The White Heron (Chapters I–II) by Sarah Orne Jewett
The Awakening (Chapters I–IV) by Kate Chopin
The Yellow Wallpaper (partial) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Ethan Frome (partial) by Edith Wharton
O Pioneers! (Part One—Chapter I) by Willa Cather
A WHITE HERON
by Sarah Orne JewettI.
The woods were already filled with shadows one
June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a
bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the
trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving
home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking
creature in her behavior, but a valued
companion for all that. They were going away
from whatever light there was, and striking
deep into the woods, but their feet were familiar
with the path, and it was no matter whether
their eyes could see it or not.
There was hardly a night the summer through
when the old cow could be found waiting at the
pasture bars; on the contrary, it was her
greatest pleasure to hide herself away among
the huckleberry bushes, and though she wore a
loud bell she had made the discovery that if one
stood perfectly still it would not ring. So Sylvia
had to hunt for her until she found her, and call
Co’ ! Co’ ! with never an answering Moo, until
her childish patience was quite spent. If the
creature had not given good milk and plenty of
it, the case would have seemed very different to
her owners. Besides, Sylvia had all the time
there was, and very little use to make of it.
Sometimes in pleasant weather it was a
consolation to look upon the cow’s pranks as an
intelligent attempt to play hide and seek, and
as the child had no playmates she lent herself to
this amusement with a good deal of zest.
Though this chase had been so long that the
wary animal herself had given an unusual
signal of her whereabouts, Sylvia had only
laughed when she came upon Mistress Moolly
at the swamp-side, and urged her affectionately
homeward with a twig of birch leaves. The old
cow was not inclined to wander farther, she
even turned in the right direction for once as
they left the pasture, and stepped along the
road at a good pace. She was quite ready to be
milked now, and seldom stopped to browse.
Sylvia wondered what her grandmother would
say because they were so late. It was a great
while since she had left home at half-past five
o’clock, but everybody knew the difficulty of
making this errand a short one. Mrs. Tilley had
chased the hornéd torment too many summer
evenings herself to blame any one else for
lingering, and was only thankful as she waited
that she had Sylvia, nowadays, to give such
valuable assistance. The good woman suspected
that Sylvia loitered occasionally on her own
account; there never was such a child for
straying about out-of-doors since the world was
made! Everybody said that it was a good change
for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight
years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as
for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had
been alive at all before she came to live at the
farm. She thought often with wistful
compassion of a wretched geranium that
belonged to a town neighbor.
“ ‘Afraid of folks,’ ” old Mrs. Tilley said to
herself, with a smile, after she had made the
unlikely choice of Sylvia from her daughter’s
houseful of children, and was returning to the
farm. “ ‘Afraid of folks,’ they said! I guess she
won’t be troubled no great with ‘em up to the old
place!” When they reached the door of the lonely
house and stopped to unlock it, and the cat
came to purr loudly, and rub against them, a
deserted pussy, indeed, but fat with young
robins, Sylvia whispered that this was a
beautiful place to live in, and she never should
wish to go home.
The companions followed the shady wood-road,
the cow taking slow steps and the child very
fast ones. The cow stopped long at the brook to
drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp,
and Sylvia stood still and waited, letting her
bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water,
while the great twilight moths struck softly
against her. She waded on through the brook as
the cow moved away, and listened to the
thrushes with a heart that beat fast with
pleasure. There was a stirring in the great
boughs overhead. They were full of little birds
and beasts that seemed to be wide awake, and
going about their world, or else saying goodnight
to each other in sleepy twitters. Sylvia
herself felt sleepy as she walked along.
However, it was not much farther to the house,
and the air was soft and sweet. She was not
often in the woods so late as this, and it made
her feel as if she were a part of the gray
shadows and the moving leaves. She was just
thinking how long it seemed since she first
came to the farm a year ago, and wondering if
everything went on in the noisy town just the
same as when she was there, the thought of the
great red-faced boy who used to chase and
frighten her made her hurry along the path to
escape from the shadow of the trees.
Suddenly this little woods-girl is horrorstricken
to hear a clear whistle not very far
away. Not a bird’s-whistle, which would have a
sort of friendliness, but a boy’s whistle,
determined, and somewhat aggressive. Sylvia
left the cow to whatever sad fate might await
her, and stepped discreetly aside into the
bushes, but she was just too late. The enemy
had discovered her, and called out in a very
cheerful and persuasive tone, “Halloa, little
girl, how far is it to the road?” and trembling
Sylvia answered almost inaudibly, “A good
ways.”
She did not dare to look boldly at the tall young
man, who carried a gun over his shoulder, but
she came out of her bush and again followed the
cow, while he walked alongside.
“I have been hunting for some birds,” the
stranger said kindly, “and I have lost my way,
and need a friend very much. Don’t be afraid,”
he added gallantly. “Speak up and tell me what
your name is, and whether you think I can
spend the night at your house, and go out
gunning early in the morning.”
Sylvia was more alarmed than before. Would
not her grandmother consider her much to
blame? But who could have foreseen such an
accident as this? It did not seem to be her fault,
and she hung her head as if the stem of it were
broken, but managed to answer “Sylvy,” with
much effort when her companion again asked
her name.
Mrs. Tilley was standing in the doorway when
the trio came into view. The cow gave a loud
moo by way of explanation.
“Yes, you’d better speak up for yourself, you old
trial! Where’d she tucked herself away this
time, Sylvy?” But Sylvia kept an awed silence;
she knew by instinct that her grandmother did
not comprehend the gravity of the situation.
She must be mistaking the stranger for one of
the farmer-lads of the region.
The young man stood his gun beside the door,
and dropped a lumpy game-bag beside it; then
he bade Mrs. Tilley good-evening, and repeated
his wayfarer’s story, and asked if he could have
a night’s lodging.
“Put me anywhere you like,” he said. “I must be
off early in the morning, before day; but I am
very hungry, indeed. You can give me some milk
at any rate, that’s plain.”
“Dear sakes, yes,” responded the hostess, whose
long slumbering hospitality seemed to be easily
awakened. “You might fare better if you went
out to the main road a mile or so, but you’re
welcome to what we’ve got. I’ll milk right off,
and you make yourself at home. You can sleep
on husks or feathers,” she proffered graciously.
“I raised them all myself. There’s good
pasturing for geese just below here towards the
ma’sh. Now step round and set a plate for the
gentleman, Sylvy!” And Sylvia promptly
stepped. She was glad to have something to do,
and she was hungry herself.
It was a surprise to find so clean and
comfortable a little dwelling in this New
England wilderness. The young man had
known the horrors of its most primitive
housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that
level of society which does not rebel at the
companionship of hens. This was the best thrift
of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a
small scale that it seemed like a hermitage. He
listened eagerly to the old woman’s quaint talk,
he watched Sylvia’s pale face and shining gray
eyes with ever growing enthusiasm, and
insisted that this was the best supper he had
eaten for a month, and afterward the new-made
friends sat down in the door-way together while
the moon came up.
Soon it would be berry-time, and Sylvia was a
great help at picking. The cow was a good
milker, though a plaguy thing to keep track of,
the hostess gossiped frankly, adding presently
29 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
that she had buried four children, so Sylvia’s
mother, and a son (who might be dead) in
California were all the children she had left.
“Dan, my boy, was a great hand to go gunning,”
she explained sadly. “I never wanted for
pa’tridges or gray squer’ls while he was to
home. He’s been a great wand’rer, I expect, and
he’s no hand to write letters. There, I don’t
blame him, I’d ha’ seen the world myself if it
had been so I could.
“Sylvy takes after him,” the grandmother
continued affectionately, after a minute’s pause.
“There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her
way over, and the wild creaturs counts her one
o’ themselves. Squer’ls she’ll tame to come an’
feed right out o’ her hands, and all sorts o’ birds.
Last winter she got the jay-birds to bangeing
here, and I believe she’d ‘a’ scanted herself of
her own meals to have plenty to throw out
amongst ‘em, if I hadn’t kep’ watch. Anything
but crows, I tell her, I’m willin’ to help
support—though Dan he had a tamed one o’
them that did seem to have reason same as
folks. It was round here a good spell after he
went away. Dan an’ his father they didn’t
hitch,—but he never held up his head ag’in
after Dan had dared him an’ gone off.”
The guest did not notice this hint of family
sorrows in his eager interest in something else.
“So Sylvy knows all about birds, does she?” he
exclaimed, as he looked round at the little girl
who sat, very demure but increasingly sleepy, in
the moonlight. “I am making a collection of
birds myself. I have been at it ever since I was
a boy.” (Mrs. Tilley smiled.) “There are two or
three very rare ones I have been hunting for
these five years. I mean to get them on my own
ground if they can be found.”
“Do you cage ‘em up?” asked Mrs. Tilley
doubtfully, in response to this enthusiastic
announcement.
“Oh no, they’re stuffed and preserved, dozens
and dozens of them,” said the ornithologist,
“and I have shot or snared every one myself. I
caught a glimpse of a white heron a few miles
from here on Saturday, and I have followed it in
this direction. They have never been found in
this district at all. The little white heron, it is,”
and he turned again to look at Sylvia with the
hope of discovering that the rare bird was one of
her acquaintances.
But Sylvia was watching a hop-toad in the
narrow footpath.
“You would know the heron if you saw it,” the
stranger continued eagerly. “A queer tall white
bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it
would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high
tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk’s
nest.”
Sylvia’s heart gave a wild beat; she knew that
strange white bird, and had once stolen softly
near where it stood in some bright green swamp
grass, away over at the other side of the woods.
There was an open place where the sunshine
always seemed strangely yellow and hot, where
tall, nodding rushes grew, and her grandmother
had warned her that she might sink in the soft
black mud underneath and never be heard of
more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes just
this side the sea itself, which Sylvia wondered
and dreamed much about, but never had seen,
whose great voice could sometimes be heard
above the noise of the woods on stormy nights.
“I can’t think of anything I should like so much
as to find that heron’s nest,” the handsome
stranger was saying. “I would give ten dollars to
anybody who could show it to me,” he added
desperately, “and I mean to spend my whole
vacation hunting for it if need be. Perhaps it
was only migrating, or had been chased out of
its own region by some bird of prey.”
