Bess Character Analysis
Overview
Bess is the unnamed protagonist’s beloved charge—a girl born with a cognitive disability and a vivid red birthmark shaped like a horned face on her chest. Though she appears only in memory, Bess functions as the emotional and moral heart of The Vaster Wilds. Her life and horrific death after the Jamestown famine shape the protagonist's trauma, guilt, and eventual spiritual unraveling. The novel never reveals Bess’s perspective directly; instead, she is seen entirely through the girl’s adoring, grieving eyes, making her both a real character and a symbol of innocence destroyed by colonial greed.
Plot Role
Bess’s role is almost entirely retrospective. She is introduced in Chapter 2 when the girl, alone in the wilderness, reflects on sharing warmth with a feverish child. Chapter 13 provides the fullest portrait: Bess was born when the girl was only four or five, and the girl raised her as a “poppet, her plaything, her sister, her charge, her daughter.” The child’s “brainlessness” and beauty are noted; her hair is described as “silken shining.” In Chapter 22, Bess’s fate is revealed: during the famine, she refused to eat, starved herself, and died. After burial, the settlers exhumed her body and butchered it for food; the mistress reached for a piece of fried brain. This atrocity drives the girl to attack the mistress and then to murder the minister and flee into the wilderness. Bess’s memory haunts every subsequent chapter.
Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions
Bess is defined by what she does not do. She never speaks in the narrative except through remembered gestures. Her key action is a deliberate refusal to participate in the colonial machinery of consumption: she “chose to let herself die instead of being part of the machinery of domination” (Chapter 15). This passive resistance is the novel’s clearest act of moral rebellion. Her other trait is love: she wakes the girl from night terrors by patting her face and murmuring wordless comfort. She is also mischievous—she steals sugar, baubles, and “unripe apricots,” hoarding beautiful things.
Because Bess’s mind is “simple,” the narrator suggests that she exists in a state of grace, “making real the abstraction of holy grace” (Chapter 15). She is contrasted with the calculating adults around her.
Chronological Arc
| Time Period | Key Events |
|---|---|
| Before the novel | Born in London to the mistress (after goldsmith’s death). Raised by the girl. First steps at age three. Takes her first words from the girl’s vocabulary. |
| Voyage to Virginia | Survives the brutal crossing. Once ashore, Bess “felt the badness of the place and the english project in it” and refuses food. |
| Jamestown winter | Lies down, clenches her teeth, and starves over months. Dies while the girl lies beside her. |
| The girl’s escape | The girl washes and dresses Bess’s body, digs a shallow grave with fire, and buries her. The settlers later exhume the body. |
| During the girl’s wilderness flight | Bess appears in flashbacks, dreams, and hallucinations—her face erased in a dream, her laughing figure at a feast vision. |
| Just before the girl’s death | The girl recalls “the tender mornings of watching Bess awaken” and Bess’s joy. She understands that Bess knew only submission can exist in this world. |
Relationships
With the girl (Zed): The girl’s love for Bess is presented as the purest relationship in the book. She calls it “a labor of adoration.” Bess returns this love with trust and physical comfort. The girl’s trauma after Bess’s death is so severe that it triggers a murder and a flight into the wilderness. Bess’s memory becomes the girl’s only anchor of meaning.
With the mistress: The mistress is “a most uninvolved mother.” She loves Bess in rare moments but also calls her “monstrous stupid” and jokes about marrying her to a rich old nobleman. After Bess’s death, the mistress participates in cannibalizing her body—an act that the girl cannot forgive.
With the minister: Bess is simply cargo to him. He never shows her affection. His greed forces the family to the New World, and Bess’s death is a direct result.
With the cook: The cook feeds Bess sugar in secret, showing the only other kindness Bess receives outside the girl.
Key Decisions and Consequences
- Bess decides to stop eating. Consequence: She starves to death. This passive act is a rejection of English colonial violence.
- The girl buries Bess in a shallow grave. Consequence: The settlers exhume the body, leading to the cannibalism scene and the girl’s violent break.
- The girl stabs the minister. Consequence: She becomes a fugitive. This murder is the immediate inciting action of the survival plot.
- The girl chooses not to fight for survival at the end. Consequence: She accepts death, partly because she has no human connection left—Bess was her only true bond.
Theme and Symbol Connections
- Innocence and destruction: Bess represents the innocent victim of colonial expansion. Her “brainlessness” is ironically wisdom—she sees the horror and refuses to participate.
- Naming and identity: Bess never names herself; others name her. Her lack of language aligns her with nature rather than human power structures. The girl’s attempt to rename Bess’s memory fails because the loss is too absolute.
- Memory and trauma: Bess’s memory is both a comfort and a wound. The girl carries it until she can no longer bear it, then surrenders.
- Colonial violence and guilt: Bess’s consumption by the settlers literalizes the cannibalism at the heart of Jamestown. The mistress reaching for fried brain becomes the novel’s most grotesque image of complicity.
- Nature’s indifference: Bess’s body returns to the earth; the vulture that visits the girl is the same nature that consumed Bess. No divine justice intervenes.
Questions and Answers
1. Why does Bess stop eating?
The novel implies Bess senses the “badness of the place and the english project.” She chooses to die rather than be part of the colonial system. This is a deliberate, though wordless, moral act.
2. What is the meaning of Bess’s birthmark?
The red birthmark shaped like a horned face would have been read as a demonic sign, but the mistress hides it. The mark symbolizes how colonial society demonizes innocence that does not conform—Bess is both “devil-marked” and the purest soul.
3. How does Bess’s death affect the girl?
It fractures her completely. She murders the minister, flees, and cannot stop reliving the moment. Bess’s desecration is the memory she cannot lock behind her mental door, and it destroys her will to live.
4. Is Bess a symbol or a real character?
Both. She is a fully realized individual with physical details (hair, birthmark, habits) and a history. At the same time, her silence and suffering make her a symbol of every innocent destroyed by colonial greed.
5. Why does the girl compare Bess to bear cubs?
In Chapter 20, the dying girl sees cubs and says they “reminded her of her best-beloved Bess.” The comparison emphasizes Bess’s animal vulnerability and her closeness to nature—the one realm not yet corrupted by English naming and domination.