor window one evening, they witness Mrs. Biggs sexually dominating her feebly resistant husband, a scene that fills Harriet with scorn for both partners and thus provokes the subsequent action of the novel. She is killed by the narrator.