Abigail Marston, We Hardly Knew Ye…But Now We Do
Abigail breaks my heart, and it’s time to talk about it.
(Spoiler Alert: I’ll be candidly discussing the game in its entirety, assuming my readers have completed both the main story and the epilogue. Additionally, I will not be using Abigail’s appearance in Undead Nightmare as source material, as Rockstar has specified it is not canonical.)
Abigail Marston is one of just a few characters to appear in both installments of Red Dead Redemption — between her and the rest of the two-game character roster, Rockstar had an interesting predicament before them: how does one both rewind and fast-forward extant characters, all while maintaining their integrity, and that of the story? There were some small, easily adapted characters, like Mother Superior Calderón. When John encounters her during Red Dead Redemption, her motivations, values, and personality remain the same as the Saint-Denis-dwelling sweetheart sister we meet in the second game. No problems there.
But there were big characters with big question marks. A handful, completely essential: Abigail and Jack’s abduction by Edgar Ross catalyze Red Dead Redemption’s entire story. It forces John to confront three wildly different ghosts from his past — Bill, Javier, and Dutch — each one giving us insight into the long-gone glory days of the gang. We gain something from each interaction, most of which carries through flawlessly into Red Dead Redemption 2.
Then there’s Abigail.
From the player’s interaction with her in Red Dead Redemption, Abigail appears as a dutiful wife and practical prairie-hardened rancher. She attacks John for his time away from the ranch, professes genuine love for him, and reacts to his death with predictable heartbreak. She dies in 1914 and Jack buries her beside John at Beecher’s Hope.
We get the only other puzzle piece from Dutch during a standoff at the First National Bank of Blackwater. In a spiteful jab at John, Dutch mocks Abigail: a prostitute, once upon a time, who slept around the gang.
Knowing so little makes it difficult to connect with Abigail. We value her because John does, but Abigail gets just minutes of cutscenes in which we get to know her — and the first time we meet her, she seems…unpleasant.
However, it was advantageous to allow the Abigail Marston we met in 2010 to remain fairly one-note and uncomplicated. The Red Dead writers had a blank-slate foundational character to work with, she just needed a little zhuzh.
And, as with the rest of Red Dead Redemption 2, Abigail Roberts bloomed into a complicated, full, beautifully written character that elevates the story to new heights of realism, complexity, and heartache.
Granted, I was once wildly conflicted about Abigail.
I know I’m not the first or only one to find her irritatingly unreasonable, immovable, and downright annoying. I tried to see Abigail’s plight through female eyes, reaching for anything with which to connect and understand her behavior (man troubles? Girl, I’ve been there.), but no, I still came up empty.
What is going on? Why is she so difficult? Why does she treat John the way she does?
One explanation was love. She loves him too much. And of course, she does. Nobody — particularly those who saw Abigail and John’s final moments together — would disagree. But Abigail’s love is often combative, sarcastic, irrational, controlling. It made Red Dead Redemption 2’s epilogue difficult to play, even with the tantalizing prize of shooting Micah in the nuts thirty times waiting just over the horizon.
As I considered Abigail’s life, and the small portion of her past we get to experience, something started to make sense.
It’s unknown at exactly what age Abigail was orphaned, but we can figure from Rockstar’s description of her that it was in early childhood: “An orphan who grew up scraping out a living in dive bars and brothels in the West…”. We know Abigail joined the gang when she was seventeen and became pregnant with Jack at eighteen. We also know that when Jack was about a year old, John — not convinced Jack was his son — disappeared for a year. This forced Abigail to rely on the gang while raising Jack, something she still does in Red Dead Redemption 2. We also see Abigail go out on one job (the botched bank heist) — she doesn’t generate income, but she and Jack are provided for without question.
Between 1894 and 1899, life was decent for Abigail, even with John having temporarily abandoned her. Abigail likely credited Dutch, their charismatic leader, with giving her the most stability she’d ever known. These were her formative years: Dutch became a father figure that showers her and her family with love, support, and protection — at least at first. We know that as the game progresses, things change, but that’s a story for another time.
When we first see the Marstons in 1907, they’re fleeing an “incident” in Roanoke Ridge in which John shot a man. It’s implied that this isn’t the first time John’s actions have forced them to relocate. But now Abigail and John are in their thirties and Jack is on the cusp of his teenage years — even though he has little memory of gang life, Abigail is dissatisfied with the new life they’re providing him, and themselves, for that matter.
Abigail is tired, frustrated, and wants some stability back. She says as much, and her behavior confirms it: her elation at securing a job in Strawberry and settling into the tiny cabin at Pronghorn Ranch. Abigail wants a home and normal life, and starts behaving like the last person to ever offer her anything even remotely close — Dutch van der Linde.