Mrs. Tilley gave amazed attention to all this,
but Sylvia still watched the toad, not divining,
as she might have done at some calmer time,
that the creature wished to get to its hole under
the door-step, and was much hindered by the
unusual spectators at that hour of the evening.
No amount of thought, that night, could decide
how many wished-for treasures the ten dollars,
so lightly spoken of, would buy.
The next day the young sportsman hovered
about the woods, and Sylvia kept him company,
having lost her first fear of the friendly lad, who
proved to be most kind and sympathetic. He
told her many things about the birds and what
they knew and where they lived and what they
did with themselves. And he gave her a jackknife,
which she thought as great a treasure as
if she were a desert-islander. All day long he did
not once make her troubled or afraid except
when he brought down some unsuspecting
singing creature from its bough. Sylvia would
have liked him vastly better without his gun;
she could not understand why he killed the very
birds he seemed to like so much. But as the day
waned, Sylvia still watched the young man with
loving admiration. She had never seen anybody
so charming and delightful; the woman’s heart,
asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a
dream of love. Some premonition of that great
power stirred and swayed these young
creatures who traversed the solemn woodlands
with soft-footed silent care. They stopped to
listen to a bird’s song; they pressed forward
again eagerly, parting the branches—speaking
to each other rarely and in whispers; the young
man going first and Sylvia following,
fascinated, a few steps behind, with her gray
eyes dark with excitement.
She grieved because the longed-for white heron
was elusive, but she did not lead the guest, she
only followed, and there was no such thing as
speaking first. The sound of her own
unquestioned voice would have terrified her—it
was hard enough to answer yes or no when
there was need of that. At last evening began to
fall, and they drove the cow home together, and
Sylvia smiled with pleasure when they came to
the place where she heard the whistle and was
afraid only the night before.
II.
Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of
the woods, where the land was highest, a great
pine-tree stood, the last of its generation.
Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for
what reason, no one could say; the
woodchoppers who had felled its mates were
dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of
sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had
grown again. But the stately head of this old
pine towered above them all and made a
landmark for sea and shore miles and miles
away. Sylvia knew it well. She had always
believed that whoever climbed to the top of it
could see the ocean; and the little girl had often
laid her hand on the great rough trunk and
looked up wistfully at those dark boughs that
the wind always stirred, no matter how hot and
still the air might be below. Now she thought of
the tree with a new excitement, for why, if one
climbed it at break of day, could not one see all
the world, and easily discover from whence the
white heron flew, and mark the place, and find
the hidden nest?
What a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition!
What fancied triumph and delight and glory for
the later morning when she could make known
the secret! It was almost too real and too great
for the childish heart to bear.
All night the door of the little house stood open
and the whippoorwills came and sang upon the
very step. The young sportsman and his old
hostess were sound asleep, but Sylvia’s great
design kept her broad awake and watching. She
forgot to think of sleep. The short summer night
seemed as long as the winter darkness, and at
last when the whippoorwills ceased, and she
was afraid the morning would after all come too
soon, she stole out of the house and followed the
pasture path through the woods, hastening
toward the open ground beyond, listening with
a sense of comfort and companionship to the
drowsy twitter of a half-awakened bird, whose
perch she had jarred in passing. Alas, if the
great wave of human interest which flooded for
the first time this dull little life should sweep
away the satisfactions of an existence heart to
heart with nature and the dumb life of the
forest!
There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling
moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began
with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it,
with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels
of her whole frame, with her bare feet and
fingers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws
to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost
to the sky itself. First she must mount the white
oak tree that grew alongside, where she was
almost lost among the dark branches and the
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 30
green leaves heavy and wet with dew; a bird
fluttered off its nest, and a red squirrel ran to
and fro and scolded pettishly at the harmless
housebreaker. Sylvia felt her way easily. She
had often climbed there, and knew that higher
still one of the oak’s upper branches chafed
against the pine trunk, just where its lower
boughs were set close together. There, when she
made the dangerous pass from one tree to the
other, the great enterprise would really begin.
She crept out along the swaying oak limb at
last, and took the daring step across into the old
pine-tree. The way was harder than she
thought; she must reach far and hold fast, the
sharp dry twigs caught and held her and
scratched her like angry talons, the pitch made
her thin little fingers clumsy and stiff as she
went round and round the tree’s great stem,
higher and higher upward. The sparrows and
robins in the woods below were beginning to
wake and twitter to the dawn, yet it seemed
much lighter there aloft in the pine-tree, and
the child knew she must hurry if her project
were to be of any use.
The tree seemed to lengthen itself out as she
went up, and to reach farther and farther
upward. It was like a great main-mast to the
voyaging earth; it must truly have been amazed
that morning through all its ponderous frame
as it felt this determined spark of human spirit
wending its way from higher branch to branch.
Who knows how steadily the least twigs held
themselves to advantage this light, weak
creature on her way! The old pine must have
loved his new dependent. More than all the
hawks, and bats, and moths, and even the
sweet voiced thrushes, was the brave, beating
heart of the solitary gray-eyed child. And the
tree stood still and frowned away the winds
that June morning while the dawn grew bright
in the east.
Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen
it from the ground, when the last thorny bough
was past, and she stood trembling and tired but
wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top. Yes,
there was the sea with the dawning sun making
a golden dazzle over it, and toward that glorious
east flew two hawks with slow-moving pinions.
How low they looked in the air from that height
when one had only seen them before far up, and
dark against the blue sky. Their gray feathers
were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little
way from the tree, and Sylvia felt as if she too
could go flying away among the clouds.
Westward, the woodlands and farms reached
miles and miles into the distance; here and
there were church steeples, and white villages,
truly it was a vast and awesome world.
The birds sang louder and louder. At last the
sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could
see the white sails of ships out at sea, and the
clouds that were purple and rose-colored and
yellow at first began to fade away. Where was
the white heron’s nest in the sea of green
branches, and was this wonderful sight and
pageant of the world the only reward for having
climbed to such a giddy height? Now look down
again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set
among the shining birches and dark hemlocks;
there where you saw the white heron once you
will see him again; look, look! a white spot of
him like a single floating feather comes up from
the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises,
and comes close at last, and goes by the
landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and
outstretched slender neck and crested head.
And wait! wait! do not move a foot or a finger,
little girl, do not send an arrow of light and
consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the
heron has perched on a pine bough not far
beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the
nest and plumes his feathers for the new day!
The child gives a long sigh a minute later when
a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to
the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and
lawlessness the solemn heron goes away. She
knows his secret now, the wild, light, slender
bird that floats and wavers, and goes back like
an arrow presently to his home in the green
world beneath. Then Sylvia, well satisfied,
makes her perilous way down again, not daring
to look far below the branch she stands on,
ready to cry sometimes because her fingers ache
and her lamed feet slip. Wondering over and
over again what the stranger would say to her,
and what he would think when she told him
how to find his way straight to the heron’s nest.
“Sylvy, Sylvy!” called the busy old grandmother
again and again, but nobody answered, and the
small husk bed was empty and Sylvia had
disappeared.
The guest waked from a dream, and
remembering his day’s pleasure hurried to
dress himself that it might sooner begin. He
was sure from the way the shy little girl looked
once or twice yesterday that she had at least
seen the white heron, and now she must really
be made to tell. Here she comes now, paler than
ever, and her worn old frock is torn and
tattered, and smeared with pine pitch. The
grandmother and the sportsman stand in the
door together and question her, and the
splendid moment has come to speak of the dead
hemlock-tree by the green marsh.
But Sylvia does not speak after all, though the
old grandmother fretfully rebukes her, and the
young man’s kind, appealing eyes are looking
straight in her own. He can make them rich
with money; he has promised it, and they are
poor now. He is so well worth making happy,
and he waits to hear the story she can tell.
No, she must keep silence! What is it that
suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has
she been nine years growing and now, when the
great world for the first time puts out a hand to
her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake?
The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in
her ears, she remembers how the white heron
came flying through the golden air and how
they watched the sea and the morning together,
and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the
heron’s secret and give its life away.
Dear loyalty, that suffered a sharp pang as the
guest went away disappointed later in the day,
that could have served and followed him and
loved him as a dog loves! Many a night Sylvia
heard the echo of his whistle haunting the
pasture path as she came home with the
loitering cow. She forgot even her sorrow at the
sharp report of his gun and the sight of
thrushes and sparrows dropping silent to the
ground, their songs hushed and their pretty
feathers stained and wet with blood. Were the
birds better friends than their hunter might
have been,—who can tell? Whatever treasures
were lost to her, woodlands and summer-time,
remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell
your secrets to this lonely country child!
31 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 32
1. Sylvia’s cow is called
a. Lillybell.2. Read the following sentence and then select, from below, the word that is closest in meaning
b. Mistress Moolly.
c. Mrs. Tilley.
d. Little Nana.
to the word in bold-faced type.
The cow was a good milker, though a plaguy thing to keep track of . . .
a. annoying3. The young hunter is actually a(n)
b. frightening
c. sickening
d. impossible
a. psychologist.4. Read the following sentence and then select, from the choices below, the word closest in
b. naturalist.
c. scientist.
d. ornithologist.
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
She grieved because the longed-for white heron was elusive, but she did not lead the guest,
she only followed, and there was no such thing as speaking first.
a. bold5. “ . . . do not send an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager eyes . . . ” This line
b. evasive
c. endangered
d. rare
from the story is an elaborate way of saying,
a. “Hide!”6. Which literary term is used in the following sentence from the story?
b. “Don’t even move!”
c. “Get down!”
d. “Don’t look at it!”
“It was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth . . . ”
a. onomatopoeia7. Describe the game apparently played by the cow and her owner.
b. alliteration
c. assonance
d. simile
8. Explain the relationship between Sylvia and Mrs. Tilley. How did Sylvia come to live with
her?
9. What sound frightens Sylvia? Who was responsible for it?
10. Identify and describe the bird that the young man wants.
11. Discuss the change in Sylvia’s feelings towards the young hunter. How did she feel about him
when they first met? How does she feel about him after they have spent a day together?
12. With regard to his occupation, which aspect of the young man’s behavior is puzzling to
Sylvia?
13. On a literal and a figurative level, describe the significance of the great pine tree. In other
words, what does it symbolize or offer to Sylvia?
