Holder of the World

I've been reading the other blogs to get an idea of what to write and have noticed that a lot of them focus on space and time and value. There is another important theme in this book, however, which is the relationship between the signified and the signifier. The book mentions the english alphabet many times in the story - people being branded with letters, letters being carved to represent certain things - sinner, adulterer, etc. But we discussed in class that it is not only the letters that are carrying multiple meanings, but Hannah herself. She begins as a widows daughter in the forest, and then (after her mother's death) turns into a poor orphan child. She grows up to be a strange maiden who is hidden away in the house but then is taken as Legge's wife and shipped of to England. From American to English, she has already experienced so many different changes to what her name signifies. While in India it changes even drastically. From Legge's wife, to a pirates wife, to a pirates widdow, and then finally to the Salem Bibi, Hannah undergoes so many changes that I'm sure her head must have been spinning. And all of these signifieds (here comes the connection!) are a product of space and time. There is a quote in the book that says:
"In other words, at the age of thirty, Hanna was a pure product of her time and place, her marriage and her training, exposed to a range of experience that would be extreme even in today's world, but none of it, consciously, had sunk in or affected her outer behavior."
This was before she became Salem Bibi, but the author is saying that, no matter how many times her signified changed, she was always the same signifier - Hannah - on the outside. Now, when that signifier changed to Salem Bibi, she allowed that outer behavior to change as well because she was no longer tied down to White Town or Gabriel or the New Salem - she was a new person in a new space.