The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

The letter in which Lizzy asks Martin to start dating again after her death serves as a motif for the novel’s thematic exploration of Learning to Love Again After Loss. The letter also has a significant impact on the novel’s structure. In the prologue, Lizzy entrusts a “blue envelope” to Aunt Claire and asks her to give it to Martin “in three or four years” because she “can’t bear to think of him being lonely” (5). Its reappearance in the second chapter, fittingly titled “The Blue Letter,” serves as the novel’s inciting incident. Like the chance to open one’s heart to a new love after loss, Lizzy’s letter is at once both frightening and precious. Rosalind instinctively fears and hates “that scary blue letter” because the first time she saw it was the first time she heard her mother discuss the possibility of her death (5). That pain and grief come surging back when she sees the letter again, exacerbating her apprehensions about her father dating from the outset. 

Martin’s relationship to the letter illustrates his complicated emotions as he continues to mourn the loss of his wife. He shares Rosalind’s apprehension about dating again, but he cherishes the message because it comes from Lizzy and is “so full of love and caring—for all of [his daughters], and for [him]” (258).