14. Describe the sights that Sylvia sees from the top of the tree.
15. Sylvia returns home fully prepared to tell the young hunter the location of the white heron;
however, she decides not to reveal the information after all. Why?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
THE AWAKENINGI
by Kate Chopin
A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage
outside the door, kept repeating over and over:
“Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s
all right!”
He could speak a little Spanish, and also a
language which nobody understood, unless it
was the mocking-bird that hung on the other
side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out
upon the breeze with maddening persistence.
Mr. Pontellier, unable to read his newspaper
with any degree of comfort, arose with an
expression and an exclamation of disgust.
He walked down the gallery and across the
narrow “bridges” which connected the Lebrun
cottages one with the other. He had been seated
before the door of the main house. The parrot
and the mockingbird were the property of
Madame Lebrun, and they had the right to
make all the noise they wished. Mr. Pontellier
had the privilege of quitting their society when
they ceased to be entertaining.
He stopped before the door of his own cottage,
which was the fourth one from the main
building and next to the last. Seating himself
in a wicker rocker which was there, he once
more applied himself to the task of reading the
newspaper. The day was Sunday; the paper
was a day old. The Sunday papers had not yet
reached Grand Isle. He was already acquainted
with the market reports, and he glanced
restlessly over the editorials and bits of news
which he had not had time to read before
quitting New Orleans the day before.
Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man
of forty, of medium height and rather slender
build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown
and straight, parted on one side. His beard was
neatly and closely trimmed.
Once in a while he withdrew his glance from
the newspaper and looked about him. There
was more noise than ever over at the house.
The main building was called “the house,” to
distinguish it from the cottages. The chattering
and whistling birds were still at it. Two young
girls, the Farival twins, were playing a duet
from “Zampa” upon the piano. Madame Lebrun
was bustling in and out, giving orders in a high
key to a yard-boy whenever she got inside the
house, and directions in an equally high voice to
a dining-room servant whenever she got
outside. She was a fresh, pretty woman, clad
always in white with elbow sleeves. Her
starched skirts crinkled as she came and went.
Farther down, before one of the cottages, a lady
in black was walking demurely up and down,
telling her beads. A good many persons of the
pension had gone over to the Cheniere
Caminada in Beaudelet’s lugger to hear mass.
Some young people were out under the
wateroaks playing croquet. Mr. Pontellier’s two
children were there sturdy little fellows of four
and five. A quadroon nurse followed them about
with a faraway, meditative air.
Mr. Pontellier finally lit a cigar and began to
smoke, letting the paper drag idly from his
hand. He fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade
that was advancing at snail’s pace from the
beach. He could see it plainly between the
gaunt trunks of the water-oaks and across the
stretch of yellow camomile. The gulf looked far
away, melting hazily into the blue of the
horizon. The sunshade continued to approach
slowly. Beneath its pink-lined shelter were his
wife, Mrs. Pontellier, and young Robert Lebrun.
When they reached the cottage, the two seated
themselves with some appearance of fatigue
upon the upper step of the porch, facing each
other, each leaning against a supporting post.
“What folly! to bathe at such an hour in such
heat!” exclaimed Mr. Pontellier. He himself had
taken a plunge at daylight. That was why the
morning seemed long to him.
“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added,
looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable
piece of personal property which has suffered
some damage. She held up her hands, strong,
39 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 40
shapely hands, and surveyed them critically,
drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists.
Looking at them reminded her of her rings,
which she had given to her husband before
leaving for the beach. She silently reached out
to him, and he, understanding, took the rings
from his vest pocket and dropped them into her
open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers;
then clasping her knees, she looked across at
Robert and began to laugh. The rings sparkled
upon her fingers. He sent back an answering
smile.
“What is it?” asked Pontellier, looking lazily and
amused from one to the other. It was some
utter nonsense; some adventure out there in the
water, and they both tried to relate it at once. It
did not seem half so amusing when told. They
realized this, and so did Mr. Pontellier. He
yawned and stretched himself. Then he got up,
saying he had half a mind to go over to Klein’s
hotel and play a game of billiards.
“Come go along, Lebrun,” he proposed to
Robert. But Robert admitted quite frankly that
he preferred to stay where he was and talk to
Mrs. Pontellier.
“Well, send him about his business when he
bores you, Edna,” instructed her husband as he
prepared to leave.
“Here, take the umbrella,” she exclaimed,
holding it out to him. He accepted the
sunshade, and lifting it over his head descended
the steps and walked away.
“Coming back to dinner?” his wife called after
him. He halted a moment and shrugged his
shoulders. He felt in his vest pocket; there was
a ten-dollar bill there. He did not know;
perhaps he would return for the early dinner
and perhaps he would not. It all depended upon
the company which he found over at Klein’s and
the size of “the game.” He did not say this, but
she understood it, and laughed, nodding goodby
to him.
Both children wanted to follow their father
when they saw him starting out. He kissed
them and promised to bring them back bonbons
and peanuts.
II
Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes were quick and bright;
they were a yellowish brown, about the color of
her hair. She had a way of turning them swiftly
upon an object and holding them there as if lost
in some inward maze of contemplation or
thought.
Her eyebrows were a shade darker than her
hair. They were thick and almost horizontal,
emphasizing the depth of her eyes. She was
rather handsome than beautiful. Her face was
captivating by reason of a certain frankness of
expression and a contradictory subtle play of
features. Her manner was engaging.
Robert rolled a cigarette. He smoked cigarettes
because he could not afford cigars, he said. He
had a cigar in his pocket which Mr. Pontellier
had presented him with, and he was saving it
for his after-dinner smoke.
This seemed quite proper and natural on his
part. In coloring he was not unlike his
companion. A clean-shaved face made the
resemblance more pronounced than it would
otherwise have been. There rested no shadow of
care upon his open countenance. His eyes
gathered in and reflected the light and languor
of the summer day.
Mrs. Pontellier reached over for a palm-leaf fan
that lay on the porch and began to fan herself,
while Robert sent between his lips light puffs
from his cigarette. They chatted incessantly:
about the things around them; their amusing
adventure out in the water—it had again
assumed its entertaining aspect; about the
wind, the trees, the people who had gone to the
Cheniere; about the children playing croquet
under the oaks, and the Farival twins, who
were now performing the overture to “The Poet
and the Peasant.”
Robert talked a good deal about himself. He
was very young, and did not know any better.
Mrs. Pontellier talked a little about herself for
the same reason. Each was interested in what
the other said. Robert spoke of his intention to
go to Mexico in the autumn, where fortune
awaited him. He was always intending to go to
41 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
Mexico, but some way never got there.
Meanwhile he held on to his modest position in
a mercantile house in New Orleans, where an
equal familiarity with English, French and
Spanish gave him no small value as a clerk and
correspondent.
He was spending his summer vacation, as he
always did, with his mother at Grand Isle. In
former times, before Robert could remember,
“the house” had been a summer luxury of the
Lebruns. Now, flanked by its dozen or more
cottages, which were always filled with
exclusive visitors from the “Quartier Francais,”
it enabled Madame Lebrun to maintain the
easy and comfortable existence which appeared
to be her birthright.
Mrs. Pontellier talked about her father’s
Mississippi plantation and her girlhood home in
the old Kentucky bluegrass country. She was
an American woman, with a small infusion of
French which seemed to have been lost in
dilution. She read a letter from her sister, who
was away in the East, and who had engaged
herself to be married. Robert was interested,
and wanted to know what manner of girls the
sisters were, what the father was like, and how
long the mother had been dead.
When Mrs. Pontellier folded the letter it was
time for her to dress for the early dinner.
“I see Leonce isn’t coming back,” she said, with
a glance in the direction whence her husband
had disappeared. Robert supposed he was not,
as there were a good many New Orleans club
men over at Klein’s.
When Mrs. Pontellier left him to enter her
room, the young man descended the steps and
strolled over toward the croquet players, where,
during the half-hour before dinner, he amused
himself with the little Pontellier children, who
were very fond of him.
III
It was eleven o’clock that night when Mr.
Pontellier returned from Klein’s hotel. He was
in an excellent humor, in high spirits, and very
talkative. His entrance awoke his wife, who
was in bed and fast asleep when he came in. He
talked to her while he undressed, telling her
anecdotes and bits of news and gossip that he
had gathered during the day. From his trousers
pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank notes
and a good deal of silver coin, which he piled on
the bureau indiscriminately with keys, knife,
handkerchief, and whatever else happened to
be in his pockets. She was overcome with sleep,
and answered him with little half utterances.
He thought it very discouraging that his wife,
who was the sole object of his existence, evinced
so little interest in things which concerned him,
and valued so little his conversation.
Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and
peanuts for the boys. Notwithstanding he loved
them very much, and went into the adjoining
room where they slept to take a look at them
and make sure that they were resting
comfortably. The result of his investigation was
far from satisfactory. He turned and shifted the
youngsters about in bed. One of them began to
kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.
Mr. Pontellier returned to his wife with the
information that Raoul had a high fever and
needed looking after. Then he lit a cigar and
went and sat near the open door to smoke it.
Mrs. Pontellier was quite sure Raoul had no
fever. He had gone to bed perfectly well, she
said, and nothing had ailed him all day. Mr.
Pontellier was too well acquainted with fever
symptoms to be mistaken. He assured her the
child was consuming at that moment in the
next room.
He reproached his wife with her inattention,
her habitual neglect of the children. If it was
not a mother’s place to look after children,
whose on earth was it? He himself had his
hands full with his brokerage business. He
could not be in two places at once; making a
living for his family on the street, and staying
at home to see that no harm befell them. He
talked in a monotonous, insistent way.
Mrs. Pontellier sprang out of bed and went into
the next room. She soon came back and sat on
the edge of the bed, leaning her head down on
the pillow. She said nothing, and refused to
answer her husband when he questioned her.
When his cigar was smoked out he went to bed,
and in half a minute he was fast asleep.
Mrs. Pontellier was by that time thoroughly
awake. She began to cry a little, and wiped her
eyes on the sleeve of her peignoir. Blowing out
the candle, which her husband had left burning,
she slipped her bare feet into a pair of satin
mules at the foot of the bed and went out on the
porch, where she sat down in the wicker chair
and began to rock gently to and fro.
