Stone Yard Devotional

Helen Parry plays the part of antagonist for much of the novel, both personally against the protagonist and against the sisters of the abbey. Her arrival with Sister Jenny’s remains is viewed as an ill omen, and her worldly experiences and work to help the unfortunate shame the sisters in their faithful isolation. In the protagonist’s view, Helen is the same girl she was when they were teenagers, a confidently antagonistic girl who invites conflict: “[N]othing appeared to have changed in Helen Parry; how the things we schoolgirls so hated her for were exactly the qualities that now gave her such unsettling power. The unashamed demand for space […] Her unwavering, absolute readiness for a fight” (116). Helen is unapologetically herself and stands firm in her beliefs. She is willing and ready to fight for herself, intimidating others and making them feel self-conscious in her presence. She appears to believe that others are beneath her, and this breeds discontent and ill-will in the sisters. Despite this, the protagonist at times disagrees with the sisters, remembering Helen’s violent childhood and forgiving what she sees as faults.

Like the protagonist, Helen experiences a change in Stone Yard Devotional and becomes a dynamic character. For Helen, her return to their hometown is not just a means to deliver Sister Jenny, but also to see her dying mother. When Helen sees her mother for possibly the final time, she finds a resolution she could not when she was younger. Meanwhile, the protagonist, who witnesses Helen’s change, gains a new understanding of Helen. Helen’s mother was violent, abusive, and absent. At the time, the protagonist did not know why, but on their drive to visit the woman, she learns it was because she was frequently in the mental health wing of the hospital. Suddenly, the protagonist sees a different Helen, and Helen herself asserts that her mother was not what she seemed: “As we drove through the streets of our town again she said quietly, ‘I need you to know that I loved my mother, and she tried, as much as she was able, to love me’” (275). The protagonist realizes that Helen and her mother underwent great struggles and that she and the town abandoned and admonished them for it. Now, the protagonist sees Helen’s patience with her mother not as fear but as care, and she realizes that though Helen knew her mother loved her, it was a struggle to feel it.

Though she only lives in memories in Stone Yard Devotional, the protagonist’s mother plays a significant role in her journey. Throughout the novel, the protagonist remembers her mother as an at-times eccentric woman with a strong moral compass. In many ways, the protagonist reflects her mother’s personality, something she comes to discover as she isolates herself from the world. Just like her mother, the protagonist finds joy and purpose in simple tasks and work. Just as the protagonist loves the daily work of the abbey, her mother enjoyed the simple work of gardening: “My mother used to hold out a heap of garden soil in two cupped hands, marvelling, calling me over to sniff and feel the moist black clumps […] Sometimes it seemed she loved the earth itself more than the plants” (67). The protagonist realizes that her mother loved dirt even more than gardening, finding meaning in the most basic yet essential part of the gardening process. Similarly, the protagonist pares her life down to its simplest at the abbey. Through these memories, the protagonist’s mother becomes a posthumous guide for her daughter.

Part of the protagonist’s mother’s role in the novel is to provide mystery for the protagonist on her journey. The more the protagonist remembers her mother and examines their relationship, the more she questions who her mother truly was. In her mind, her mother kept many aspects of her life secret, though she approached life confidently. Therefore, in the protagonist’s mind, her mother is independent and strong and does not need her support. She sees her mother’s strength most clearly as the woman dies: “Even when barely conscious, my mother received her tearful visitors with a pale, transcendent solemnity, growing smaller and more skeletal there in her bed, but also enlarging in some way—I suppose I mean spiritually. She seemed to rise, even as she shrank” (282). While the protagonist’s mother’s body withers, her mind and spirit do not. She rises to the occasion of her death, seeming more preoccupied with others rather than herself. However, the more the protagonist analyzes her actions as a daughter, the more she realizes that there were pivotal moments when her mother needed help and support, but she did not see it, only seeing the strong woman. Now, as the protagonist ages, she gains a new understanding of her mother and wishes she could be there for her again.

