The Silent Companions

Content Warning: The source material and this guide discuss violence toward women (including implications of rape and incest), child loss, miscarriage, violent death from murder and execution, the mistreatment of someone with a disability, animal abuse, substance use, mental illness, and racism against a Romani person.

Like much Gothic literature, The Silent Companions uses the trappings of the supernatural to expose a more everyday horror: the status of women in patriarchal societies. The novel is especially interested in women’s domestic role, showing how marriage, the home, and motherhood can become sources of deep anguish. At the same time, the absence of these staples of female existence are little better, as women who do not or cannot conform to societal expectations experience equal (if not greater) marginalization.

As a pregnant widow, Elsie straddles these two categories of women, and her storyline exposes the trauma of both. Following her husband’s death, Elsie is taken to The Bridge, and the mansion’s unsettling, unwelcoming appearance, with its rotting gardens and sawdust-covered floors, evokes the inhabitants’ imprisonment and solitude. Elsie’s forced stay in this isolated location exemplifies the cultural imprisonment of women, who frequently had little influence over their own lives and were subject to the decisions of male guardians or spouses. Moreover, without her husband, she lacks any significant emotional support, resulting in extreme loneliness and misery that contribute to her physical and psychological deterioration.

Elsie is not the only female character who is effectively imprisoned in the domestic environment of The Bridge. When Sarah begs to keep the silent companion, Elsie reflects, “The world was full of them, past and present: sad, lonely little girls. She has suffered enough already. Was Sarah talking about Hetta, or herself? (147). As this quote suggests, Sarah has virtually no agency; she spent her childhood years looking after an older woman and now must care for a grieving widow. Later, Elsie learns that Mrs. Holt, who became Rupert’s father’s mistress, was banished to The Bridge after she became pregnant. Women who resist such a life or struggle to adapt to it may face a more literal form of imprisonment in a psychiatric hospital. After experiencing child loss, Rupert’s mother, Julia, was hospitalized until her death. The same fate befalls Elsie, whose senses and sanity are continually challenged by those around her—particularly Jolyon and Mrs. Holt. This denial of her reality breeds panic and helplessness, compounding the problem. Meanwhile, The silent companions torture her and serve as a metaphor for the coercive influences that women endure, which Laura Purcell suggests could easily drive a woman “mad.” Elsie describes physically and metaphorically losing her voice as “a strait waistcoat on her tongue with no one to loosen the ties” (295), underscoring the connection between the policing of women’s “sanity” and the curbing of their agency.

Anne Bainbridge’s life too is characterized by strict cultural conventions and the authority of her husband, Josiah. Her experiences underscore the historical continuity of female oppression, implying that the difficulties of women like Elsie are not new but deeply established in history. Anne’s daughter, Hetta, also experiences isolation and oppression due to being both a girl and a person with a disability; significantly, her disability manifests as an inability to speak, suggesting her powerless position. The limited options available to both Anne and Hetta contribute directly to the extreme measures they ultimately take, which leads to tragedy in both their timeline and Elsie’s.