It was then past midnight. The cottages were
all dark. A single faint light gleamed out from
the hallway of the house. There was no sound
abroad except the hooting of an old owl in the
top of a water-oak, and the everlasting voice of
the sea, that was not uplifted at that soft hour.
It broke like a mournful lullaby upon the night.
The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes
that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer
served to dry them. She was holding the back of
her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had
slipped almost to the shoulder of her uplifted
arm. Turning, she thrust her face, steaming
and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went
on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her
face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have
told why she was crying. Such experiences as
the foregoing were not uncommon in her
married life. They seemed never before to have
weighed much against the abundance of her
husband’s kindness and a uniform devotion
which had come to be tacit and self-understood.
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to
generate in some unfamiliar part of her
consciousness, filled her whole being with a
vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist
passing across her soul’s summer day. It was
strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did
not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband,
lamenting at Fate, which had directed her
footsteps to the path which they had taken. She
was just having a good cry all to herself. The
mosquitoes made merry over her, biting her
firm, round arms and nipping at her bare
insteps.
The little stinging, buzzing imps succeeded in
dispelling a mood which might have held her
there in the darkness half a night longer.
The following morning Mr. Pontellier was up in
good time to take the rockaway which was to
convey him to the steamer at the wharf. He
was returning to the city to his business, and
they would not see him again at the Island till
the coming Saturday. He had regained his
composure, which seemed to have been
somewhat impaired the night before. He was
eager to be gone, as he looked forward to a lively
week in Carondelet Street.
Mr. Pontellier gave his wife half of the money
which he had brought away from Klein’s hotel
the evening before. She liked money as well as
most women, and, accepted it with no little
satisfaction.
“It will buy a handsome wedding present for
Sister Janet!” she exclaimed, smoothing out the
bills as she counted them one by one.
“Oh! we’ll treat Sister Janet better than that,
my dear,” he laughed, as he prepared to kiss her
good-by.
The boys were tumbling about, clinging to his
legs, imploring that numerous things be
brought back to them. Mr. Pontellier was a
great favorite, and ladies, men, children, even
nurses, were always on hand to say goodby to
him. His wife stood smiling and waving, the
boys shouting, as he disappeared in the old
rockaway down the sandy road.
A few days later a box arrived for Mrs.
Pontellier from New Orleans. It was from her
husband. It was filled with friandises, with
luscious and toothsome bits—the finest of
fruits, pates, a rare bottle or two, delicious
syrups, and bonbons in abundance.
Mrs. Pontellier was always very generous with
the contents of such a box; she was quite used to
receiving them when away from home. The
pates and fruit were brought to the diningroom;
the bonbons were passed around. And
the ladies, selecting with dainty and
discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all
declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best
husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was
forced to admit that she knew of none better.
IV
It would have been a difficult matter for Mr.
Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or
any one else’s wherein his wife failed in her
duty toward their children. It was something
which he felt rather than perceived, and he
never voiced the feeling without subsequent
regret and ample atonement.
If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble
whilst at play, he was not apt to rush crying to
his mother’s arms for comfort; he would more
likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his
eves and the sand out of his mouth, and go on
playing. Tots as they were, they pulled together
and stood their ground in childish battles with
doubled fists and uplifted voices, which usually
prevailed against the other mother-tots. The
quadroon nurse was looked upon as a huge
encumbrance, only good to button up waists
and panties and to brush and part hair; since it
seemed to be a law of society that hair must be
parted and brushed.
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a motherwoman.
The motherwomen seemed to prevail
that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know
them, fluttering about with extended,
protecting wings when any harm, real or
imaginary, threatened their precious brood.
They were women who idolized their children,
worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a
holy privilege to efface themselves as
individuals and grow wings as ministering
angels.
Many of them were delicious in the role; one of
them was the embodiment of every womanly
grace and charm. If her husband did not adore
her, he was a brute, deserving of death by slow
torture. Her name was Adele Ratignolle. There
are no words to describe her save the old ones
that have served so often to picture the bygone
heroine of romance and the fair lady of our
dreams. There was nothing subtle or hidden
about her charms; her beauty was all there,
flaming and apparent: the spun-gold hair that
comb nor confining pin could restrain; the blue
eyes that were like nothing but sapphires; two
lips that pouted, that were so red one could only
think of cherries or some other delicious
crimson fruit in looking at them. She was
growing a little stout, but it did not seem to
detract an iota from the grace of every step,
pose, gesture. One would not have wanted her
white neck a mite less full or her beautiful arms
more slender. Never were hands more exquisite
than hers, and it was a joy to look at them when
she threaded her needle or adjusted her gold
thimble to her taper middle finger as she sewed
away on the little night-drawers or fashioned a
bodice or a bib.
Madame Ratignolle was very fond of Mrs.
Pontellier, and often she took her sewing and
went over to sit with her in the afternoons. She
was sitting there the afternoon of the day the
box arrived from New Orleans. She had
possession of the rocker, and she was busily
engaged in sewing upon a diminutive pair of
night-drawers.
She had brought the pattern of the drawers for
Mrs. Pontellier to cut out—a marvel of
construction, fashioned to enclose a baby’s body
so effectually that only two small eyes might
look out from the garment, like an Eskimo’s.
They were designed for winter wear, when
treacherous drafts came down chimneys and
insidious currents of deadly cold found their
way through key-holes.
Mrs. Pontellier’s mind was quite at rest
concerning the present material needs of her
children, and she could not see the use of
anticipating and making winter night garments
the subject of her summer meditations. But she
did not want to appear unamiable and
uninterested, so she had brought forth
newspapers, which she spread upon the floor of
the gallery, and under Madame Ratignolle’s
directions she had cut a pattern of the
impervious garment.
Robert was there, seated as he had been the
Sunday before, and Mrs. Pontellier also
occupied her former position on the upper step,
leaning listlessly against the post. Beside her
was a box of bonbons, which she held out at
intervals to Madame Ratignolle.
That lady seemed at a loss to make a selection,
but finally settled upon a stick of nougat,
wondering if it were not too rich; whether it
could possibly hurt her. Madame Ratignolle
had been married seven years. About every two
years she had a baby. At that time she had
three babies, and was beginning to think of a
fourth one. She was always talking about her
“condition.” Her “condition” was in no way
apparent, and no one would have known a thing
about it but for her persistence in making it the
subject of conversation.
Robert started to reassure her, asserting that
he had known a lady who had subsisted upon
nougat during the entire—but seeing the color
mount into Mrs. Pontellier’s face he checked
himself and changed the subject.
Mrs. Pontellier, though she had married a
Creole, was not thoroughly at home in the
society of Creoles; never before had she been
thrown so intimately among them. There were
only Creoles that summer at Lebrun’s. They all
knew each other, and felt like one large family,
among whom existed the most amicable
relations. A characteristic which distinguished
them and which impressed Mrs. Pontellier most
forcibly was their entire absence of prudery.
Their freedom of expression was at first
incomprehensible to her, though she had no
difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity
which in the Creole woman seems to be inborn
and unmistakable.
Never would Edna Pontellier forget the shock
with which she heard Madame Ratignolle
relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing
story of one of her accouchements, withholding
no intimate detail. She was growing
accustomed to like shocks, but she could not
keep the mounting color back from her cheeks.
Oftener than once her coming had interrupted
the droll story with which Robert was
entertaining some amused group of married
women.
A book had gone the rounds of the pension.
When it came her turn to read it, she did so
with profound astonishment. She felt moved to
read the book in secret and solitude, though
none of the others had done so,—to hide it from
view at the sound of approaching footsteps. It
was openly criticized and freely discussed at
table. Mrs. Pontellier gave over being
astonished, and concluded that wonders would
never cease.
1. Read the following sentence and then select, from the choices below, the word that is closest
in meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
There rested no shadow of care upon his open countenance.
a. novel2. Read the following sentence and select, from the choices below, the word that is closest in
b. face
c. thoughts
d. heart
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
From his trousers pockets he took a fistful of crumpled bank notes and a good deal of silver
coin, which he piled on the bureau indiscriminately with keys, knife, handkerchief, and
whatever else happened to be in his pockets.
3. Mr. Pontellier expresses his concern that Mrs. Pontellier is habitually
a. carefully
b. painstakingly
c. randomly
d. sloppily
a. hateful to him.4. In order to appear as the generous and romantic husband, Mr. Pontellier sends
b. neglectful of the children.
c. drunk and inappropriate.
d. selfish and uncaring.
a. flowers to his wife every Thursday.5. According to Mrs. Pontellier, Creole people were somewhat different from most other groups
b. his wife on a trip in the fall.
c. his wife a box of assorted treats and cordials.
d. love letters to his family when he is away on business.
due to their obvious lack of
a. conviction.6. Describe the setting of the story. What unique features can you discover from the description
b. morals.
c. prudery.
d. initiative.
provided?
7. What can you surmise about Mr. Pontellier’s attitude from the following comment, “What
folly! To bathe at such an hour in such heat!”?
8. How does the following line from the story give you an insight into the way Mr. Pontellier
views his wife?
“You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage.9. What are the Pontelliers like as parents? Is one more “devoted” to the children than the
other? Is either one obviously vested in the nurturing of the children?
10. Describe the appearance of Mrs. Pontellier.
11. Compare and contrast how Mrs. Pontellier and Robert LeBrun were brought up. What did
they have in common?
12. The term used by the narrator to describe Mrs. Pontellier’s feeling was “indescribable
oppression.” What does this mean to you? How did she feel?
13. Interpret the meaning behind this statement made about Mme. Pontellier:
“Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better.”
14. Who was Adele Ratignolle? What did she look like? Why was she so admired by Mr.
Pontellier?
49 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
by Charlotte Perkins GilmanIt is very seldom that mere ordinary people like
John and myself secure ancestral halls for the
summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would
say a haunted house, and reach the height of
romantic felicity—but that would be asking too
much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is
something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why
have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects
that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no
patience with faith, an intense horror of
superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of
things not to be felt and seen and put down in
figures.
