The Frozen River

“The contrast of ham hocks dangling from the ceiling and the body sprawled on the table sends a shiver along my spine. It is enough to make one of the men behind me gag.”

Lawhon links Burgess’s body physically and metaphorically to the meat stored in the tavern’s back room. The gruesome nature of this imagery foreshadows the vigilante justice that brought about his gruesome death, dehumanizing him in the way his rape of Rebecca reflects his dehumanization of her—an act the novel positions as physically revolting, signaled by the gagging onlooker).

“‘Them’s rare as virgins in a brothel.’ ‘And just as expensive. But I saw one, anyways. A pretty little vixen. Upriver. Yesterday. Near that mill run by the Welshman.’”

The trappers objectify the silver fox in the same sentence that they objectify women, reinforcing its symbolic significance as an emblem of femininity. Their leering, predatory words have definite sexual connotations, evoking the sexually violent culture that surrounds women in Hallowell.

“He ripped off the lace hem of my shift before he started. He tied his hair back. Why do I remember that so clearly?”

This detail from Rebecca’s account of her rape proves to be the central piece of evidence in Burgess’s murder case. Her rhetorical question to Martha is rich with despair as Lawhon emphasizes the traumatic physical, emotional and psychological aftermath of rape.

“Judge North, however, treats all sessions with the same sense of pomp and pageantry. He wears the required wig and red silk robe, buttoned to the top, and a ruffled collar that has turned yellow with age. It hangs against his throat like a limp rag.”

Here, Martha suggests that North uses his position as a judge to reify his power and influence in Hallowell. North dons elaborate judicial robes and accoutrement to emphasize his authority, underscoring the idea of The Courtroom as a Theatrical Spectacle. Lawhon draws a thin line between performativity and professional ethics in this setting, suggesting the court rules in its own self-interest to protect institutionalized, white, male power.

“You have learned nothing. Her name is Grace. And if you were an educated man—as you claim—you would know that the name means ‘unmerited favor.’ Which is exactly what God has shown by allowing both her and the child to survive your ministrations.”

Martha pushes back against the misogyny exemplified by Page by challenging the value of his education by comparing it to the value of knowing and caring for the well-being of one’s patients. Keenly aware of the symbolic significance of names, Martha uses this etymological knowledge makes it clear that there are many valuable skills that Page’s education disregards. Lawhon highlights on Page’s inability to learn his patient’s name to draw a distinction between impersonal, clinical care and the work that Martha performs in her community.

“‘As I recall,’ I add, twisting the knife, ‘you delivered your first child four months after your wedding, Peggy. It was six months for you, Rachel.’ I look to Clarissa Stone and shake my head. ‘But you’re the one who should be most ashamed of your pious outrage. It took a year and a bitter paternity suit before Paul would make an honest woman out of you.’”

Martha’s evokes the intimate knowledge she gained as Peggy, Rachel, and Clarissa’s midwife to defend Sarah and push back against their inadvertent complicity in Hallowell’s culture of Puritan Shame Culture and Gender Oppression. Rather than acknowledging that complicity, the three women take offense and turn to Page for medical care, a choice that yields tragic results.

“He fills a specific gap in the legal system and has a rudimentary understanding of the law at best. Most of these judges rule by common sense, but some by partiality.”

Martha characterizes North as legally inept, a makeshift judge for a justice system in its primitive stages, paralleling his lack of skill in the courtroom with his lack of moral character. This assessment further reinforces the notion that the formal routes for seeking out justice in Hallowell as unreliable and flawed, justifying Sam and Jonathan’s use of vigilante justice against Burgess, and Ephraim’s lynching of Martha’s rapist.

“And then I cry. Mostly for Rebecca and the tiny, unwanted beating heart deep within her womb. But also for myself. And our daughters. And for every other woman who lives, suffers, and dies by the mercurial whims of men.”

Martha’s use of anaphora, repeatedly beginning sentences with “and,” evokes the compounding nature of gender-based injustice in her world. It also mirrors the repetitive act of crying itself, as she sheds tear after tear for the women of her community who are all oppressed in the same way.

