# Joanna Todd — The Country of the Pointed Firs character guide

> Joanna Todd in The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Poor Joanna, Joanna, Miss Joanna Todd

**First appearance:** 0012-xiii-poor-joanna

## Snapshot

A proud, heartbroken woman who abandoned the mainland for a solitary life on Shell-heap Island after being jilted, becoming the coast's most haunting legend.

## Who they are

Crossed in love and unwilling to be pitied, she signed away her share of the family farm and rowed alone to a thirty-acre island, refusing all company. Her withdrawal is both a rebuke to the community and a strange kind of freedom — she wanted, as Mrs. Fosdick says, to be free. Her story, told in the novel's middle chapters, gives Dunnet Landing its deepest shadow and its most affecting meditation on grief.

## Relationships

### [Nathan Todd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/characters/nathan_todd)

_family_

Joanna Todd was Nathan Todd's sister, and her tragic isolation was partly triggered by his failed romantic involvement with her friend.

## In the story

### [XIII: Poor Joanna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/chapters/xiii-poor-joanna)

The subject of the story; a woman who became a hermit on Shell-heap Island after a broken heart.

### [XIV: The Hermitage](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/chapters/xiv-the-hermitage)

The hermit of Shell-heap Island; described as polite, gentle, forbidding, and firm in her choice to live alone after committing what she believed was the unpardonable sin.

### [On Shell-Heap Island](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/chapters/xv-on-shell-heap-island)

The hermit who lived on Shell-Heap Island; her house is gone but her grave remains; remembered by Captain Bowden.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/characters/joanna_todd
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_country_of_the_pointed_firs_se/characters