Characters In Ascension Martin MacInnes

Fenna: The Mathematician Matriarch in In Ascension

Overview

Fenna is the mother of Leigh and Helena in Martin MacInnes’s novel In Ascension. A mathematician by profession and a shy, withdrawn person by nature, Fenna retreats into her work to escape an abusive marriage and later suffers memory lapses that point to a cognitive decline. Her character is seen mainly through her daughters’ memories: Leigh recalls her tenderness during childhood pain, while Helena remembers her as a distant figure who needed practical care. Fenna’s arc from brilliant researcher to ailing nursing-home resident mirrors the novel’s exploration of how the past is both buried and inescapable.

Plot Role

Fenna’s presence shapes the novel’s emotional core. In Chapter 1 (Endeavour), Leigh describes how Fenna used migraines and extended university hours to create distance from her violent husband Geert. When Leigh returns to Rotterdam in Chapter 2 (Datura), she stays with her mother and witnesses the first signs of odd behaviour and memory loss. By Chapter 5 (Ascension), Helena oversees Fenna’s move into a nursing home and handles her estate after Fenna dies. Fenna’s decline deepens the conflict between the sisters: Leigh prioritises her own career and space mission, while Helena resents being left to manage their mother’s care alone.

Motivations and Traits

Fenna’s primary motivation is to protect herself—and, indirectly, her children—from Geert’s volatility. Leigh observes that Fenna’s migraine episodes “put a barrier around her, gave her space, time alone” and also helped distract Geert, giving him “a role” that channelled his aggression. This act of self-preservation comes at a cost: Fenna seldom speaks about her work or her feelings, treating mathematics as a private “revelation” rather than a subject to be shared.

Yet Fenna is also capable of deep, non-verbal care. In a striking memory, Leigh recalls how Fenna would sense her night-time pain and massage her limbs, “using rhythm and discipline” to ease her suffering. Leigh says Fenna “almost seemed a part of me” during those dark hours. This ability to connect through physical comfort contrasts with her emotional distance the rest of the time.

Later, her memory lapses and disorientation, described in Chapter 2 as moments when “a wet uncertainty filled her eyes”, suggest a progressive illness. Fenna’s cousin Erika provides the backstory that Fenna was always “shy” and “captivated” by mathematics, indicating that her retreat was not merely a reaction to trauma but part of a lifelong temperament.

Chronological Arc

Fenna’s arc unfolds across several decades:

  • Youth and marriage: The only child of a nurse and a factory worker, both dead by the time she starts university. She meets Geert, a failed architect turned fisherman, and marries him.
  • Motherhood in Rotterdam: While raising Leigh and Helena, Fenna pursues her mathematics career at the university. She endures Geert’s abuse indirectly—Leigh says “she must have been aware” of the beatings—and responds by working longer hours.
  • After Geert’s death: In Chapter 1, Fenna appears “more surprised than upset” and returns to her bicycle commute and work the morning after the funeral. She insists she is fine and discourages her daughters from staying.
  • Three weeks with Leigh: In Chapter 2, Fenna and Leigh enjoy an unusual period of closeness—watching detective shows, sharing meals—but Fenna also shows signs of cognitive decline. Leigh recalls “a wet uncertainty” in her mother’s eyes.
  • Nursing home and death: By Chapter 5, Fenna lives in a nursing home. Helena visits three times before eventually taking a month’s leave to move her in. Fenna dies while Leigh is on the Proscenium 1 mission. Leigh’s final instructions request a wild burial, a gesture that Helena interprets as part of her sister’s dramatic sentimentality.

Relationships

With Geert

Fenna never directly confronts Geert about his violence. Leigh speculates that Fenna may have been too afraid, or that she could not condemn Geert’s good traits without also condemning the happiness they had shared early in marriage. Geert, in turn, uses Fenna’s migraines as an excuse to enforce silence in the house, a dynamic that protects Fenna from his anger but isolates the children.

With Leigh

Mother and daughter share moments of wordless intimacy. During Leigh’s childhood growth spurts, Fenna would come to her bed and massage her legs, making “soft, bird-like fluttering sounds.” Leigh feels that in those nights she “wasn’t really alone at all.” Yet Fenna keeps her daily life opaque; Leigh never learns what her mother actually does at the university. When they live together for three weeks in Chapter 2, Fenna resists talking about anything deeper than the weather, and the visit ends with Leigh feeling both grateful and frustrated.

