Pin Attling

Character Analysis

Cam's younger sister sure knows how to get her way. While most people think of her as the flighty chick in the Attling household, we give her much more credit—after all, by the end of the book, she's independent, complete with her own job.

Working Girl

When Pin goes to the Big House to get a job as a Clothes Folder, no one's even sure what that is, let alone why she needs it. We appreciate how straightforward she is when she tells Acton:

"I do come to you in my own way, with my own means, or I do not come to you at all." (16.11)

Yes, ma'am. In other words, Pin wants a job for herself. She tells her dad that she's saving up for her dowry, and even though he's a little surprised (since the bride's dad usually bankrolls the dowry), he just goes with it. Maybe that's because when Pin's got her mind made up, no one can change it. Pin carves out a little space for herself in a world that doesn't seem to give women much power, and refuses to cave to other's expectations.

Cam-rades

It's the same with how she treats her brother, Cam. Everyone else tiptoes around the guy, but she's pretty upfront with him when he's bugging her. This suggests a closeness between them that's kind of surprising given the fact that Cam went off to war:

[…] when Pin was very small, and it was as if she'd never met him; not until after the war had ended and he'd come riding in with the warm spring winds, on his fine tall horse, with his sword and his spear and his stories of the North. (1.18)

But perhaps this is the very reason why Pin and Cam are so close now. Pin only knows the Cam who returns from war, not the one who left all those years ago, so when he returns, she meets him as he is without preconceived ideas about him. As far as Pin's concerned, how Cam is after the war is how he's always been—or at least how she's always known him. And she likes this Cam, even taking a job at the Big House in hopes of catching up with him sometime.

Catch up with him she does not, however. Eventually she writes to him, and when he responds he says he'll come home someday, just not today. That night Pin dreams:

That night, as she rubbed cream on her hands, Pin dreamed— of herself in the carp-patterned robe, of Acton's face when she told him of Cam's letter, of Cam riding into the yard on his big gray, just as he had before. (16.174)

Pin's dream closes out the book. And though it is a happy dream, it is still just that—a dream—which suggests that perhaps Pin won't get the joyous reunion with her brother she's so hoping for. Bummer.