Chains · Garden Heights

Part 7

for Chains · Part 7 · Chapters 37–41

8 Parts40 min

What Happens in Part 7

Isabel spies again to keep Curzon alive, reads Common Sense, and learns her soul cannot be chained.

A Guard's BargainLady Seymour leaves her sickbed, and Madam sets the household to Christmas baking. Isabel uses her water errand as cover to reach the prison, but the guards turn her away and warn that baskets will be searched. Through a window she sees Curzon feverish and stripped of his blanket and food by stronger prisoners. A guard named Dibdin offers a bargain: he will see Curzon fed if Isabel carries word to Captain Morse so a doctor can come.

Sal, Not LocktonIsabel had sworn off spying after the last time cost her so much, but she agrees, giving her name as Sal and refusing the Lockton name. That night she works through Thomas Paine (author)'s Common Sense, reading one sentence over and over until it opens. On Christmas Eve she finds Curzon mending. Christmas brings holly, shoes from Lady Seymour, nothing from Madam, and a warning that the prison visits disgrace the family.

Bread and NewsWalking out alone, Isabel understands that Madam can chain her body but not her soul. She makes her mother's bread pudding and gives it to a family living under sailcloth in the burned district. In late December Captain Morse intercepts her at market, and she carries a loaf with a message baked inside to Dibdin — the American victory at Trenton, which runs through the prison like fire.

Ice in the YardPrinceton follows in early January. Master Lockton sails for England with the bad news, Sarah's baby is born and named George, and Lady Seymour asks Isabel's forgiveness, admitting she once tried to buy her and Ruth. Then a seizure leaves Lady Seymour unable to move or speak, and Isabel nurses her while Madam asks the doctor how soon she will die, worried only about the Queen's birthday ball. Hanging frozen wash, Isabel thinks of Ruth and smashes a sheet.

What We Will Learn

Section	What you will practice
Vocabulary	Errands, secrets, and grief: provisions, contraband, courier, defiance, mourning…
Literary Elements	Situational irony sharpened to a point, symbols made out of ordinary household objects, and a motif of food that carries far more than food
Cross-Curricular	Prisoners of war in occupied New York — the sugarhouses, churches and prison hulks, and the civilians who kept the men inside them alive

Chapter Summary

Ch.	What happens
Chapter 37	A Bargain at the Prison Door — With Lady Seymour recovered, the house turns to Christmas work. The guards refuse Isabel entry and promise to search her basket, but through a window she sees Curzon feverish and robbed of blanket and food. Dibdin will care for him only if she carries word to Captain Morse, so she becomes a courier again and starts Common Sense that night.
Chapter 38	Keeping Christmas — Curzon is mending when she visits on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day brings holly, a pair of shoes from Lady Seymour, nothing from Madam, and a warning to stay away from the prison. Isabel decides her soul cannot be owned, bakes her mother’s bread pudding, and carries it to a family living in tents in the burned district.
Chapter 39	The Message in the Bread — Sent to market by Sarah, Isabel is stopped by Captain Morse, who begs one more errand. At a tavern he hands her a loaf with a note baked inside. She delivers it to Dibdin, and word of the American victory at Trenton spreads through the prison and lifts the whole yard.
Chapter 40	New Year, New Ground — A second American victory at Princeton softens the prisoners’ treatment for a while. Master Lockton sails for England to report the losses, Sarah’s son is born and named George, and Lady Seymour asks forgiveness for having tried to buy Isabel and Ruth. Isabel keeps reading, and Paine’s argument starts to fit her own life.
Chapter 41	Sheets of Ice — Madam orders a new gown for Queen Charlotte’s birthday ball. Lady Seymour is felled by a seizure and left helpless, and Isabel nurses her while Madam asks the doctor when the old woman will die. In the frozen yard the wash hangs stiff as glass, Ruth comes flooding back, and Isabel smashes an icy sheet.

Part 1

Vocabulary

Study 10 key words from Chapters 37–41, then answer each question.

🏢Knowledge Bank · Where the Prisoners Were Kept

History · Prisons of Occupied New YorkWhen the British army took New York in the autumn of 1776 and then captured Fort Washington in November, thousands of rebel soldiers surrendered within a few weeks, and there was nowhere ready to put them. The city had one old jail and one nearly new stone workhouse on the Common, called the Bridewell. Everything after that was improvised. Officers were crowded into meeting houses such as the Middle Dutch Church, whose pews were torn out to clear floor space. Others were locked into sugarhouses — tall stone refineries built to store and boil raw sugar, with walls a yard thick and windows no wider than a hand. Still more were rowed across to Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn and shut below the decks of hulks, worn-out warships stripped of masts and anchored as floating prisons. Not one of these places was built to keep human beings warm and fed through a winter, and every surviving account of that season names the same three miseries: cold, hunger, and overcrowding.