“I consider them my babies. I am not their mother, of course, but they are mine, and I can still feel the weight of grief hanging heavy in those birthing rooms.”

In The Frozen River, Lawhon makes heavy use of italicization as an emphatic device. Here, the italics place focus on Martha’s connection to the babies she delivers, a connection that extends to the practice of midwifery itself, especially as Page threatens to destroy her practice.

“The fining of unwed mothers is a cruel system, meant to humiliate women, and therefore dissuade them from carnal activity. But given that women do not conceive children on their own, and there is no law that fines men for their participation, it is the worst kind of hypocrisy as well.”

Martha’s assessment of the law centers the injustice of Puritan Shame Culture and Gender Oppression. At the same time, her despisal of hypocrisy reflects traditional Puritan values, since the Bible frames hypocrisy as one of the greatest social sins.

“The way the air crackles with tension, the way I feel the glances of our neighbors, makes me think that they are hoping for another spectacle. Another outburst on my part. Half of them weren’t here the first time, didn’t see me held in contempt of court. It makes me angry, this voyeurism.”

Lawhon’s narrative depicts The Courtroom as a Theatrical Spectacle that Martha experiences as an oppressive phenomenon, to the point of causing her physical discomfort. The air’s metaphorical crackles represent physical manifestations of her community’s love of gossip and desire to feel morally superior, which distances them from the human pain of the people involved in the trial. Lawhon makes a clear distinction between Martha’s investigation into the Burgess murder—motivated by a desire to see justice served and protect those she loves—and the self-serving interest of the courtroom spectators with the drama of the trial.

“A thought occurs to me—so quickly that I do not have time to reject it: if Joseph North cannot be hanged for raping Rebecca Foster, perhaps he can be hanged for killing Joshua Burgess?”

Here, Martha’s hatred for North clouds her judgment regarding the Burgess murder; she is so convinced of North’s guilt, and desperate to see him executed for his other heinous crimes, that it does not yet occur to her to investigate other suspects, especially not good men like Sam Dawin. The aside in this quote’s first sentence is an acknowledgement of the immorality of this particular thought, and an indication that Martha’s determination to see justice can also lead to flawed behavior on her part.

“The only thing our oldest child has ever wanted, in all his life, is to go to sea. Though I know he’d deny it, I suspect Cyrus wants to be a pirate. To climb rigging and perch in a crow’s nest and see exotic locations. He wants—more than anything—a life of adventure. A life filled with salt air and blue water and a fist shaken in defiance at the stormy horizon.”

Because Cyrus cannot speak, Martha attempts to reconstruct what she believes to be his greatest wishes, underscoring her love for her son and her sense of Familial Loyalty in the Face of Suspicion. Her image of Cyrus as a pirate climbing a ship’s mast and looking out over an expansive sea provides a sharp contrast to the image of him locked up in a jail cell, convicted of a crime she believes he did not commit. Cyrus’s arrest raises the narrative stakes of Martha’s attempts to exonerate him and see the true culprit punished.

“They’ve taken the word of a heretic’s wife. A woman who hasn’t lived in this village for five years. And now the very court my husband serves is after him? You tell me where the justice is in that, Martha Ballard. Tell me.”

Lidia North’s questions for Martha reveal a view of justice as transactional, something earned through service to the community, rather than an inherent right owed to all residents of Hallowell. Such discourse mirrors broader conversations occurring in the 18th century about human rights and legal recourse— conversations that lay at the heart of the American Revolution itself, albeit ones that excluded women, people of color and other marginalized groups as deserving of those rights, pointing to the novel’s thematic interest in Puritan Shame Culture and Gender Oppression.

“‘Harvard men.’ Eliza shakes her head. ‘Always trying to act like Oxford men.’”

Lawhon once again takes aim at Page’s Harvard education, calling its merit into question and highlighting the disparity of privilege, resource and access it evokes. Eliza’s pithy observation that Harvard students are desperate to be like Oxford students evokes the colonial setting of the novel; in the United States’ nascent years, emulating the status signifiers of England would have been a natural behavior for American men hoping to accumulate power.