John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not
say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead
paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps
that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one’s own
husband, assures friends and relatives that
there is really nothing the matter with one but
temporary nervous depression—a slight
hysterical tendency—what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high
standing, and he says the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever
it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and
exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work”
until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with
excitement and change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it
does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so
sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had
less opposition and more society and stimulus—
but John says the very worst thing I can do is to
think about my condition, and I confess it
always makes me feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone,
standing well back from the road, quite three
miles from the village. It makes me think of
English places that you read about, for there
are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and
lots of separate little houses for the gardeners
and people.
There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a
garden—large and shady, full of box-bordered
paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors
with seats under them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they are all
broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I believe,
something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow,
the place has been empty for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I
don’t care—there is something strange about
the house—I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening,
but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut
the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes.
I’m sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think
it is due to this nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper
self-control; so I take pains to control myself—
before him, at least, and that makes me very
tired.
I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one
downstairs that opened on the piazza and had
roses all over the window, and such pretty oldfashioned
chintz hangings! but John would not
hear of it.
He said there was only one window and not
room for two beds, and no near room for him if
he took another.
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets
me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in
the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel
basely ungrateful not to value it more.
He said we came here solely on my account,
that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I
could get. “Your exercise depends on your
strength, my dear,” said he, “and your food
somewhat on your appetite; but air you can
absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery at
the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly,
with windows that look all ways, and air and
sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then
playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for
the windows are barred for little children, and
there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had
used it. It is stripped off—the paper—in great
patches all around the head of my bed, about as
far as I can reach, and in a great place on the
other side of the room low down. I never saw a
worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns
committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following,
pronounced enough to constantly irritate and
provoke study, and when you follow the lame
uncertain curves for a little distance they
suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at
outrageous angles, destroy themselves in
unheard of contradictions.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a
smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by
the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a
sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate
it myself if I had to live in this room long.
There comes John, and I must put this away,—
he hates to have me write a word.
We have been here two weeks, and I haven’t felt
like writing before, since that first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in this
atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to
hinder my writing as much as I please, save
lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some nights
when his cases are serious.
I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully
depressing.
John does not know how much I really suffer.
He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that
satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh
on me so not to do my duty in any way!
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real
rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative
burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do
what little I am able,—to dress and entertain,
and other things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby.
Such a dear baby!
And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so
nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in his life.
He laughs at me so about this wall-paper!
At first he meant to repaper the room, but
afterwards he said that I was letting it get the
better of me, and that nothing was worse for a
nervous patient than to give way to such
fancies.
He said that after the wall-paper was changed
it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the
barred windows, and then that gate at the head
of the stairs, and so on.
“You know the place is doing you good,” he said,
“and really, dear, I don’t care to renovate the
house just for a three months’ rental.”
“Then do let us go downstairs,” I said, “there are
such pretty rooms there.”
Then he took me in his arms and called me a
blessed little goose, and said he would go down
to the cellar, if I wished, and have it
whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds and
windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as any one
need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly
as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.
I’m really getting quite fond of the big room, all
but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the garden, those
mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous oldfashioned
flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees.
Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and
a little private wharf belonging to the estate.
There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down
there from the house. I always fancy I see
people walking in these numerous paths and
arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give
way to fancy in the least. He says that with my
imaginative power and habit of story-making, a
nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all
manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to
use my will and good sense to check the
tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only well
enough to write a little it would relieve the
press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any advice and
companionship about my work. When I get
really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry
and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he
would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case
as to let me have those stimulating people
about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This paper
looks to me as if it knew what a vicious
influence it had!
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls
like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare
at you upside down.
I get positively angry with the impertinence of
it and the everlastingness. Up and down and
sideways they crawl, and those absurd,
unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one
place where two breadths didn’t match, and the
eyes go all up and down the line, one a little
higher than the other.
I never saw so much expression in an inanimate
thing before, and we all know how much
expression they have! I used to lie awake as a
child and get more entertainment and terror
out of blank walls and plain furniture than
most children could find in a toy store.
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our
big, old bureau used to have, and there was one
chair that always seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other things
looked too fierce I could always hop into that
chair and be safe.
The furniture in this room is no worse than
inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it
all from downstairs. I suppose when this was
used as a playroom they had to take the nursery
things out, and no wonder! I never saw such
ravages as the children have made here.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in
spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—
they must have had perseverance as well as
hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gouged and
splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and
there, and this great heavy bed which is all we
found in the room, looks as if it had been
through the wars.
But I don’t mind it a bit—only the paper.
There comes John’s sister. Such a dear girl as
she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her
find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper,
and hopes for no better profession. I verily
believe she thinks it is the writing which made
me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and see her a
long way off from these windows.
There is one that commands the road, a lovely
shaded winding road, and one that just looks off
over the country. A lovely country, too, full of
great elms and velvet meadows.
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a
different shade, a particularly irritating one, for
you can only see it in certain lights, and not
clearly then.
But in the places where it isn’t faded and where
the sun is just so—I can see a strange,
provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to
skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous
front design.
There’s sister on the stairs!
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are
gone and I am tired out. John thought it might
do me good to see a little company, so we just
had mother and Nellie and the children down
for a week.
Of course I didn’t do a thing. Jennie sees to
everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send
me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don’t want to go there at all. I had a
friend who was in his hands once, and she says
he is just like John and my brother, only more
so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don’t feel as if it was worth while to turn my
hand over for anything, and I’m getting
dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don’t when John is here, or anybody
else, but when I am alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now. John is
kept in town very often by serious cases, and
Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want
her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or down that
lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses,
and lie down up here a good deal.
I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the
wall-paper. Perhaps because of the wall-paper.
It dwells in my mind so!
I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is
nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern
about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics,
I assure you. I start, we’ll say, at the bottom,
down in the corner over there where it has not
been touched, and I determine for the
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 54
thousandth time that I will follow that
pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I
know this thing was not arranged on any laws
of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or
symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but
not otherwise.
Looked at in one way each breadth stands
alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a
kind of “debased Romanesque” with delirium
tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated
columns of fatuity.
But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally,
and the sprawling outlines run off in great
slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of
wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least
it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to
distinguish the order of its going in that
direction.
They have used a horizontal breadth for a
frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the
confusion.
There is one end of the room where it is almost
intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and
the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost
fancy radiation after all,—the interminable
grotesques seem to form around a common
centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal
distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap
I guess.
I don’t know why I should write this.
I don’t want to.
I don’t feel able.
And I know John would think it absurd. But I
must say what I feel and think in some way—it
is such a relief!
But the effort is getting to be greater than the
relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie
down ever so much.
John says I musn’t lose my strength, and has
me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and
things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare
meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates
to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest
reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell
him how I wish he would let me go and make a
visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand
it after I got there; and I did not make out a
very good case for myself, for I was crying
before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think
straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and
just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed,
and sat by me and read to me till it tired my
head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and
all he had, and that I must take care of myself
for his sake, and keep well.
He says no one but myself can help me out of it,
that I must use my will and self-control and not
let any silly fancies run away with me.
There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy,
and does not have to occupy this nursery with
the horrid wall-paper.
If we had not used it, that blessed child would
have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I
wouldn’t have a child of mine, an
impressionable little thing, live in such a room
for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that
John kept me here after all, I can stand it so
much easier than a baby, you see.
55 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
Of course I never mention it to them any
more—I am too wise,—but I keep watch of it all
the same.
There are things in that paper that nobody
knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get
clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very
numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and
creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like
it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish
John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case,
because he is so wise, and because he loves me
so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all
around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly,
and always comes in by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I
kept still and watched the moonlight on that
undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to shake the
pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see if the
paper did move, and when I came back John
was awake.
“What is it, little girl?” he said. “Don’t go
walking about like that—you’ll get cold.”
I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told
him that I really was not gaining here, and that
I wished he would take me away.
“Why darling!” said he, “our lease will be up in
three weeks, and I can’t see how to leave before.
“The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot
possibly leave town just now. Of course if you
were in any danger, I could and would, but you
really are better, dear, whether you can see it or
not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are
gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I
feel really much easier about you.”
“I don’t weigh a bit more,” said I, “nor as much;
and my appetite may be better in the evening
when you are here, but it is worse in the
morning when you are away!”
“Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug,
“she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now
let’s improve the shining hours by going to
sleep, and talk about it in the morning!”
“And you won’t go away?” I asked gloomily.
“Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks
more and then we will take a nice little trip of a
few days while Jennie is getting the house
ready. Really dear you are better!”
“Better in body perhaps—” I began, and stopped
short, for he sat up straight and looked at me
with such a stern, reproachful look that I could
not say another word.
“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake
and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own,
that you will never for one instant let that idea
enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous,
so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It
is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me
as a physician when I tell you so?”
So of course I said no more on that score, and we
went to sleep before long. He thought I was
asleep first, but I wasn’t, and lay there for hours
trying to decide whether that front pattern and
the back pattern really did move together or
separately.
On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a
lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a
constant irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable
enough, and infuriating enough, but the
pattern is torturing.
1. Read the sentence and then select, from the choices below, the words that are closest in
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of
romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
a. great happiness2. From which primary point of view is this story told?
b. powerful despair
c. awesome fright
d. mild appreciation
a. first person3. Why won’t John repaper the room despite his wife’s protests?
b. second person
c. third person
d. omniscient
a. He likes the wallpaper.4. Read the following sentence and then select, from below, the literary term that was
b. He doesn’t think it’s healthy to indulge her fantasies.
c. He cannot find anyone to do the job.
d. He is being stubborn in order to try and shake her out of her depression.
employed.
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck . . .
a. metaphor5. Discuss the personality traits of John. On what types of things does he base his beliefs? What
b. onomatopoeia
c. simile
d. assonance
does he do for a living? Are these things related?
6. Describe the house in which the characters live for the summer.
7. Discuss the wallpaper. How is it described? Is the description superficial or thorough? Which
literary techniques are used to create an image for the reader? Are they effective?
8. How does John view his wife’s condition? Does he believe she is ill? Why or why not?
9. The woman appears to be eager to write. What benefit does she get from writing? Why do
you think John doesn’t like her to engage in the activity of writing?
10. The woman in the story discusses her feelings about the expression she finds in inanimate
objects. What kinds of things does she mention? List two or three.
