Eliza

Eliza is the protagonist of the novel. She is about 20 years old and works as a prostitute in a brothel in the town of Monterey in the wake of her husband’s death in a bar fight. She had been handed over to her husband, Peter, when she was 18 and he was 38 two years prior, and she relates stories of how she is forced to endure abuse at his hand. He forces her to have sex once or twice a day and often would keep her locked up or isolated from the town and the world around them. In addition, her upbringing was very cold and strictly religious, which has instilled a lot of pessimistic notions of the world in her. At the start of the novel, most of her experiences of the world have come at the hands of people who, for one reason or another, sought...