History Characters / RedeemingLove

* OutDamnedSpot: When she first begins to see that Michael is a genuinely good man, Angel feels she is unworthy of him; she plunges into a creek and frantically begins trying to make herself feel clean. Michael eventually finds her rubbing her skin raw with gravel and sobbing.

* DoesNotLikeMen: Angel hates them—mostly {{justified}} since the only men she knew well [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned]] her, [[RapeAsBackstory raped]] her, and [[SexSlave sold her into prostitution]], and almost every man she’s met since has only objectified her. In one of her encounters with Michael, she also comments that she’s always found men’s bodies “ugly”—again {{justified}} by the fact that pretty much every male body she’s ever seen up close has been in the process of effectually raping her.

* OnlyFriend: At the beginning, Angel is cold and aloof towards everyone but Lucky, one of the prostitutes in the Palace. Lucky tries to cheer Angel up, snipes at other prostitutes when they are mean to Angel, and pleads with her to be careful. Angel, for her part, is still rather closed-off but with Lucky, she is as friendly as she gets; she even asks her not to drink so much, showing that she cares, too. When Angel gets beaten within the inch of death, Lucky figures out that Angel wanted to die and brings Michael to her as she knows he wanted to give Angel a better life.

* YourCheatingHeart: Michael marries Angel; she runs off and sleeps with a number of men. ZigZagged because she's made it very clear she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be his wife, and she goes back to prostitution not because she likes sleeping around but because she knows no other way to earn a living.

* YourCheatingHeart: Angel's father is a married man who isn't happy to have an illegitimate child.

** Averted for most of the prostitutes in the book who are portrayed as very unfortunate people.
** Played straight with Lucky, Angel's caring and supportive OnlyFriend.

* OnlyFriend: In the beginning, Angel is on more or less friendly terms only with Lucky, another prostitute in the Palace.

* DefiledForever: In the beginning of the novel, Sarah's mother Mae becomes a victim of this attitude. She is in love with a married man and has a child by him, then he dumps her, and she has nowhere to go because her parents refuse to take her back. She ends up becoming a prostitute and dies in just a year.

* IronicNickname: Angel's OnlyFriend in the brothel is nicknamed Lucky. She's somewhat better adjusted then her but is still a SexSlave and a drunkhead and [[spoiler:she burns alive in the fire in the Palace.]] Lucky, huh?

* YourCheatingHeart: Angel's father was a married man who wasn't happy to have an illegitimate child.

* FeminineWomenCanCook: Averted with Angel; she’s very good at looking and behaving like a [[ProperLady lady]], but she has next to no domestic skills because she’s never needed them before. This is a source of angst and frustration once she reaches a point where she wants to do something nice for Michael like make him dinner. Played straight when she gets enough practice that she actually becomes quite skilled in the kitchen, and even acquires a job as a cook later on in the novel.

* BreakTheCutie: Angel’s backstory.

-->"Does anyone else want to get between me and my ''wife''?"
* CelibateHero: Michael is still a virgin at the age of twenty-six (to Angel's amazement), and remains so even for some time into their marriage.

* HouseHusband: Michael, because he’s been a bachelor living alone well into his twenties, and Angel learned next to no domestic skills during her life as a prostitute.

* MessianicArchetype: Michael. He is a righteous man who endures [[LoveMartyr quite some suffering]] to save Angel's lost soul.

* JerkassRealization: Near the end, Paul realizes that he's been self-righteous and cruel towards Angel.
-->He sat for a long time, unable to speak, thinking of all the time and all the persecution she had endured. From him. And now she was apologizing. He had plotted her destruction and destroyed himself in the process. From that time, he had been consumed by hatred, blinded by it.

* YouAreWhatYouHate: Played with: Paul despises Angel [[spoiler: because she sleeps with people outside of wedlock and because he thinks she uses sex to manipulate people, but he has deliberately manipulated her to get sex out of her, knowing Michael is married to her. He has a JerkassRealization in the end.]]

* TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason: A version of these tropes is invoked when Angel becomes deeply ashamed of her former life as a prostitute and refuses to tell either her employers or her and Michael’s new neighbors about it [[spoiler:(though it turns out that most of those people either guessed or found out about it anyway, and accepted her in spite of it)]].

* InternalizedCategorism: Angel believes every nasty thing people say about her to be true.

* SelfHarm: In an attempt to make herself clean, Angel plunges into an ice-cold river and rubs her skin raw with gravel.

* OutDamnedSpot: When she first begins to see that Michael is a genuinely good man, Angel feels she is unworthy of him; she plunges into a river and frantically begins trying to make herself feel clean. Michael eventually finds her rubbing her skin raw with gravel and sobbing.

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: [[spoiler:Angel leaves Michael for the third time because she believes that when she is gone, he will eventually marry Miriam and be able to have the children he desperately wants.]]

* YourCheatingHeart: Michael marries Angel; she runs off and sleeps with a number of men. ZigZagged because she's made it very clear she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be his wife, and she goes back to prostitution not because she wants to but because she knows no other way to earn a living.

* BeautyIsBad: Angel's father says she should have never been born and abandons her mother who has nowhere to go without him. Duke is a pimp, a pedophile, and a sadist. Both are described as TallDarkAndHandsome.

* MeaningfulName: Her real name is Sarah, which is the name of a woman from the Bible who for a long time had no home and was barren. In the end, [[spoiler: she is miraculously able to have children.]]
** Also the name that Michael gives Angel after she refuses to tell him her real name, ''Tirzah'', is another Biblical name meaning “she is my delight” and was intended by Michael to be a meaningful and deliberate expression of love to his wife, in contrast to the superficial name she used as a prostitute, ''Angel'', which was only meant to describe her physical beauty.

* WorldsMostBeautifulWoman: We don’t know about the whole world, but it’s made clear that Angel is the most beautiful woman anywhere in the GoldFever country where the story takes place.

* YouAreWhatYouHate: Played with: Paul despises Angel [[spoiler: because she sleeps with people outside of wedlock and because he thinks she uses sex to manipulate people, but he has deliberately manipulated her to get sex out of her, knowing Michael is married to her.]] To his credit, he feels enormously guilty about it.