11. Read the following excerpt from the story and try to explain what it means. Is she really
talking about wallpaper? Or do you believe she might be trying to say more?
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one,
for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking,
formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front
design.
ETHAN FROME
by Edith Wharton
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people,
and, as generally happens in such cases, each
time it was a different story.
If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you
know the post-office. If you know the post-office
you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it,
drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and
drag himself across the brick pavement to the
white colonnade: and you must have asked who
he was.
It was there that, several years ago, I saw him
for the first time; and the sight pulled me up
sharp. Even then he was the most striking
figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin
of a man. It was not so much his great height
that marked him, for the “natives” were easily
singled out by their lank longitude from the
stockier foreign breed: it was the careless
powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness
checking each step like the jerk of a chain.
There was something bleak and
unapproachable in his face, and he was so
stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old
man and was surprised to hear that he was not
more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon
Gow, who had driven the stage from
Bettsbridge to Starkfield in pre-trolley days and
knew the chronicle of all the families on his
line.
“He’s looked that way ever since he had his
smash-up; and that’s twenty-four years ago
come next February,” Harmon threw out
between reminiscent pauses.
The “smash-up” it was—I gathered from the
same informant—which, besides drawing the
red gash across Ethan Frome’s forehead, had so
shortened and warped his right side that it cost
him a visible effort to take the few steps from
his buggy to the post-office window. He used to
drive in from his farm every day at about noon,
and as that was my own hour for fetching my
mail I often passed him in the porch or stood
beside him while we waited on the motions of
the distributing hand behind the grating. I
noticed that, though he came so punctually, he
seldom received anything but a copy of the
Bettsbridge Eagle, which he put without a
glance into his sagging pocket. At intervals,
however, the post-master would hand him an
envelope addressed to Mrs. Zenobia—or Mrs.
Zeena-Frome, and usually bearing
conspicuously in the upper left-hand corner the
address of some manufacturer of patent
medicine and the name of his specific. These
documents my neighbour would also pocket
without a glance, as if too much used to them to
wonder at their number and variety, and would
then turn away with a silent nod to the postmaster.
Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him
a greeting tempered to his own grave mien; but
his taciturnity was respected and it was only on
rare occasions that one of the older men of the
place detained him for a word. When this
happened he would listen quietly, his blue eyes
on the speaker’s face, and answer in so low a
tone that his words never reached me; then he
would climb stiffly into his buggy, gather up the
reins in his left hand and drive slowly away in
the direction of his farm.
“It was a pretty bad smash-up?” I questioned
Harmon, looking after Frome’s retreating
figure, and thinking how gallantly his lean
brown head, with its shock of light hair, must
have sat on his strong shoulders before they
were bent out of shape.
“Wust kind,” my informant assented. “More’n
enough to kill most men. But the Fromes are
tough. Ethan’ll likely touch a hundred.”
“Good God!” I exclaimed. At the moment Ethan
Frome, after climbing to his seat, had leaned
over to assure himself of the security of a
wooden box-also with a druggist’s label on it—
which he had placed in the back of the buggy,
and I saw his face as it probably looked when he
thought himself alone. “That man touch a
hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell
now!”
Harmon drew a slab of tobacco from his pocket,
cut off a wedge and pressed it into the leather
85 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 86
pouch of his cheek. “Guess he’s been in
Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart
ones get away.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Somebody had to stay and care for the folks.
There warn’t ever anybody but Ethan. Fust his
father—then his mother—then his wife.”
“And then the smash-up?”
Harmon chuckled sardonically. “That’s so. He
had to stay then.”
“I see. And since then they’ve had to care for
him?”
Harmon thoughtfully passed his tobacco to the
other cheek. “Oh, as to that: I guess it’s always
Ethan done the caring.”
Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far
as his mental and moral reach permitted there
were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I
had the sense that the deeper meaning of the
story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in
my memory and served as the nucleus about
which I grouped my subsequent inferences:
“Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many
winters.”
Before my own time there was up I had learned
to know what that meant. Yet I had come in the
degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural
delivery, when communication was easy
between the scattered mountain villages, and
the bigger towns in the valleys, such as
Bettsbridge and Shadd’s Falls, had libraries,
theatres and Y. M. C. A. halls to which the
youth of the hills could descend for recreation.
But when winter shut down on Starkfield and
the village lay under a sheet of snow
perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I
began to see what life there—or rather its
negation—must have been in Ethan Frome’s
young manhood.
I had been sent up by my employers on a job
connected with the big power-house at Corbury
Junction, and a long-drawn carpenters’ strike
had so delayed the work that I found myself
anchored at Starkfield-the nearest habitable
spot—for the best part of the winter. I chafed at
first, and then, under the hypnotising effect of
routine, gradually began to find a grim
satisfaction in the life. During the early part of
my stay I had been struck by the contrast
between the vitality of the climate and the
deadness of the community. Day by day, after
the December snows were over, a blazing blue
sky poured down torrents of light and air on the
white landscape, which gave them back in an
intenser glitter. One would have supposed that
such an atmosphere must quicken the emotions
as well as the blood; but it seemed to produce no
change except that of retarding still more the
sluggish pulse of Starkfield. When I had been
there a little longer, and had seen this phase of
crystal clearness followed by long stretches of
sunless cold; when the storms of February had
pitched their white tents about the. devoted
village and the wild cavalry of March winds had
charged down to their support; I began to
understand why Starkfield emerged from its six
months’ siege like a starved garrison
capitulating without quarter. Twenty years
earlier the means of resistance must have been
far fewer, and the enemy in command of almost
all the lines of access between the beleaguered
villages; and, considering these things, I felt the
sinister force of Harmon’s phrase: “Most of the
smart ones get away.” But if that were the case,
how could any combination of obstacles have
hindered the flight of a man like Ethan Frome?
During my stay at Starkfield I lodged with a
middle-aged widow colloquially known as Mrs.
Ned Hale. Mrs. Hale’s father had been the
village lawyer of the previous generation, and
“lawyer Varnum’s house,” where my landlady
still lived with her mother, was the most
considerable mansion in the village. It stood at
one end of the main street, its classic portico
and small-paned windows looking down a
flagged path between Norway spruces to the
slim white steeple of the Congregational
church. It was clear that the Varnum fortunes
were at the ebb, but the two women did what
they could to preserve a decent dignity; and
Mrs. Hale, in particular, had a certain wan
refinement not out of keeping with her pale oldfashioned
house.
In the “best parlour,” with its black horse-hair
and mahogany weakly illuminated by a
gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening
to another and more delicately shaded version
of the Starkfield chronicle. It was not that Mrs.
Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority
to the people about her; it was only that the
accident of a finer sensibility and a little more
education had put just enough distance
between herself and her neighbours to enable
her to judge them with detachment. She was
not unwilling to exercise this faculty, and I had
great hopes of getting from her the missing
facts of Ethan Frome’s story, or rather such a
key to his character as should co-ordinate the
facts I knew. Her mind was a store-house of
innocuous anecdote and any question about her
acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail;
but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her
unexpectedly reticent. There was no hint of
disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her
an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him
or his affairs, a low “Yes, I knew them both . . .
it was awful . . . ” seeming to be the utmost
concession that her distress could make to my
curiosity.
So marked was the change in her manner, such
depths of sad initiation did it imply, that, with
some doubts as to my delicacy, I put the case
anew to my village oracle, Harmon Gow; but got
for my pains only an uncomprehending grunt.
“Ruth Varnum was always as nervous as a rat;
and, come to think of it, she was the first one to
see ‘em after they was picked up. It happened
right below lawyer Varnum’s, down at the bend
of the Corbury road, just round about the time
that Ruth got engaged to Ned Hale. The young
folks was all friends, and I guess she just can’t
bear to talk about it. She’s had troubles enough
of her own.”
All the dwellers in Starkfield, as in more
notable communities, had had troubles enough
of their own to make them comparatively
indifferent to those of their neighbours; and
though all conceded that Ethan Frome’s had
been beyond the common measure, no one gave
me an explanation of the look in his face which,
as I persisted in thinking, neither poverty nor
physical suffering could have put there.
Nevertheless, I might have contented myself
with the story pieced together from these hints
had it not been for the provocation of Mrs.
Hale’s silence, and—a little later—for the
accident of personal contact with the man.
On my arrival at Starkfield, Denis Eady, the
rich Irish grocer, who was the proprietor of
Starkfield’s nearest approach to a livery stable,
had entered into an agreement to send me over
daily to Corbury Flats, where I had to pick up
my train for the Junction. But about the middle
of the winter Eady’s horses fell ill of a local
epidemic. The illness spread to the other
Starkfield stables and for a day or two I was put
to it to find a means of transport. Then Harmon
Gow suggested that Ethan Frome’s bay was still
on his legs and that his owner might be glad to
drive me over.
I stared at the suggestion. “Ethan Frome? But
I’ve never even spoken to him. Why on earth
should he put himself out for me?”
Harmon’s answer surprised me still more. “I
don’t know as he would; but I know he wouldn’t
be sorry to earn a dollar.”
I had been told that Frome was poor, and that
the saw-mill and the arid acres of his farm
yielded scarcely enough to keep his household
through the winter; but I had not supposed him
to be in such want as Harmon’s words implied,
and I expressed my wonder.
“Well, matters ain’t gone any too well with
him,” Harmon said. “When a man’s been setting
round like a hulk for twenty years or more,
seeing things that want doing, it eats inter him,
and he loses his grit. That Frome farm was
always ‘bout as bare’s a milkpan when the cat’s
been round; and you know what one of them old
water-mills is wuth nowadays. When Ethan
could sweat over ‘em both from sunup to dark
he kinder choked a living out of ‘em; but his
folks ate up most everything, even then, and I
don’t see how he makes out now. Fust his father
got a kick, out haying, and went soft in the
brain, and gave away money like Bible texts
afore he died. Then his mother got queer and
87 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 88
dragged along for years as weak as a baby; and
his wife Zeena, she’s always been the greatest
hand at doctoring in the county. Sickness and
trouble: that’s what Ethan’s had his plate full
up with, ever since the very first helping.”
