Polly Ann (Hannaberry) Dolan

Character Analysis

Polly Ann is Tom's mother, and we're going to float the idea that she is almost as much the story's hero as Tom is. If Bert Breen's Barn is Tom's coming-of-age tale, it is Polly Ann's redemption tale.

Polly Ann is the daughter of the careless and chronically unemployed Chick Hannaberry. Her husband, Nob Dolan, was just as useless. Despite rough beginnings, Polly Ann is resourceful, hardworking, and independent. She is an extremely capable mother, loving, loyal, and very practical. She is also very pretty, which male characters point out frequently. Polly Ann enjoys the compliments, but she stays grounded in common sense and does not rely on men. Through her hard work, Polly Ann inspires Tom to pursue a better life for them all.

Polly Ann vs. Useless Men Everywhere

Polly Ann's mother died when she was five. While her father was alive, he was a "happy man […] free to do whatever he fancied, which was mostly nothing" (1.3). Chick and his five daughters survived by living in abandoned, broken-down homes and foraging for whatever they could sell or trade. In particular, Chick sent the girls to look for berries and sell them at the Armond house, which Polly Ann also thought felt like begging. The shame stays with Polly Ann all her life.

When Polly Ann married Nob Dolan, it seemed she would be moving into a better life because he had a small farm. But when Nob saw what a capable worker she was, he left all the chores to her, spent all his time drinking, and eventually ran off, never to be heard from again, leaving Polly Ann, not yet 28 years old, with a boy, twin girls, and a rundown home. Nob's a total tool. As a result, Polly Ann becomes "hardened" (2.6) toward those parts of her past, and she develops a crazy strong work ethic to provide for her family.

Polly Ann the Wise and Inspiring

Tom learns a lot from adult male characters in the book, but he learns a great deal from Polly Ann as well. From her, he gets his work ethic, awesome pep talks, and a partner in crime for the climactic treasure hunt.

Let's take a look at her impact in those areas.

Work ethic: To most of us, waking up before dawn to milk the cows, walking three miles to the mill, disassembling a barn, and then walking home to collapse in bed would be an extraordinarily difficult day. But Tom has seen this kind of breakneck work ethic all his life from Polly Ann, whose schedule includes the following:

One day a week she took in washing for the four unmarried farmhands that worked at Massey's [….] Three other days a week she went up to Boonville washing or cleaning for people there. She made what she could, too, in other ways, peddling the few eggs their hens laid, when she had enough to make a basket, and she churned twice a week, selling the butter to the houses she worked for in town. And Sundays when there were berries she took Tom and his sisters into the woods to pick them, but she never told him or his sisters they had to take them up the back porch of any big house. She sold them herself. (2.9)

No small set of tasks. And all that is in addition to the cooking, cleaning, washing, and upkeep of the few animals on her own property. A strong work ethic is Tom's best quality, and he gets it from his mama.

Pep talks: There are several tender moments between Tom and Polly Ann, just the two of them sitting over tea or a meal at the kitchen table. In these moments and others, we often get wise words from Polly Ann. For example, when Tom begins to doubt his ability to go through with the plan of taking down, moving, and rebuilding the barn, Polly Ann tells him:

You hadn't ought to get discouraged, Tom. Sure, it seems bigger than you thought, now you've learned what it takes to get a thing done. But, Tom, you got this idea about the Breen barn three years ago. You've never let go of it. You were a dreamy young boy then, and it seemed as long as you wished something it would surely be. Now you're sixteen. You've changed. You're big as some men are. Strong, too. And you've been growing up inside. But, Tom, that idea was good. It would be a sin to give it up because it looks some harder. That idea was what started you doing things, like working for Ackerman and Hook, like fixing up our house. It's not only been good for you, it's been so for the girls and me, and we are proud of you. (34.6)

Polly Ann is full of great lines like these. Feel free to stitch them on pillows or type them up in frilly cursive for your Instagram.

Partner in crime: Tom deduces where the Breen money is buried only after he gets a key piece of the puzzle from Polly Ann: she was once whipped (ouch) by the Widow Breen for looking in through the barn window to see what Bert Breen was doing in there at night. That's what finally leads Tom to realize the money is hidden beneath the barn floor, and Polly Ann nearly guesses as much herself.

After Tom reaches this conclusion, he needs Polly Ann to act as his guide because he wants to take a back route to the property so he won't be spotted by the Flanchers. Looking over at her as they set out, he observes her:

She had on a thick sweater with a collar that rolled up around her neck under her small, determined chin. He was glad she was coming with him. (49.1)

She does her job like a trekking pro, anticipating each part of the path before they come upon it and explaining the parts of the way that Tom has never encountered before. When they arrive at the Breen place and Tom unearths the money, she helps him carry it to the wagon and takes it to Billy-Bob's with him. She plays a key role in the whole shebang.

Polly Ann Transformed

Polly Ann influences Tom greatly, but he changes her as well. Throughout her adult life, Polly Ann has hardly been a woman to entertain pie-in-the-sky daydreams. Instead, she's more one for "sturdy practical common sense" (34.9). There's also the sense that she has used her poverty as a defense mechanism and a shield. For example, when Tom suggests that Mr. Hook might one day ask Polly Ann to marry him, she says, "if Mr. Hook should ask me, I'd say no. A person from as poor as we are has no right to marry a wealthy man like him" (42.180).

We're definitely not saying that Polly Ann needs a man to swoop in and marry her to make her life butterflies and rainbows, but what this quote shows is that Polly Ann seems to have resigned herself to the fact that certain doors will always be closed to her because of poverty.

As Tom goes after the dreams in his life, though, Polly Ann gradually starts to believe in dreams and new possibilities as well. After Tom gets the disappointing news that the Breen property has been sold, she gives him one of her awesome pep talks, smiles "with some of the old fierce earnestness still in her," and says, "I've got the idea you're going to buy it all the same" (32.33). In response, Tom "wanted to ask her who was dreaming now, but thought he better not" (32.34).

Moments like this give a small glimmer that Tom has opened her mind to imagining the ways life could be different. Isn't that nice?

Polly Ann's Revenge

Tom's purchase of the Breen barn from Mr. Armond is the realization of Tom's dream, but it is also Polly Ann's redemption. When Tom prepares to go make his offer on the barn, Polly Ann tells him, "You're as good as [Mr. Armond] is, Tom, and you've come to make him an offer. If he don't want to sell the barn, that's that. Tell him good-bye and come home" (34.10).

Growing up, Polly Ann never thought that could be the case, because the only interaction she ever had with Mr. Armond was selling foraged berries at his grand home so her family could scrape by. Now she has raised a son who drives right up to the house and puts $50 cash down on the table.

At the end of the novel, she goes with Tom to the Armond place "for once without having to peddle something" (63.3). Tom hands over five crisp five-dollar bills, the remainder of what he owes on the barn, and Polly Ann sees him "taking in not only Molly and Dan [their new horses] but the wagon and Tom's suit and herself, too" (63. 25). By that look, Polly Ann knows her life has made a total 180 from where it was in her childhood.

Tom's success is Polly Ann's revenge because she is directly responsible for that success—not that she sees it as revenge, because she's not spiteful, despite having been through so much. A lot of people help Tom realize his dreams, but Polly Ann is the one who inspires him and sets an example through her own hard work. That makes his victory hers as well.