Paradise

The Oven was constructed back in 1890, shortly after the founding of the town of Haven. It is a large, round, iron oven that was shared by all the families back then. It served not only for cooking but also as a place for people to come together. When the New Fathers decide to establish Ruby, they take the Oven with them from Haven. In Ruby, it continues to mark a meeting place for people in the community. As a relic of the isolated Haven, the Oven reinforces the insularity of the town. As a kind of town hall, it is where citizens make decisions rather than consulting with “white law.”

An old inscription on the Oven is so worn that the people cannot agree on what it says. All that is left is “…the Furrow of His Brow.” Some think the missing word is “Be”; some think it is “Beware.” This uncertainty triggers a debate that exposes growing division and intergenerational conflicts in Ruby:

Some young people, by snickering at Miss Esther’s finger memory, had insulted entire generations preceding them. They had not suggested, politely, that Miss Esther may have been mistaken; they howled at the notion of remembering invisible words you couldn’t even read by tracing letters you couldn’t pronounce (83).

The irreverence of the youth is alarming for the elders. The Oven symbolizes the old ways, the Old Fathers, and Ruby’s legacy. Like the lore of Haven passed down in stories to younger generations, the Oven, too, had to pass from Haven to Ruby. However, on the morning of the attack at the Convent, the rainfall softens the ground, causing the Oven to lean. It is a metaphor for how the ideological foundations of Ruby are, too, destabilized in the aftermath of the attack. As a commentary on the violence and a final act of irreverence toward the old ways, an anonymous person graffitis the Oven’s hood with “We are the Furrow of His Brow” (298).

The Convent, located 17 miles south of Ruby, was an embezzler’s mansion before it became a Catholic school for Indigenous girls. Connie, Mother Superior, and Sister Roberta (who ends up in a nursing home) stayed behind when the school closed. Gradually, five women without homes, each running from a complicated past and seeking refuge, come to live in the mansion with Connie. The Convent evokes the title of the novel, serving as a true paradise, in contrast to the supposed paradise of Ruby. Where the town is exclusive, judgmental, and rigid, the Convent is welcoming, accepting, and free.

The Convent is also a place where the holy and unholy are juxtaposed. When the nuns took over the embezzler’s mansion, they tried to clear out remnants of its sinful past—“Consolata’s first tasks were to smash offending marble figures and tend bonfires of books, crossing herself when naked lovers blew out of the fire and had to be chased back to the flame” (225). However, not all could be erased, leaving small reminders of what it once was. Likewise, in the last of the Convent’s three phases (unholy mansion - holy Catholic school - safe house), it combines the qualities of its first two phases; the women are free of the rigidity of religious forms, yet they experience spiritual healing.