The next morning, when I looked out, I saw the
hollow-backed bay between the Varnum
spruces, and Ethan Frome, throwing back his
worn bearskin, made room for me in the sleigh
at his side. After that, for a week, he drove me
over every morning to Corbury Flats, and on my
return in the afternoon met me again and
carried me back through the icy night to
Starkfield. The distance each way was barely
three miles, but the old bay’s pace was slow, and
even with firm snow under the runners we were
nearly an hour on the way. Ethan Frome drove
in silence, the reins loosely held in his left hand,
his brown seamed profile, under the helmet-like
peak of the cap, relieved against the banks of
snow like the bronze image of a hero. He never
turned his face to mine, or answered, except in
monosyllables, the questions I put, or such
slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a
part of the mute melancholy landscape, an
incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was
warm and sentient in him fast bound below the
surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his
silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of
moral isolation too remote for casual access,
and I had the sense that his loneliness was not
merely the result of his personal plight, tragic
as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon
Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold
of many Starkfield winters.
Only once or twice was the distance between us
bridged for a moment; and the glimpses thus
gained confirmed my desire to know more. Once
I happened to speak of an engineering job I had
been on the previous year in Florida, and of the
contrast between the winter landscape about us
and that in which I had found myself the year
before; and to my surprise Frome said
suddenly: “Yes: I was down there once, and for a
good while afterward I could call up the sight of
it in winter. But now it’s all snowed under.”
He said no more, and I had to guess the rest
from the inflection of his voice and his sharp
relapse into silence.
Another day, on getting into my train at the
Flats, I missed a volume of popular science—I
think it was on some recent discoveries in biochemistry—
which I had carried with me to read
on the way. I thought no more about it till I got
into the sleigh again that evening, and saw the
book in Frome’s hand.
“I found it after you were gone,” he said.
I put the volume into my pocket and we dropped
back into our usual silence; but as we began to
crawl up the long hill from Corbury Flats to the
Starkfield ridge I became aware in the dusk
that he had turned his face to mine.
“There are things in that book that I didn’t
know the first word about,” he said.
I wondered less at his words than at the queer
note of resentment in his voice. He was
evidently surprised and slightly aggrieved at
his own ignorance.
“Does that sort of thing interest you?” I asked.
“It used to.”
“There are one or two rather new things in the
book: there have been some big strides lately in
that particular line of research.” I waited a
moment for an answer that did not come; then I
said: “If you’d like to look the book through I’d
be glad to leave it with you.”
He hesitated, and I had the impression that he
felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of
inertia; then, “Thank you—I’ll take it,” he
answered shortly.
I hoped that this incident might set up some
more direct communication between us. Frome
was so simple and straightforward that I was
sure his curiosity about the book was based on
a genuine interest in its subject. Such tastes
and acquirements in a man of his condition
made the contrast more poignant between his
outer situation and his inner needs, and I hoped
that the chance of giving expression to the
latter might at least unseal his lips. But
something in his past history, or in his present
way of living, had apparently driven him too
89 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
deeply into himself for any casual impulse to
draw him back to his kind. At our next meeting
he made no allusion to the book, and our
intercourse seemed fated to remain as negative
and one-sided as if there had been no break in
his reserve.
Frome had been driving me over to the Flats for
about a week when one morning I looked out of
my window into a thick snow-fall. The height of
the white waves massed against the gardenfence
and along the wall of the church showed
that the storm must have been going on all
night, and that the drifts were likely to be
heavy in the open. I thought it probable that my
train would be delayed; but I had to be at the
power-house for an hour or two that afternoon,
and I decided, if Frome turned up, to push
through to the Flats and wait there till my train
came in. I don’t know why I put it in the
conditional, however, for I never doubted that
Frome would appear. He was not the kind of
man to be turned from his business by any
commotion of the elements; and at the
appointed hour his sleigh glided up through the
snow like a stage-apparition behind thickening
veils of gauze.
I was getting to know him too well to express
either wonder or gratitude at his keeping his
appointment; but I exclaimed in surprise as I
saw him turn his horse in a direction opposite to
that of the Corbury road.
“The railroad’s blocked by a freight-train that
got stuck in a drift below the Flats,” he
explained, as we jogged off into the stinging
whiteness.
“But look here—where are you taking me,
then?”
“Straight to the Junction, by the shortest way,”
he answered, pointing up School House Hill
with his whip.
“To the Junction—in this storm? Why, it’s a
good ten miles!”
“The bay’ll do it if you give him time. You said
you had some business there this afternoon. I’ll
see you get there.”
He said it so quietly that I could only answer:
“You’re doing me the biggest kind of a favour.”
“That’s all right,” he rejoined.
Abreast of the schoolhouse the road forked, and
we dipped down a lane to the left, between
hemlock boughs bent inward to their trunks by
the weight of the snow. I had often walked that
way on Sundays, and knew that the solitary
roof showing through bare branches near the
bottom of the hill was that of Frome’s saw-mill.
It looked exanimate enough, with its idle wheel
looming above the black stream dashed with
yellow-white spume, and its cluster of sheds
sagging under their white load. Frome did not
even turn his head as we drove by, and still in
silence we began to mount the next slope. About
a mile farther, on a road I had never travelled,
we came to an orchard of starved apple-trees
writhing over a hillside among outcroppings of
slate that nuzzled up through the snow like
animals pushing out their noses to breathe.
Beyond the orchard lay a field or two, their
boundaries lost under drifts; and above the
fields, huddled against the white immensities of
land and sky, one of those lonely New England
farm-houses that make the landscape lonelier.
“That’s my place,” said Frome, with a sideway
jerk of his lame elbow; and in the distress and
oppression of the scene I did not know what to
answer. The snow had ceased, and a flash of
watery sunlight exposed the house on the slope
above us in all its plaintive ugliness. The black
wraith of a deciduous creeper flapped from the
porch, and the thin wooden walls, under their
worn coat of paint, seemed to shiver in the wind
that had risen with the ceasing of the snow.
“The house was bigger in my father’s time: I
had to take down the ‘L,’ a while back,” Frome
continued, checking with a twitch of the left
rein the bay’s evident intention of turning in
through the broken-down gate.
I saw then that the unusually forlorn and
stunted look of the house was partly due to the
loss of what is known in New England as the
“L”: that long deep-roofed adjunct usually built
at right angles to the main house, and
connecting it, by way of storerooms and tool©
2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 90
house, with the wood-shed and cow-barn.
Whether because of its symbolic sense, the
image it presents of a life linked with the soil,
and enclosing in itself the chief sources of
warmth and nourishment, or whether merely
because of the consolatory thought that it
enables the dwellers in that harsh climate to
get to their morning’s work without facing the
weather, it is certain that the “L” rather than
the house itself seems to be the centre, the
actual hearth-stone of the New England farm.
Perhaps this connection of ideas, which had
often occurred to me in my rambles about
Starkfield, caused me to hear a wistful note in
Frome’s words, and to see in the diminished
dwelling the image of his own shrunken body.
“We’re kinder side-tracked here now,” he added,
“but there was considerable passing before the
railroad was carried through to the Flats.” He
roused the lagging bay with another twitch;
then, as if the mere sight of the house had let
me too deeply into his confidence for any farther
pretence of reserve, he went on slowly: “I’ve
always set down the worst of mother’s trouble
to that. When she got the rheumatism so bad
she couldn’t move around she used to sit up
there and watch the road by the hour; and one
year, when they was six months mending the
Bettsbridge pike after the floods, and Harmon
Gow had to bring his stage round this way, she
picked up so that she used to get down to the
gate most days to see him. But after the trains
begun running nobody ever come by here to
speak of, and mother never could get it through
her head what had happened, and it preyed on
her right along till she died.”
As we turned into the Corbury road the snow
began to fall again, cutting off our last glimpse
of the house; and Frome’s silence fell with it,
letting down between us the old veil of
reticence. This time the wind did not cease with
the return of the snow. Instead, it sprang up to
a gale which now and then, from a tattered sky,
flung pale sweeps of sunlight over a landscape
chaotically tossed. But the bay was as good as
Frome’s word, and we pushed on to the Junction
through the wild white scene.
In the afternoon the storm held off, and the
clearness in the west seemed to my
inexperienced eye the pledge of a fair evening. I
finished my business as quickly as possible, and
we set out for Starkfield with a good chance of
getting there for supper. But at sunset the
clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier
night, and the snow began to fall straight and
steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft
universal diffusion more confusing than the
gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be
a part of the thickening darkness, to be the
winter night itself descending on us layer by
layer.
The small ray of Frome’s lantern was soon lost
in this smothering medium, in which even his
sense of direction, and the bay’s homing
instinct, finally ceased to serve us. Two or three
times some ghostly landmark sprang up to
warn us that we were astray, and then was
sucked back into the mist; and when we finally
regained our road the old horse began to show
signs of exhaustion. I felt myself to blame for
having accepted Frome’s offer, and after a short
discussion I persuaded him to let me get out of
the sleigh and walk along through the snow at
the bay’s side. In this way we struggled on for
another mile or two, and at last reached a point
where Frome, peering into what seemed to me
formless night, said: “That’s my gate down
yonder.”
The last stretch had been the hardest part of
the way. The bitter cold and the heavy going
had nearly knocked the wind out of me, and I
could feel the horse’s side ticking like a clock
under my hand.
“Look here, Frome,” I began, “there’s no earthly
use in your going any farther—” but he
interrupted me: “Nor you neither. There’s been
about enough of this for anybody.”
I understood that he was offering me a night’s
shelter at the farm, and without answering I
turned into the gate at his side, and followed
him to the barn, where I helped him to
unharness and bed down the tired horse. When
this was done he unhooked the lantern from the
sleigh, stepped out again into the night, and
called to me over his shoulder: “This way.”
1. Choose from below, the literary term used in the following line from the story:
. . . in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.
a. irony
b. hyperbole
c. metaphor
d. simile
2. Read the following sentence and then select, from the choices below, the word closest in
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
Every one in Starkfield knew him and gave him a greeting tempered to his own grave mien;
but his taciturnity was respected and it was only on rare occasions that one of the older men
of the place detained him for a word.
a. silence
b. boisterousness
c. rudeness
d. boldness
3. Read the following sentence and select, from below, the literary term that is used.
In the afternoon the storm held off, and the clearness in the west seemed to my inexperienced
eye the pledge of a fair evening.
a. metaphor
b. foreshadowing
c. hyperbole
d. onomatopoeia
91 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
Far off above us a square of light trembled
through the screen of snow. Staggering along in
Frome’s wake I floundered toward it, and in the
darkness almost fell into one of the deep drifts
against the front of the house. Frome scrambled
up the slippery steps of the porch, digging a way
through the snow with his heavily booted foot.