“He wants to own the entire town.”

James Wall succinctly summarizes North’s villainous motivations, highlighting his misogyny, and hunger for strength, power and dominance. The novel reflects this hunger for power in his professional duties as a judge, in his treatment of women, and his ruthless approach to land ownership. In this context, Lawhon positions his rape of Rebecca and attempted rape of Martha as attempts to assert dominance and control rather than sexual gratification.

“The ice is thickest in the shallows, near the riverbank. Toward the center of the Kennebec, however, it creaks beneath my feet. Like old floorboards. Like old bones. And even though I know it will bear my weight, I proceed carefully, medical bag in one hand and the other outstretched, each footstep purposeful, listening for popping sounds, feeling for shifting and sinking beneath my feet.”

Martha’s similes comparing the Kennebec River to floorboards and bones brings the wild body of water firmly into the domestic sphere, aligning the river with Martha’s home and her aging body, and illustrating her respect for and intimate familiarity with both. Crossing the river thus comes to Martha as second nature.

“I watch the judges at their table across the room. They look like mere mortals, just men of varying ages, at breakfast. In a few short hours, however, they will don their black silk robes and their powdered wigs and transform into symbols of power and authority.”

Martha’s observation of the judges looking unexpectedly mundane at the breakfast table highlights the novel’s thematic interest in The Courtroom as Theatrical Spectacle—aligning the judges’ ceremonial garb with a theatrical costume that transforms them into larger-than-life characters. Here, Martha attempts to separate the specter of power from the men themselves, human and fallible, similar to her description of North’s worn and untidy robes in Chapter 9.

“Isaac said she refused to go. Said she didn’t have the heart to stand before another group of men and give them details of her shame.”

Lawhon highlights the toll that Puritan Shame Culture and Gender Oppression take as Rebecca’s shame and desire to protect herself from further harm prevents her from appearing in court to see her attackers brought justice. Lawhon reinforces this sense of shame and danger through her use of indirect dialogue; Rebecca’s inability to discuss her ordeal further extends even beyond the men in courtroom to Martha—her most trusted confidante—sending her husband to relay the message for her.

“It is not that I want to be remembered, per se. I have done nothing remarkable. Not by the standards of history, at least. But I am here. And these words are the mark I will leave behind. So yes, it matters that I continue this ritual.”

Martha’s humility speaks to her character and defines her perspective on her work and the importance she places on giving voice to the women in her community who are so often violated, silenced, overlooked and ignored. Her words foreshadow the significance that real-world historians will place on Martha Ballard’s diary in the future. Lawhon contrasts Martha’s humility and perspective with the self-aggrandizement of men like North and Page, who are desperate to leave their marks on society through dominance and the accumulation of power, wealth, property and prestige.

“They smell like the natural world, humid and verdant, like soil after the rain. But those are scents that a person rarely notices until a moment like this. Births. Accidents. Injuries. The various ways in which we are turned inside out.”

Martha reprises her language of the body “turning inside out” to describe childbirth—symbolism that evokes the vulnerability, both emotional and physical, of giving birth. Here, the natural imagery used to describe the smell of childbirth makes such vulnerability seem beautiful, consistent with Martha’s perspective.

“Foxes and coyotes are natural enemies, love.”

Lawhon likens the rivalry between Martha and North to the natural enmity between the fox and coyote. This metaphor implies a hardwired quality to that the animosity Martha feels for North as intrinsic as the fox’s need to protect herself from the larger, predatory coyote, illustrating their adversarial roles as protagonist and antagonist.

“An old farmer once told me that a wolf—once it’s gotten a taste for human blood—must be killed because it will never stop hunting people from that point forward. I think it’s the same with men—or at least some of them—and rape.”

Sam’s use of a farmer’s aphorism to describe rapist ideology once again ties North to the natural predators of the animal kingdom: the imagery of the wolf immediately calls to mind North’s pet coyote. His theory also recalls Coleman’s assertion that North lost his soul through his villainous crimes during the Seven Years’ War, positioning acts of colonization and racialized violence as irredeemable.