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Jenny Abdul Akbar
Mrs. Northcote is the fraudulent fortune teller at Polly Cockpurse’s gathering, which Jock Grant-Menzies interrupts to inform Brenda of John Andrew’s death. The ladies are each enraptured by Mrs. Northcote’s mysterious and exciting fortune readings, but the reader soon finds out that she gives the same generic prediction to everyone. Waugh intended her character to exemplify the false prophets and idols to which people flock in the absence of religion.
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Mrs. Northcote Character Timeline in A Handful of Dust
The timeline below shows where the character Mrs. Northcote appears in A Handful of Dust. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: Hard Cheese on Tony
...these histrionics aside and leads Jock to Brenda at Polly’s house. There, the bogus psychic Mrs. Northcote is reading the ladies’ fortunes, giving the same vague predictions to them all in private....
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