Visual AidFour improvised prisons in occupied New York

Structure diagram of the four kinds of building the Knowledge Bank lists, with what each was actually built for: the Bridewell workhouse, meeting houses stripped of their pews, sugarhouses with walls a yard thick and windows no wider than a hand, and hulks anchored off Wallabout Bay. The four are drawn as equal panels, which flattens real differences — the hulks were by far the deadliest — and no measurements here are exact. The drawing maps a system, not the cell any character occupies. Notice the bracket: whatever the building, every surviving account names the same three miseries.

The Bridewell, converted meeting houses, the sugarhouses and the prison hulks of British-occupied New York, as set out in the Knowledge Bank and in standard histories of Revolutionary prisoners of war. Drawn for Garden Heights Academy.

provisionsn.Ch.37

A supply of food gathered for someone to use later

“Isabel saved provisions from the kitchen to carry to the prison.”

contrabandn.Ch.37

Goods that are forbidden and must be carried in secret

“The guard warned that every basket would be searched for contraband.”

couriern.Ch.37

A person who carries messages from one place to another

“Isabel agreed to serve as a courier between Morse and the prisoners.”

wretchedadj.Ch.37

In a miserable condition; badly off and suffering

“Curzon lay in a wretched state, shivering with no blanket.”

disgracen.Ch.38

Shame brought on a person or a family by someone’s conduct

“Madam called the prison visits a disgrace to the household.”

compassionn.Ch.38

Pity for another person that makes you want to help

“Compassion sent the bread pudding to a family she had never met.”

defiancen.Ch.39

Open refusal to obey an order or a person in power

“Going to market for Morse was quiet defiance of Madam.”

pamphletn.Ch.40

A short unbound booklet that argues for an idea

“The pamphlet in her hands argued that no king should rule.”

mourningn.Ch.41

The clothing and customs of grief after a death

“Madam feared that mourning would ruin her plans for the ball.”

brittleadj.Ch.41

Hard but easily cracked or snapped

“The frozen sheets hung brittle as window glass in the yard.”

ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1According to the Knowledge Bank, the wretched conditions of that first winter came mainly from the fact that ___.Ch.37

2‘Contraband’ means goods that are ___.Ch.37

3A ‘courier’ is a person who carries messages.Ch.37

4Someone in a ‘wretched’ state is ___.Ch.37

5Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.37

Word choices:provisionscourierdisgracebrittle- some words will not be used

She hid the under her cloak.

Dibdin needed a who would not be noticed.

6A ‘disgrace’ is something that brings a family ___.Ch.38

7‘Compassion’ means pity that makes a person want to help.Ch.38

8‘Defiance’ is best defined as ___.Ch.39

9Fill in each blank with the correct word.Ch.40

Word choices:pamphletmourningcontrabandcompassion- some words will not be used

She read the by a stub of candle.

Madam dreaded a season of before the ball.

10Something ‘brittle’ bends easily without breaking.Ch.41

Part 2

Comprehension

Show you understood what happens in Chapters 37–41.

⚔Knowledge Bank · The News Baked Into a Loaf

Military History · Trenton and PrincetonThe message Isabel smuggles into the prison is real history. On the night of December 25, 1776, General George Washington ferried his army across the ice-clogged Delaware River and struck the garrison at Trenton the next morning, taking about nine hundred prisoners in roughly an hour of fighting. Most of that garrison was made up of Hessians — German soldiers hired out to the British crown by their own rulers. A week later, on January 3, the same army slipped around a British force in the dark and won again at Princeton. Neither battle was large by European standards. What made them matter was timing. The Continental Army had been beaten out of New York all autumn, and most of its enlistments ran out on the last day of December. Two quick victories persuaded thousands of men to sign on again and convinced wavering states that the war was still alive. In a prison yard where nobody expected good news, that was worth more than food; it was morale.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1The Knowledge Bank explains that Trenton and Princeton mattered mostly because of ___.Ch.37

2What has happened to the blanket and food Curzon was given?Ch.37

3Dibdin agrees to look after Curzon in exchange for nothing at all.Ch.37

4What does Lady Seymour give Isabel for Christmas?Ch.38

5Write the numbers 1–5 in the boxes to show the correct order of events. Number 1 = what happens first.Chapters 37–41

Dibdin offers to care for him if she carries a message.
Word of the Trenton victory reaches the prisoners.
Isabel finds Curzon feverish behind the prison window.
Isabel shares her mother’s bread pudding with strangers.
A seizure leaves Lady Seymour helpless and Isabel nurses her.