Sister Simone and Sister Bonaventure are two of the older sisters at the abbey, with Sister Simone serving as the abbess. Both women are static characters that help guide the protagonist through her time at the abbey, both directly and indirectly, in matters of faith and personal guilt. Simone, who spends most of the novel fighting with local authorities to arrange Sister Jenny’s burial, accepts the protagonist’s lack of faith but constantly challenges her to reconsider it and grow through it. She pleads with the protagonist at one point to reassess what prayer is: “Simone once took me to task over my ‘sneering’ about prayer. My notion of prayer was juvenile: forget this telephone line to God bullshit […] Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking” (161). Simone knows that she cannot reach the protagonist through religious tradition and doctrine alone, and she encourages her instead to use religious practice as an introspective tool. She wants the protagonist to take prayer seriously, not as a means to communicate with a higher power as much as to open her mind to new possibilities.

Sister Bonaventure plays a different role for the protagonist in Stone Yard Devotional, mysteriously mourning the death of her friend Sister Jenny. At first, the protagonist finds Bonaventure’s devotion to the remains odd, suspecting an underlying reason. Bonaventure does little else than speak of Jenny and watch over her casket. When Bonaventure reveals that it is because of a fight the two sisters left unresolved, the protagonist senses a similar emotional weight in the older sister: “She told me that, and I could see the cold hard weight of it in her, and I believed her when she said she thought it would never leave” (223). Throughout the novel, the protagonist wonders at how people go through life without atoning for or finding forgiveness for their wrongdoings. In Sister Bonaventure, she sees the real impact of holding on to anger, guilt, and grief. It is a weight that pulls Bonaventure to the remains of Jenny and will keep her connected to the woman for the rest of her life, just as the protagonist’s teenage treatment of Helen Parry binds her to Helen.

The other sisters of the abbey are all foils to the protagonist in different ways. While the protagonist is not religious and seeks the isolation of the abbey only for personal reflection and peace, Sisters Carmel and Sissy are fervently devoted to their faith. When the protagonist learns that Sister Carmel abandoned her two teenage children to join the abbey because of her love of Jesus, she is horrified. She watches Carmel closely one day after a visit from her kids, shocked to find no regret in the woman: “I watched Carmel closely across the church later that day for any sign of turmoil or sadness, but saw none. If anything, she seemed more fervent, her voice stronger and more alive, her attention to the liturgy more avid” (178). Carmel’s devotion to God and her religious beliefs is antithetical to what the protagonist believes in and creates a visceral reaction within the protagonist. Their motivations for being at the abbey are completely opposed. Sister Sissy, while also devoted, is more combative in her faith than Carmel. Sister Sissy constantly challenges others on topics of faith and cannot stomach being wrong: “While I chewed I considered Sissy’s need to control other people’s beliefs, to point out their wrongness, and her need at the same time for them to be grateful of her correction” (105). Her need to be right and make everyone acknowledge her beliefs and points of view conflicts with the protagonist’s reason for coming to the abbey: to be left alone.

Sisters Josephine and Dolores also live at the abbey because of their religious faith, but they are foils to the protagonist in other ways: Josephine in her timidity and Dolores in her youth. When the protagonist makes a claim about women not being appreciated in the Bible or in preaching, Josephine takes offense. It takes her weeks to find the bravery, but Josephine finally confronts the protagonist about it. Though the protagonist still does not agree with her, she feels poorly, knowing she belittled the woman: “I had traduced something she found beautiful and profound, and I know what that feels like, to have something you cherish ridiculed. It’s a horrible reduction in your sense of yourself” (243). The protagonist sympathizes with Josephine, but she will not back down from her criticism. Meanwhile, Sister Dolores, the youngest of all the sisters, elicits both annoyance and sympathy from the protagonist. The protagonist sees the girl as the opposite of herself, with so much time in her life left. She wants Dolores to live a full life, and cannot fathom how she lives at the abbey: “Really I just want to say to her, You’re so young. Go away from here, go home to your mother and your sisters. Go to their weddings, hold their babies. Live” (96). The protagonist lives at the abbey at an older age, to reflect on and recover from her life. She cannot understand how someone so young can forego her youth and life for religious purposes.