It’s unintentional and happening entirely in her subconscious. If Abigail had the chance to reflect and truly understand her emotions and her own mind, she would’ve seen the pattern and changed. But, no such luck: parents gone, youth spent trying to survive, falling in with Dutch’s gang, where she unwittingly admires a narcissist that manipulates and gaslights those around him. Again, she was seventeen: years before the brain is fully developed, and people are still building the framework of our personalities, values, and ideas. Naturally, she began picking up cues from Dutch and adopting them into her personality without even meaning to.
In the epilogue, three well-choreographed incidents push John to violence. Each time, John realistically has only one course of action; each time, Abigail disagrees, insisting he “always has a choice”:
A fight breaks out when Laramies harass Abe — protecting vulnerable folks is in John’s (and most people’s) nature, and he acts accordingly. Abigail breaks up that fight, angrier at John for his part in it than she was at the interlopers.
John kills three men that tried to follow him and Jack home from Strawberry. Considering John’s difficult position — having Jack with him — his actions were necessary and justified. John does acknowledge how unfair and traumatic it was for Jack, and in his imperfect way, tries to get his son through it. Abigail is predictably livid at John’s handling of the situation, even though the outcome would’ve been unimaginably tragic if John hadn’t acted.
The night of the Laramie Gang attack on Pronghorn Ranch is the turning point of the epilogue.
The player has no choice but to head, guns blazing, into the night: John defends the people and property before leading a small retaliation raid on Hanging Dog Ranch to recover stolen cattle. It’s a no-brainer, but we can guess what might’ve happened if John had obeyed Abigail and done nothing: the cattle wouldn’t have been recovered, more people might’ve died, the Geddes family would’ve taken huge financial losses, perhaps irrecoverably. The Marstons would’ve likely had to relocate again, and wouldn’t have had David Geddes in their corner moving forward. During the attack, Geddes himself tells John “We need your help. I don’t care what you used to do or what your name is…this is the land of second chances.”
This call to action spurs John to embrace who he is and help out; Geddes then helps John secure a loan via his distant cousin, Ansel Atherton, at the West Elizabeth Co-Operative Bank. This was required to even begin work on (and eventually furnish) Beecher’s Hope.
Yet Abigail doesn’t even seem to consider this.
Instead, she decides she’s had enough, and leaves John, taking Jack with her.
I realized then that Abigail is outright rejecting reality. She doesn’t understand that it was unreasonable and unrealistic for her to ask John to sit and stay. Beyond that, she doesn't care how backward it is that she spent her life cajoling John into accepting Jack, just to take him away when John disobeys her wishes.
On to Beecher’s Hope, which serves as the backdrop for some of the biggest, most iconic moments in both games. The ranch is John’s love letter to Abigail and Jack, and the player’s involvement in building it — down to hammering nails and raising walls to an infamously catchy tune — gives us emotional stock in it. The player also sees the true cost of Beecher’s Hope, not just in blood, sweat, and tears, but also cold hard cash. John uses Arthur’s bequeathed journal as his ledger: between the land, the precut house and barn, tools, and labor, John owes the bank somewhere in the ballpark of $1600.
Sadie Adler is one of Red Dead Redemption 2’s most fascinating characters, and her story will be largely reserved for her own article. The pertinent information here is that between the events of 1899 and 1907, Sadie becomes a feared bounty hunter. She recruits John to go after bounties together and splitting the reward.
Sadie comes to Beecher’s Hope to discuss a job, and Abigail, without even letting John speak, tells Sadie that John isn’t looking for “that kind of work”. By this time, Sadie and John had already collected a few bounties together, and John admits he did so to help pay down the considerable debt. Abigail says, “I thought we said no more of that.” John clarifies, “No, you said that.”
In this short, quick interaction, it’s easy to miss — Abigail moves to control John’s decisions, and when she realizes she’s too late, pivots to twisting words and rewriting history.
Abigail does relent, allowing John to continue bounty hunting; but by this time, whispers of Micah Bell have caught Sadie’s ear, and soon, there’s a concrete lead. The ensuing interaction at Beecher’s Hope is tense: Sadie barely gets the words out before Abigail coldly shuts her down. She insists that John isn’t going. “That’s your business, his business is here.”
What’s important to note is Sadie, Charles, and John all ignore Abigail. John doesn’t even acknowledge her until she corners him in the bedroom. Not being heard sets Abigail off: she’s losing control of the situation and stands to lose a lot more if she can’t get it together. She can’t help but escalate the situation. Sound familiar?