6Where does Isabel take the bread pudding she bakes?Ch.38

7How is Captain Morse’s message hidden?Ch.39

8News of the victory at Trenton spreads quickly among the prisoners.Ch.39

9What does Lady Seymour confess to Isabel in early January?Ch.40

10Madam is more troubled by her aunt’s collapse than by the coming ball.Ch.41

Part 3

Literary Elements

Understanding HOW and WHY Laurie Halse Anderson tells the story across Chapters 37–41.

📜Knowledge Bank · A Booklet Written to Be Read Aloud

Rhetoric · Paine’s Common SenseThe little book Isabel labors over by candlelight is real. Thomas Paine (author) published Common Sense in Philadelphia in January 1776, at first anonymously, as a cheap unbound pamphlet — a few dozen printed sheets stitched at the fold and sold for about the price of a meal. Paine wrote it in deliberately plain language, refusing the Latin tags and legal phrasing that filled political writing, so that a farmer or a sailor could follow the argument without help. More than a hundred thousand copies moved within the first year, and it was read aloud in taverns and army camps to people who could not read at all. Anderson (author) then puts that pamphlet into the hands of a girl who is herself legal property. The sentence Isabel keeps circling — that no one is born with a right to govern another — describes the house she is standing in. When a text says the reverse of what a character’s life shows, a reader is looking straight at irony.

A worn printed title page reading Common Sense, addressed to the inhabitants of America, on the following interesting subjects, with four numbered subjects listed, a two-line verse, and the imprint Philadelphia, printed and sold by R. Bell, in Third-Street, MDCCLXXVI — Photograph of the title page of the first edition of the pamphlet the Knowledge Bank describes, printed in Philadelphia in 1776 and held by the Library of Congress. The page proves two of the Knowledge Bank’s claims at a glance: no author is named, because Thomas Paine (author) published it anonymously, and instead of a learned title the sheet simply lists four subjects a reader might want. Only the outside is shown — the argument is inside — and this bound copy has been kept safe in a library, unlike the cheap stitched sheets that were carried into camps and read to pieces. Notice how ordinary it looks: a few dozen sheets, priced about like a meal.
Title page, Thomas Paine, Common Sense, first edition, printed and sold by R. Bell, Philadelphia, 1776; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Source: Wikimedia Commons, file "Common sense addressed to the inhabitants of America" (LCCN2006681076.jpg), public domain.

Situational Irony

A girl who is legally owned carries secret messages for an army fighting about liberty, and reads a pamphlet arguing that nobody may rule another.

Symbol

The wash frozen into stiff white slabs stands for a life gone rigid — and Isabel breaks one, which is the only thing in the yard she can break.

Motif

Food keeps returning as the book’s currency: stolen rations, a shared pudding, a loaf with a message inside it, a bowl held to an old woman’s lips.

🧠Knowledge Bank question

1According to the Knowledge Bank, Isabel reading Common Sense is ironic because ___.Ch.37

2The frozen wash that Isabel smashes works mainly as ___.Ch.41

3A motif is a detail or image an author brings back again and again.Ch.39

4Which detail best shows the food motif at work?Ch.39

5Situational irony means an outcome matches exactly what the words led us to expect.Ch.40

6Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.41

Word choices:symbolmotifrhymeindex- some words will not be used

A sheet frozen into a white slab is a .

Bread returning in scene after scene is a .

7Madam asking the doctor when her aunt will die mainly reveals ___.Ch.41

8A symbol is an object that also carries a larger meaning.Ch.41

9Why is it ironic that Isabel is the one reading a pamphlet about liberty?Ch.40

10Fill in each blank with the correct literary term.Ch.37

Word choices:ironymotifmarginchapter- some words will not be used

A liberty pamphlet read by an owned girl is .

Stolen rations and a shared pudding form a .

Part 4

Think Deeper

Four deeper challenges — no single-word recall. Read, weigh the evidence, and reason it out.

🍞Knowledge Bank · The People Who Carried Food In

Social History · Smuggling Food to PrisonersBritish regulations said a captured rebel should receive roughly two thirds of what a British soldier ate. On paper that was thin but survivable. In practice the commissary — the branch of an army that buys and hands out food — was run by officers paid a share of whatever they did not spend, and the men in the churches and sugarhouses often got a fraction of their rations, sometimes spoiled, sometimes nothing. Captured officers were handled differently. Many were released on parole — a sworn promise not to escape or take up arms — which let them lodge, work and walk about the occupied city while their men stayed locked up. That is exactly why a character like Captain Morse can meet Isabel in a tavern. It is also why civilians mattered so enormously. Ordinary New Yorkers, among them women and free and enslaved Black residents sent out on errands, carried bread, blankets and news past the guards, and that quiet smuggling was, for a great many prisoners, the whole difference between dying and surviving.

