One Foot In Eden Character Analysis

A Woman Lost in Time In Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden Widow Glendower is an old woman who is feared yet respected by many. People fear her because they don’t know her, and they don’t know her because they haven’t made the effort to. She’s a woman of incredible talent. As Amy proves when she gives up hope in doctors and even in God, Widow Glendower is someone people turn to when they are desperate for healing. An old medicine woman whose necessity was phased out by modern medicine.
Widow Glendower lives alone in seclusion which fuels the rumors of witchcraft and how another witch had “burned a newborn for power the doing of such a thing gave her (Rash 98). Amy was desperate enough to go to her for help to get pregnant but, didn’t trust her to bring her baby into the world. She expects the rumors, she seems to accept them when she says “You been listening to slack talk if you are, girl, listening to folks what will say the worst of
That’s why she differs so much from the rest of the people around. They’ve not had enough time to experience life the way that she has, and learn the lessons she has. Amy recalls being scared of Widow Glendower as a little girl. She remembers her father saying ““That old woman has helped many another person when they wasn’t no one else to doctor them and now some of them same people call her a witch” (68). Her father knew she was a kind woman with wisdom people didn’t comprehend.
People who don’t understand things or can’t explain things tend to fear those things. That’s why when Sheriff recalled being a young boy and seeing Widow Glendower he ran away. He’s an adult now looking for Holland Winchester thinking “So there was one other thing to be done, a visit I’d put off as long as I could” (43). He’s putting it off because something inside him still wants to avoid her. She never did anything to provoke him, the fear of the unknown is what caused him to