The Signature of All Things

Henry Whittaker is Alma’s father and an example of a self-made man who built his fortune on cunning, theft, and sheer perseverance. As a boy growing up in a large but poor family in the village of Richmond, outside London, the young Henry is described as “a dangerous experimentalist, a lighter of illicit fires, a roof-scampering taunter of housewives, a menace to smaller children” (8). Henry despises his father’s lack of ambition but learns what he can of plants from his father’s work as an orchardman at Kew Gardens. When he first meets Sir Joseph Banks, having been turned in by his own father for stealing plants from the gardens and selling them in his own little illegal market, Henry is described by Banks as a “spindly, ginger-haired, tight-lipped, milky-eyed, broad-shouldered, sunken-chested youth” (13).

Beatrix, his Dutch wife, is not in love with Henry, seeing something of the blacksmith in his “ruddy face, his large hands, and his rough manners” (42). But she admires his wit and drive, and together they form a successful partnership. Henry is proud of his influence and wealth, and all his life he retains the early wish, inspired by Banks, to be an English gentleman. This is evidenced by the fact that, even when men’s fashions change to more sober attire, Henry continues to dress in a late 18th-century style.

Henry is not motivated by causes, passions, ethics, or values, but only by the drive to pursue his own success in the business world. He adopts Prudence at Beatrix’s insistence but makes it clear that he thinks that clever, steady Alma is worth 10 of the beautiful, silent Prudence. When Prudence’s abolitionist tendencies create a threat to his business, Henry disowns her with no remorse. Alma, groomed to reflect his own image, is and remains his clear favorite. He depends on her, teaches her through his stories, and wants her to be like him, telling her what he thinks is the secret to his success: to always have one last bribe. When, upon his death, Alma looks for the emerald he swears he had sewn under his skin, she realizes that in this, as in so many things, her father lied.

Ambrose Pike only appears in Part 3 of the book, but he plays a major role as Alma’s love interest. Ambrose was born into a family of ministers in Framingham, Massachusetts, but he did not wish to follow in his father’s footsteps because, to him, religion should be a spiritual effort, not a practical or worldly vocation. Ambrose dropped out of Harvard and is not a very social person; it is difficult for him to make friends. After some time spent trying to work at his friend’s printing company, Ambrose travels through Guatemala and Mexico making a botanical study of orchids, which he sends to George Hawkes for printing. The artistry of his work captivates Alma and George; his paintings show a delicate eye for detail and a consummate love of beauty.

At first sight, Alma thinks him a “lovely, bright, and enthusiastic man of twenty years” (269), though he is in fact in his thirties. After their wedding, Alma realizes that he is “a being of unique sensitivities and talents, whose mind was a delicate thing” (284). When Alma asks Ambrose if, in leaving his family’s profession, he fell away from the Lord, Ambrose says instead that he “fell too close to the Lord” (205). Reading Jacob Boehme’s The Signature of All Things as a young man had a transformative effect on him. Ambrose says he “tried to become the fire” (231) and describes the experience as becoming “unparticled” (231).

In contrast and as a foil to Alma, who believes in the solid and material, Ambrose prefers the spiritual. He believes in the divine and the invisible. He strives for purity and communion and wants, in essence, to become an angel and separate himself from earthly needs like food or physical passion. Reverend Welles of Matavia Bay speaks of Ambrose as a model of goodness and notes his kindness to everyone—a demeanor, the reverend notes, one does not always see from white men in foreign lands. Though he is intelligent and kind, Ambrose is also emotionally fragile. He has a physical relationship with Tomorrow Morning but then, out of shame that he is no longer pure, cuts himself, and his wounds cause the infection that kills him. Alma reflects that Ambrose had “wished for the world to be a paradise, when in fact it was a battlefield. He had spent his life longing for the eternal, the constant, and the pure” (442).

Beatrix is Dutch, born to the van Devender family, who in the novel have long been the directors and stewards of Amsterdam’s famous botanical garden, the Hortus Botanicus. Her husband, Henry, was inspired to find a Dutch woman to marry due to his respect for the practical, intelligent, and wealthy representatives of the Dutch East India Company that he had met in his early travels around the world. Beatrix, with her family pedigree and sensible nature, perfectly matches this. She is “stout and bosomless, a perfect little barrel of a woman […] already rolling toward spinsterhood when Henry met her” (42). Beatrix is “dauntingly overeducated;” she knows five living languages and two dead ones, is an expert in botany, and “nurse[s] a hard suspicion of passion, exaggeration, and beauty, putting her confidence only in that which [is] solid and credible, and always trusting acquired wisdom over impulsive instinct” (42). She imparts this preference for common sense and credibility to her daughter.