Picture a girl carrying a water bucket down a New York street in the last week of December 1776, with a scar shaped like a letter healing on her cheek and a heel of bread hidden under her cloak. The bucket is the reason she is allowed outside. The bread is the reason she goes. Inside a cold stone building on the Common, a boy she knows is lying on a floor with no blanket, burning with fever, because the stronger men around him took his food and his covering and nobody stopped them. Isabel cannot free him, cannot bribe anyone, and owns nothing at all. What she has is a chore that takes her past the door, a face the guards have stopped noticing, and a willingness to be useful to a man who can get a doctor sent in. So she starts carrying messages again — the exact thing she swore she would never do a second time. Part 7 is three weeks of small, dangerous errands: a loaf with a note baked inside it, a bread pudding handed to strangers living in tents, an old woman washed and fed and turned in her bed. And underneath all of it, a book Isabel can barely read is telling her that no person was ever born with the right to own another.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1Claim: “In Part 7, Isabel starts carrying messages again because it is the only power she has over whether Curzon lives.” — choose the two details that best prove it.Claim & Evidence

2Shows the prison system, or Shows Madam’s grip? Tap each detail to send it left or right.Sort into two

◄ Shows the prison systemShows Madam’s grip ►

3Match each cause to its result. For each cause, pick its result.Cause & Effect

Curzon lies feverish with nothing to cover him→

Madam forbids any visits to the prison→

Captain Morse bakes a note inside a loaf→

A seizure leaves Lady Seymour helpless→

🧠Knowledge Bank question

4Fill both blanks to complete the reasoning.Build the Argument

According to the Knowledge Bank, prisoners got far less food than the rules promised because , which is why .

Part 5

Standardized Test

The Prisons of Occupied New York · Reading & Vocabulary · SAT & TOEFL-style practice

The Prisons of Occupied New York

When the British army took New York City in the autumn of 1776, it also took thousands of prisoners. The surrender of Fort Washington that November put roughly two thousand eight hundred Continental soldiers into British hands in a single afternoon. No prison in the city was large enough, so the army used whatever already stood there: a nearly new stone workhouse, the old city jail, churches with their pews torn out, and the tall stone refineries where merchants had boiled raw sugar. The buildings were unheated, and the men inside wore whatever they had been captured in.

When the buildings filled, the British turned to the water. Warships too rotten to sail were stripped of masts and rigging and anchored in Wallabout Bay, off the Brooklyn shore; a vessel kept that way was called a hulk. Prisoners lived below deck in the dark, hundreds at a time, and came up in small groups for air. Their provisions were supposed to be two thirds of what a British soldier received, but the officers who bought the food were paid a share of whatever they did not spend, and the portions reaching the holds were often meager.

What kept many men alive was help from outside the walls. New York women, free Black residents, and enslaved people sent out on errands carried bread, blankets and news past the guards, contraband that could have brought a whipping had it been found. It was never enough. Estimates differ, because nobody kept honest records, but historians broadly agree that more Americans died in British confinement around New York than were killed in all the battles of the Revolutionary War. Bones surfaced along the Brooklyn shore for generations, and a monument raised there in 1908 marks where many were finally buried.

Original passage written for Garden Heights — not a quotation from the novel.

1What is the main idea of the passage?SAT · Central Ideas

2About how many soldiers surrendered at Fort Washington?TOEFL · Factual Information

3Which of these was used to hold prisoners?TOEFL · Factual Information

4The passage suggests that the British ___.SAT · Inference

5Why were the food portions often short?TOEFL · Factual Information

6In the passage, hulk most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

7In the passage, provisions most nearly means ___.TOEFL · Vocabulary

8In the passage, contraband most nearly means ___.SAT · Words in Context

9The passage implies that civilian help was ___.SAT · Inference

10Why does the writer mention the monument raised in 1908?SAT · Author’s Purpose

Part 6 · Optional

Creative Writing

A bonus challenge to practice your English. Take your time and have fun with it.

About This Section

This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!

Writing Task — Part 7 “Something Small You Could Still Do”

Isabel cannot free Curzon, buy him a blanket, or argue with a guard. What she has is a chore that takes her past the door and a heel of bread. Write about a time when you could not fix a situation but did the one small thing you could do — or a time someone did that for you. Describe what was wrong, what was out of your control, what you actually did, and whether it mattered. 6–10 sentences. End by saying whether small acts are worth doing when they cannot solve the problem.

You can start with: “There was nothing I could do about the big part of it, but...”

0 / 40 words minimum

🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

No right or wrong — tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.

Part 7 Complete!

You finished Chapters 37–41 of Chains.

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🗣 Teach It · Just for Fun (optional)

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Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Laurie Halse Anderson. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Laurie Halse Anderson’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.