With Helena

Helena’s relationship with Fenna is practical and strained. Helena is the one who arranges the nursing home, the funeral, and the legal matters. She resents that Leigh—so caught up in her own narrative of suffering—avoids this burden. Helena notes that Fenna and Leigh both “remarked on how much Leigh resembled her father,” hinting that the mother-daughter bond was complicated by echoes of Geert.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision to retreat into mathematics: Fenna chooses to spend long hours at the university rather than confronting Geert. Consequence: Leigh feels abandoned during the day but receives attention at night. The silence at home prevents open communication about the abuse.

Decision not to share her work: Fenna never explains her mathematics, treating it as “purer, closer to music.” Consequence: Leigh and Helena grow up with little understanding of their mother’s inner life, which later contributes to their emotional distance.

Decision to accept migration to nursing home: By Chapter 5, Helena makes the decision to move Fenna. Fenna’s passivity or inability to resist leads to her institutionalisation. Consequence: The sisters’ conflict over care becomes a key source of resentment.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Fenna’s character illuminates several of the novel’s core themes:

  • Family Trauma and Memory: Fenna’s memory lapses can be read as a literal manifestation of a family that tries to forget its violent past. Leigh suspects Fenna exaggerated her migraines; later, Fenna’s real memory gaps force both daughters to confront what has been buried.
  • Isolation and Connection: Fenna’s retreat into numbers is an extreme form of the isolation that defines Leigh’s own adult life. Yet the night-massage scenes show that connection can exist without words—a fragile bond that neither sister fully repairs.
  • Symbiosis and Transformation: In Chapter 1, Leigh describes Fenna nursing her like “we were joined.” This symbiotic moment anticipates the novel’s later interest in algae and deep-sea organisms. Fenna’s eventual decline and death, followed by Leigh’s wish for a “wild burial,” suggest a return to organic cycles.
  • Environmental Collapse and Circularity: Though Fenna does not engage directly with environmental themes, her life in reclaimed Rotterdam—the lowest land, kept dry by human engineering—mirrors the novel’s concern with fragile, constructed worlds.

5 Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Fenna suffer from migraines, and does she exaggerate them? Explicit fact: Leigh states in Chapter 1 that she is “certain Fenna exaggerated her symptoms, or at least prolonged them sometimes.” She believes the episodes gave Fenna “space, time alone” and also gave Geert a sense of purpose, distracting him from more volatile behaviour. Interpretation: The migraines may be a psychosomatic response to an abusive home—a way to control the domestic atmosphere without confronting her husband directly.

2. What is the significance of Fenna’s memory lapses in Chapter 2? Explicit fact: In Chapter 2, Leigh witnesses her mother at the kitchen sink experiencing “a wet uncertainty filling her eyes,” a moment that lasts only a second but alarms Leigh. Interpretation: This episode forecasts Fenna’s later decline and mirrors the larger theme of suppressed family memory. Just as Fenna forgets where she is, the family has tried to forget Geert’s violence.

3. How does Fenna respond to Geert’s death? Explicit fact: In Chapter 1, Leigh says Fenna appeared “more surprised than upset, intrigued almost by this changed world.” The morning after the funeral, Fenna dresses for work and cycles to the university as usual. She refuses extended visits from her daughters. Interpretation: Her immediate return to routine suggests that her marriage had already left her emotionally detached; Geert’s death simply removes a threat without altering her daily life.

4. What is the connection between Fenna and the theme of oceanic versus cosmic exploration? Interpretation: While Fenna never explores space or the deep sea, her domain—pure mathematics—can be seen as a form of abstract exploration. She lives in Rotterdam, a city built below sea level, symbolising the human effort to hold back the ocean. By contrast, Leigh journeys both into the ocean and later into space, a trajectory Fenna cannot follow. Explicit fact from Leigh: Fenna “never attempted to describe what she did,” treating mathematics as “an act of revelation” beyond ordinary communication.

5. How does Fenna’s character influence the conflict between Leigh and Helena? Explicit fact: In Chapter 5, Helena recalls that she “who had made the effort to be there for Geert over his last difficult years” and that she “who had taken responsibility for their parents in ways Leigh never could.” Leigh, by contrast, “tacitly assumed it was less of a burden for Helena to deal with than for her.” Interpretation: Fenna’s passivity and decline create a situation in which one daughter must become the caretaker, deepening the sisters’ resentment. Leigh’s avoidance of Fenna’s care mirrors her mother’s own earlier avoidance of confronting Geert.