Eleanor West

Eleanor West is the founder of Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.

## Appearance

At the beginning of the book, Eleanor is said to look like she's in her sixties, despite being almost a hundred. This is because spending so long in a Nonsense world has affected her aging. She's thin, and styles her white hair into a puffball of a perm. She wears respectable greys and lilacs when meeting with parents of potential students, though her real style is much different. When she's first introduced, she's wearing electric orange trousers and a hand knit sweater of rainbow wool with a necklace of semi precious stones in a dozen colours, all of them clashing. Later, for dinner, she changes into a lovely sheath dress made from tie-dyed muslin.

## History

### Before the Books

When she was seven, she found an opening between the tree roots on her father's estate that led her to another world. She travelled back and forth between the two worlds over the years, six times before she turned sixteen, spending as much time in her real home as she could without breaking her father's heart. But she forgot that adults don't thrive in nonsense, even when they're raised to it. Every time she went back there, she got a little older, until one day she went back there, and it nearly broke her. Now she's waiting to get senile so that she can finally tolerate nonsense again and go home.

### Every Heart a Doorway

The book starts by describing how Eleanor usually meets the guardians of the children who enter the school, and how they want to help their children but refuse to believe their stories. Eleanor would inform the parents that her school would cure the children of their "delusions", though she was lying. She would say that it was a "rare but not unique disorder" that happens to young girls (or boys, if that's who she was talking to.) About one in three children had their families reject the school, but for those who did come, Eleanor helped them, hoping that one day she would also be able to return to where she belonged.

### Beneath the Sugar Sky

The Autumn after Nancy's departure, Eleanor is inspecting the building when she runs into Cora, her newest student. After making sure she's settling in well, she watches her leave to go to the Turtle Pond with Nadya. She then goes to paint with Kade; they are interrupted later by Cora and Christopher, who say that a girl has arrived in the pond, claiming to be Sumi's daughter. Eleanor cleans up while Kade goes back with them to fetch the girl.

Rini is brought to Eleanor's office, where she explains her story and asks for them to tell Sumi not to be dead. Eleanor explains that Earth is a logical world and thus they can't do that. After Rini reveals that she can travel between worlds with her bracelet, Kade gets upset at her, asking why she didn't fetch Sumi sooner. Eleanor calms him down, explaining that doing so might have changed the future for Rini. Christopher then brings them to the basement, revealing that he unburied Sumi's hands. He explains his new plan to get Sumi's skeleton, return her hands, and then find her soul in the Halls of the Dead. Eleanor finds comfort in the Nonsense of the plan, and gives them permission to go.

She is sitting on the lawn of the school when Cora, Kade, Christopher and Sumi return, and the latter rushes to hug her.

## Trivia

* "Eleanor" is a French name, derived from the name "Aenor."
	+ "West" is an English/German surname, referring to the Cardinal Direction.
* Eleanor is panromantic.

## References

1. ↑ From Seanan McGuire's tumblr: Eleanor is panromantic, but her actual sexuality is unclear, even to me.