Tom's Midnight Garden

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination.

Hatty builds a treehouse with the help of Tom’s instructions. He assures her that one of the branches is safe, as he has climbed it before. He remembers, too late, that he is weightless in the garden. Before Tom can warn Hatty, she falls from the tree. 

Abel comes running, picks up Hatty’s limp body, and carries her toward the house. When Tom follows, Abel shouts, “Get you gone!” (129). The gardener reveals that he has always seen and heard Tom but ignored him. Abel enters the house and bolts the back door, locking Tom outside.

When Abel reemerges, Tom begs to know how Hatty is. Abel reluctantly confirms that she is alive. Tom enters the house and is able to go beyond the hallway for the first time. He searches upstairs for Hatty, fearing that she will die. 

Tom is shocked when he sees James on the landing, as Hatty’s cousin is now a man. He listens to James’s conversation with Hatty’s aunt. Grace says that Hatty’s accident proves that she “has no sense of what is fitting to her sex and her age” (138).