John tries to put it into terms Abigail will accept — Micah took her security away, but Arthur gave it back. If Micah gets away with no retribution after the part he played in destroying the gang and killing Arthur, the ranch means nothing. John is trying to earn Abigail’s trust, but he needs to fully earn Beecher’s Hope first; he needs to live up to the life Arthur wanted for him, and sacrificed himself to give him. John is going, and is met with an emotional meltdown. He comes off as harsh compared to Abigail’s heartbreak: she cries, she screams, she begs, she tries to physically prevent him from leaving.
Their new life is slipping through her fingers, and she’s panicking. That’s not to say Abigail isn’t petrified of losing John — she loves him— but she was willing to give him up for far less after the events at Pronghorn Ranch. Now there’s a home on the line: the stakes are raised, and she will not, without a fight, allow anything or anyone to threaten it…even if the one threatening it is John. Abigail pulls out all the stops to try and maintain control, but just like with Dutch, John is having none of it.
We know what happens when John scales Mount Hagen, and the family lives happily ever after…for a while.
In Red Dead Redemption, Abigail still immediately finds reasons to be jealous and distrustful. She’s afraid John rejoined the gang when he encounters Dutch. Not once in Red Dead Redemption 2 does Abigail exhibit an iota of female jealousy, but she becomes nervous that John and Bonnie MacFarlane may have a thing going on. Even after she’d gotten all she wanted, Abigail harbors plenty of suspicion, paranoia, and fear.
This all, to me, seems to be direct remnants of Dutch’s influence.
Still, it’s these very flaws that make Abigail Marston such a fantastically written and profoundly real character. Her actions, reactions and motivations all make sense, especially when one considers her troubled past.
I couldn’t understand why Abigail irritated me. I’d thought it was even unintentional, just an accidental side effect of writing a good story. I just wanted Abigail to understand and value John for what he was. I wanted her to just wake the hell up and react appropriately to something, anything! In the bedroom, when John took her by the shoulders and implored her, “I’m begging YOU to understand!” I was right there with him.
But that’s not who she is, and it isn’t accidental.
Rockstar needed to show the ongoing damage of having spent time in the Van der Linde Gang: Bill mutates into an impulsive, violent madman, but still maintains self-consciousness regarding his own intelligence. This comes from Dutch’s emotional and mental abuse, and the constant implication that Bill’s own “tiny little mind” couldn’t be trusted (the sick irony: by the events of the first game, Bill’s mind is mostly gone). Javier’s philosophy, which he outlines in a Chapter 3 fishing trip, is one admits he lifted straight from Dutch; beyond that, in Red Dead Redemption, Javier tries the “family” defense, criticizes John’s “government work” and tells John he was always weak. All are direct ideas that he, with or without knowing it, absorbed from Dutch.
Red Dead Redemption gave us so little information about Abigail, most of our evidence comes from Red Dead Redemption 2 when we have a whole “Endless Summer” to learn about her. Still, there’s plenty of evidence that Dutch unknowingly influenced her worldview and relationships.
Dutch was obsessive about making money and keeping the gang together; Abigail is equally obsessive about settling down and keeping John at home. Dutch constantly requires proof and validation that his gang members are loyal; Abigail requires John to repeatedly prove his devotion. Dutch feels like the efforts of the gang are lacking; Abigail never seems satisfied with John’s efforts. Dutch holds the past over his gang members to manipulate and shame them; Abigail’s behavior and mistrust in John stems from his abandonment when Jack was a baby, also, John’s dangerous pursuit of Micah against her wishes. Dutch emotionally manipulates his gang members to achieve his ends; Abigail takes Jack away from John until he secures Beecher’s Hope. Dutch becomes increasingly paranoid and insists Arthur is “the type” to betray him; Abigail becomes suspicious of John when dealing with both Dutch and Bonnie. Dutch becomes emotional and aggressive, lashing out and accusing when he begins losing control; Abigail does the same.
Most heartbreaking of all is that Abigail can’t help herself. She’s not a bad person. She’s not some secret villain, she doesn’t have bad intentions or motives. Actually, she has a lot of love to give, even if she struggles to show it. She wants to do the right things; she’s a devoted mother and tries hard to be a good wife to John, even with all her shortcomings. What Abigail wanted most isn’t even unreasonable: a home. A family. Stability for Jack that she never had. A chance for her son to be something in a cruel world.
Abigail is a difficult, perhaps even unlikable woman because of a bad upbringing and even worse role models that failed her so completely, she can’t even begin to fix herself. It’s not her fault, it’s not even really Dutch’s fault, it’s just, unfortunately, “one of them things”. And that’s what crushes me the most, and made me reconsider everything I felt about Abigail: she knew so little true happiness in her life, and what she painstakingly carved out for herself was still marred by folks she should’ve been able to trust.