Beatrix’s marriage is not a passionate affair but rather a practical partnership; Henry suits her because she admires his ambition and drive. Beatrix prefers “the useful over the vapid, the edifying over the entertaining” (52), as evidenced by her incredulous reaction to the frivolous Retta Snow. Beatrix’s motto is labor ipse voluptas, a Latin proverb meaning “work is its own reward” (53)—another principle she cultivates in her daughter. To Beatrix, “indifference to sensation was the very definition of dignity” (53). She teaches her daughters to be scrupulous in guarding their expressions of emotion and counsels them to value intelligence over beauty. Every night she recounts each girl’s flaws and failures in the hopes that they both might improve themselves; she is rarely congratulatory. Beatrix is so unapproachable as a mother that Alma runs to the housekeeper, Hanneke, when she has nightmares or is upset. Beatrix runs the household with practical industry and keeps silent about the cancer that is afflicting her. For Beatrix, what cannot be solved must simply be endured without complaint. Beatrix is loyal about her duty and perhaps does not realize what she is asking of her daughter when she instructs Alma, with her dying breath, not to leave her father. Since Beatrix left behind her own family to marry, the injunction is hypocritical and arguably cruel.

Hanneke de Groot is the Dutch maid who comes with Beatrix to America upon her wedding. Although she is merely a supporting character, she plays an important role as a surrogate mother for Alma and an extension of Beatrix after her death. Hanneke sleeps in the basement of White Acre in a housekeeper’s room with barred windows so thieves cannot break in; the barrier serves as a symbol of Hanneke’s reserve. She does not spoil or indulge Alma or Henry, but rather watches over them both. Alma suspects Hanneke is suspicious of Ambrose, and indeed Hanneke dismisses him as “nonsense.” She, like Beatrix and Alma, is devoted to the practical and the real; dealings with the spiritual have no place in her life. Hanneke’s admonitions function as Alma’s conscience, counseling her to put herself back together after grief. She knows everything that goes on in the family and sternly informs Alma, after Henry’s death, that Prudence loved George Hawkes and turned down his offer of marriage in hopes that he would turn to Alma. Alma asks Prudence to keep Hanneke on at White Acre after Alma leaves, for she knows that Hanneke’s very identity is forever tied to her sense of duty and loyalty and her dedication to performing useful work. Hanneke dies at the same time as Retta and George Hawkes, and her death is a blow to Alma, taking away her last parental figure and a major support of her life and emotional health.

Prudence is Alma’s adopted sister and serves as a contrast and foil to Alma. Although she occupies only a supporting role in the plot of the book as a whole, she remains a significant philosophical influence on Alma’s theory of competitive alteration. She is Alma’s age and joins the family when Alma is nine. Named Polly at birth, she is the daughter of a worker on the White Acre estate who murdered his beautiful but adulterous wife and then hanged himself. Beatrix wants to give the girl a respectable future, so she renames her Prudence, persuades Henry to adopt her, and educates her alongside Alma. Prudence devotes herself to becoming a well-mannered, exemplary young lady, and the narrator describes her as “a creature of steadfast and unblinking vigilance who perfected herself daily as though honing the blade of her soul” (77).

Prudence is serious and disciplined, and only Retta can make her laugh. Prudence has a strong sense of justice that is influenced by the girls’ tutor, Arthur Dixon, who makes her understand that slavery is a gross crime and a cruel violation of human rights. Prudence is undemonstrative and not affectionate, and she never shares her internal thoughts with anyone. Instead, she does what is asked of her to the best of her ability and never asks for anything in return. In their youth, Alma’s own self-absorption causes her to mistrust Prudence’s self-denying nature, and even as an adult, she does not understand her adopted sister’s altruistic tendencies. Although the girls treat one another with “exacting correctness,” the narrator states that for Prudence, “exacting correctness was an expression of her natural state,” while for Alma, “exacting correctness was a crowning effort—a constant and almost physical subduing of all her meaner instincts, stamped into submission by sheer moral discipline and fear of her mother’s disapproval” (85).

Hanneke suggests that it was a curse for Prudence to be so beautiful that she drew attention, that people talked about her beauty. Hanneke says, “All Prudence ever wished for […] was not to be seen” (315-16). Hanneke suggests that Prudence also sought Alma’s approval and that it is for Alma’s sake that Prudence rejected the suit of George Hawkes. (To prevent George from pursuing her, Prudence married Arthur Dixon, even though she did not love him. However, the sacrifice was futile, as George ultimately asked Retta, not Alma, to be his wife.) Despite this turn of events, Prudence never expresses bitterness or regret; she carries on as stoically as a daughter of Beatrix Whittaker is expected to do. The only time Prudence gives in to emotion is when Alma gives her the house at White Acre for a school for Black children, to be supported by income from the business, and leaves the rest of the estate to the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society. Prudence has buried her own heartbreak in helping others, and Alma’s gift allows her to make a real difference.