Homecoming

Polly is Jess’s mother and Nora’s daughter, although that identification becomes complicated as their family truths are revealed. Near the end of the novel, Morton reveals that Polly is actually Thea, Isabel’s baby. Furthermore, the novel reveals that her father isn’t Isabel’s husband, Thomas, but the man that Isabel was having an affair with: Percy Summers.

For much of the novel, Polly is only known through Jess’s memories, which are in turn shaped by Nora’s stories. As a result, a skewed portrait of Polly’s character develops as seen through Nora’s eyes: “a good girl. Sensitive and kind, clever at school, quite a beauty. But she’s naïve; romantic, delicate” (470). Jess has heard this narrative about Polly all her life and therefore thinks of her mother as being fragile, flighty, and distracted. In addition, Jess is deeply angry and resentful of what she sees as Polly’s abandonment of herself and Nora. These perceptions of Polly are the only information available about her until her first direct appearance in the text in Chapter 19, when she receives a phone call about Nora’s death.

The simultaneity of Polly’s appearance and Nora’s death is no coincidence. After Polly has been represented as an absent side character for most of the novel, the shift to Polly’s perspective brings her from the periphery to the center of the story. This position is more representative of Polly’s position in the family history, as it is revealed that she is Thea, the lost baby. In some ways, the entire story revolves around her. From this point onward, Polly is revealed to be observant, perceptive, and loving. She is patient with Jess’s resentment and anger. This characteristic shines through when Jess confesses that she opened Isabel’s trunk, for Polly responds that she is “neither disappointed nor surprised” (507), and this reply demonstrates a depth of knowledge of Jess’s character that surprises her daughter. By the end of the novel, Jess’s perspective on Polly is beginning to shift, and Polly herself becomes more confident as she gains a better understanding of Nora’s past.

Although Nora is a central figure in the novel, she barely says a word in the 2018 timeline of Homecoming. However, as Jess’s grandmother, she is a powerful presence in the book. Her initial hospitalization is the incident that shifts Jess’s status quo and sends her back to Australia to face the mysteries of her past, and the fact that Nora fell while coming from the attic presents a mystery that Jess cannot resist solving. Likewise, in the 1959 timeline, Nora is at the center of the mystery of the Turner Tragedy and has spent nearly 60 years keeping her secrets. Nora’s death also brings Polly back to Sydney and allows her to reconnect with Jess. Their mutual search for answers to Nora’s secrets brings them back to Halcyon to connect with their Turner ancestors, and once they solve the mystery, they gain the opportunity to connect with their Summers family members as well. Ironically, Nora’s desperate attempts to keep her secrets is what inadvertently leads to their exposure.

Nora is the privileged daughter of two wealthy, neglectful parents, and as a child and a young woman, she relies heavily on her relationship with her older brother, Thomas, whom she adores. After Thomas leaves, Nora deals with her loneliness by marrying and attempting to begin the large family that she wants. However, one of Nora’s deepest disappointments is her inability to carry a pregnancy to term. This disappointment, along with Nora’s characteristic refusal to accept defeat, leads her to secretly keep the baby Thea, rename her Polly, and raise her as her own child: a decision that will resonate across generations. This choice also leads to her later manipulations of her daughter and granddaughter. This dynamic creates tension between the Nora that Jess loves and the more realistic and less flattering portrait of her that Morton’s narrative creates. Nora very consciously manipulates Polly and Jess in order to keep her granddaughter with her, creating a rift that is only beginning to be healed in the closing pages of the book.

Jess sums up Nora’s character and presence by saying, “Nora isn’t like other people. She’s her very own climate system” (39). Jess means that the force of Nora’s personality doesn’t shift or shape itself to accommodate others. Instead, Nora operates and makes decisions independently and doesn’t allow anyone to take control. This is evidenced in her overprotectiveness of Polly, her essential theft of Jess from Polly, and even her demand that after her death, Jess burn Isabel’s traveling case. Nora knows that the contents of the case would answer fundamental questions for Jess and Polly, but she was unable to cede control even after her death.

Originally from England, Isabel marries Thomas Turner after World War II and returns to Australia with him. The daughter of a naturalist and an artist, Isabel was orphaned at the age of seven and raised in a dormitory school. As an adult, she is a scientist, and although her role during the war is never explicitly defined, the shadowy nature of her assignment leads Jess to believe that Isabel was in the Resistance, while Sergeant Duke thinks she may have been a spy. This murky past in the war, along with her scientific background, implies that Isabel would be familiar with poisons and would therefore have access to the means for murdering her children and killing herself.

When the novel begins, Isabel is dissatisfied in her marriage to an absent husband and is isolated in a country that makes her feel like an outsider. She marries Thomas after the war, and when she arrives in Australia, they already have a baby, Matilda. Isabel’s friends from school remember her as “determined,” “capable,” and “jolly intelligent” (188), but as Duke notes, although Isabel was liked and admired in Tambilla, she had no close friends there. For nearly 60 years, Isabel is thought to have murdered her children and killed herself, and her character is rewritten by “the citizens of Tambilla […] whereby they could alleviate their own remorse and assuage their community’s guilt in one fell swoop” (389). Thus, after her death, the town questions her mental health and believes her paranoid. However, Isabel is in fact innocent of the crime. As Jess discovers, Isabel planned to take her children to England. This revelation exonerates Isabel of her family’s murders.