Blackbird House

In “The Edge of the World,” Coral Hadley’s strength and resilience set the tone for the entire novel. She’s the first of many women of Blackbird House to experience tragedy, thus establishing the pattern of strong female characters who survive trauma, including fishing accidents, fire, domestic abuse, and death by suicide. After learning that many men were lost at sea during the May storm, “Coral refused to have her husband and sons counted among those who were mourned” (12). This refusal marks her tight grip on hope, which is the first way she copes with her loss. Instead of mourning, she plants the inaugural fields at the farm and toils all summer to tend them, alone, all while holding onto hope of her family’s survival. When the blackbird-turned-white arrives, she realizes that they’re gone, and even though she grieves and needs the town’s support, she ultimately recovers and continues to run the farm, enduring long enough to see her eldest son return home. When Vincent arrives, he sees the sweet peas, “acres of them, grown carefully from seed, a pink-hued and endless sea” (21). In seven years, the plants have multiplied from seeds in the ground to what seems like an ocean of color.