In Playing Beatie Bow Ruth Park creates a character to exemplify the journey toward maturity and mental health. Her protagonist, Abigail, is very young when her parents divorce, her father leaving them for a younger woman. At fourteen, Abigail is just starting to process those emotions, but she does so indirectly, as the brain so often works. Park provides metaphors to allow the reader to see Abigail's internal journey construed literally, in the form of the Bow family and Abigail's time in 1879.
Over the course of the narrative, Abigail changes. Surprise, surprise, she learns to value herself well. Despite the challenges of her home life, Abigail proves to be a remarkably resilient, resourceful, and well-adapted girl. At the beginning of the book her very clear problem is self-isolation. She doesn't trust people and feels alienated from them. When she witnesses the Bows' home life, however, Abigail starts paying attention to how other people process their emotions. She starts to gradually realize how everyone carries their own emotional burdens. Everyone is just a little bit damaged. Realizing this, Abigail is able to eventually confide her pain in outside sources, namely Robert Bow.