Then he lifted his lantern, found the latch, and
led the way into the house. I went after him into
a low unlit passage, at the back of which a
ladder-like staircase rose into obscurity. On our
right a line of light marked the door of the room
which had sent its ray across the night; and
behind the door I heard a woman’s voice
droning querulously.
Frome stamped on the worn oil-cloth to shake
the snow from his boots, and set down his
lantern on a kitchen chair which was the only
piece of furniture in the hall. Then he opened
the door.
“Come in,” he said; and as he spoke the droning
voice grew still . . .
It was that night that I found the clue to Ethan
Frome, and began to put together this vision of
his story.
4. How does the author set the tone in the very first two paragraphs of the story?
5. What is significantly noticeable about Ethan Frome’s appearance? What is the reason for this
unusual appearance?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 92
6. How does Ethan Frome’s mail offer a hint as to what his life is like?
7. What is implied by Harmon’s comment, “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.
Most of the smart ones get away”?
93 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
8. Interpret the narrator’s description of life in Starkfield during the winter months. How does
the idea of “contrast” come into play?
9. Who is Mrs. Ned Hale? What function does the narrator hope that she fulfill for him?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 94
10. Ethan Frome is clearly disabled and a bit odd. How did he become this way?
11. Discuss the way Edith Wharton relates Ethan Frome’s disposition to the cold and melancholy
landscape.
95 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
12. How does Ethan Frome come into contact with the narrator’s book? What does this show you
about him?
13. The L-shaped portion of a New England–style house was significant in this story for a
number of reasons. What were they? In addition, how is the absence of this part of Frome’s
house important?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 96
14. What truth about Ethan Frome is revealed to the narrator when he ends up at his house
during the snowstorm? How does this explain some of Ethan’s behavior?
97 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
O PIONEERS!
by Willa Cather
PART I
The Wild Land
I
One January day, thirty years ago, the little
town of Hanover, anchored on a windy
Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown
away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and
eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings
huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky.
The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard
on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as
if they had been moved in overnight, and others
as if they were straying off by themselves,
headed straight for the open plain. None of
them had any appearance of permanence, and
the howling wind blew under them as well as
over them. The main street was a deeply rutted
road, now frozen hard, which ran from the
squat red railway station and the grain
“elevator” at the north end of the town to the
lumber yard and the horse pond at the south
end. On either side of this road straggled two
uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general
merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug
store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office.
The board sidewalks were gray with trampled
snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the
shopkeepers, having come back from dinner,
were keeping well behind their frosty windows.
The children were all in school, and there was
nobody abroad in the streets but a few roughlooking
countrymen in coarse overcoats, with
their long caps pulled down to their noses.
Some of them had brought their wives to town,
and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed
out of one store into the shelter of another. At
the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy
work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons,
shivered under their blankets. About the
station everything was quiet, for there would
not be another train in until night.
On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat
a little Swede boy, crying bitterly. He was about
five years old. His black cloth coat was much
too big for him and made him look like a little
old man. His shrunken brown flannel dress had
been washed many times and left a long stretch
of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the
tops of his clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap
was pulled down over his ears; his nose and his
chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold.
He cried quietly, and the few people who
hurried by did not notice him. He was afraid to
stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask
for help, so he sat wringing his long sleeves and
looking up a telegraph pole beside him,
whimpering, “My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her
will fweeze!” At the top of the pole crouched a
shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly and
clinging desperately to the wood with her claws.
The boy had been left at the store while his
sister went to the doctor’s office, and in her
absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole.
The little creature had never been so high
before, and she was too frightened to move. Her
master was sunk in despair. He was a little
country boy, and this village was to him a very
strange and perplexing place, where people
wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He
always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted
to hide behind things for fear some one might
laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to
care who laughed. At last he seemed to see a
ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up
and ran toward her in his heavy shoes.
His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked
rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew exactly
where she was going and what she was going to
do next. She wore a man’s long ulster (not as if
it were an affliction, but as if it were very
comfortable and belonged to her; carried it like
a young soldier), and a round plush cap, tied
down with a thick veil. She had a serious,
thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes
were fixed intently on the distance, without
seeming to see anything, as if she were in
trouble. She did not notice the little boy until
he pulled her by the coat. Then she stopped
short and stooped down to wipe his wet face.
“Why, Emil! I told you to stay in the store and
not to come out. What is the matter with you?”
121 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
“My kitten, sister, my kitten! A man put her
out, and a dog chased her up there.” His
forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat,
pointed up to the wretched little creature on the
pole.
“Oh, Emil! Didn’t I tell you she’d get us into
trouble of some kind, if you brought her? What
made you tease me so? But there, I ought to
have known better myself.” She went to the
foot of the pole and held out her arms, crying,
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” but the kitten only mewed
and faintly waved its tail. Alexandra turned
away decidedly. “No, she won’t come down.
Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw
the Linstrums’ wagon in town. I’ll go and see if
I can find Carl. Maybe he can do something.
Only you must stop crying, or I won’t go a step.
Where’s your comforter? Did you leave it in the
store? Never mind. Hold still, till I put this on
you.”
She unwound the brown veil from her head and
tied it about his throat. A shabby little
traveling man, who was just then coming out of
the store on his way to the saloon, stopped and
gazed stupidly at the shining mass of hair she
bared when she took off her veil; two thick
braids, pinned about her head in the German
way, with a fringe of reddish-yellow curls
blowing out from under her cap. He took his
cigar out of his mouth and held the wet end
between the fingers of his woolen glove. “My
God, girl, what a head of hair!” he exclaimed,
quite innocently and foolishly. She stabbed him
with a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew
in her lower lip—most unnecessary severity. It
gave the little clothing drummer such a start
that he actually let his cigar fall to the sidewalk
and went off weakly in the teeth of the wind to
the saloon. His hand was still unsteady when
he took his glass from the bartender. His feeble
flirtatious instincts had been crushed before,
but never so mercilessly. He felt cheap and illused,
as if some one had taken advantage of
him. When a drummer had been knocking
about in little drab towns and crawling across
the wintry country in dirty smoking-cars, was
he to be blamed if, when he chanced upon a fine
human creature, he suddenly wished himself
more of a man?
While the little drummer was drinking to
recover his nerve, Alexandra hurried to the
drug store as the most likely place to find Carl
Linstrum. There he was, turning over a
portfolio of chromo “studies” which the druggist
sold to the Hanover women who did chinapainting.
Alexandra explained her predicament,
and the boy followed her to the corner, where
Emil still sat by the pole.
“I’ll have to go up after her, Alexandra. I think
at the depot they have some spikes I can strap
on my feet. Wait a minute.” Carl thrust his
hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and
darted up the street against the north wind. He
was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and narrowchested.
When he came back with the spikes,
Alexandra asked him what he had done with
his overcoat.
“I left it in the drug store. I couldn’t climb in it,
anyhow. Catch me if I fall, Emil,” he called back
as he began his ascent. Alexandra watched him
anxiously; the cold was bitter enough on the
ground. The kitten would not budge an inch.
Carl had to go to the very top of the pole, and
then had some difficulty in tearing her from her
hold. When he reached the ground, he handed
the cat to her tearful little master. “Now go into
the store with her, Emil, and get warm.” He
opened the door for the child. “Wait a minute,
Alexandra. Why can’t I drive for you as far as
our place? It’s getting colder every minute.
Have you seen the doctor?”
“Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says
father can’t get better; can’t get well.” The girl’s
lip trembled. She looked fixedly up the bleak
street as if she were gathering her strength to
face something, as if she were trying with all
her might to grasp a situation which, no matter
how painful, must be met and dealt with
somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of her
heavy coat about her.
Carl did not say anything, but she felt his
sympathy. He, too, was lonely. He was a thin,
frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet in
all his movements. There was a delicate pallor
in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive
for a boy’s. The lips had already a little curl of
bitterness and skepticism. The two friends
stood for a few moments on the windy street
corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers,
who have lost their way, sometimes stand and
admit their perplexity in silence. When Carl
turned away he said, “I’ll see to your team.”
Alexandra went into the store to have her
purchases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get
warm before she set out on her long cold drive.
When she looked for Emil, she found him sitting
on a step of the staircase that led up to the
clothing and carpet department. He was
playing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie
Tovesky, who was tying her handkerchief over
the kitten’s head for a bonnet. Marie was a
stranger in the country, having come from
Omaha with her mother to visit her uncle, Joe
Tovesky. She was a dark child, with brown
curly hair, like a brunette doll’s, a coaxing little
red mouth, and round, yellow-brown eyes.
Every one noticed her eyes; the brown iris had
golden glints that made them look like goldstone,
or, in softer lights, like that Colorado
mineral called tiger-eye.
The country children thereabouts wore their
dresses to their shoe-tops, but this city child
was dressed in what was then called the “Kate
Greenaway” manner, and her red cashmere
frock, gathered full from the yoke, came almost
to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave
her the look of a quaint little woman. She had
a white fur tippet about her neck and made no
fussy objections when Emil fingered it
admiringly. Alexandra had not the heart to
take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and
she let them tease the kitten together until Joe
Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little
niece, setting her on his shoulder for every one
to see. His children were all boys, and he adored
this little creature. His cronies formed a circle
about him, admiring and teasing the little girl,
who took their jokes with great good nature.
They were all delighted with her, for they
seldom saw so pretty and carefully nurtured a
child. They told her that she must choose one of
them for a sweetheart, and each began pressing
his suit and offering her bribes; candy, and little
pigs, and spotted calves. She looked archly into
the big, brown, mustached faces, smelling of
spirits and tobacco, then she ran her tiny
forefinger delicately over Joe’s bristly chin and
said, “Here is my sweetheart.”
The Bohemians roared with laughter, and
Marie’s uncle hugged her until she cried,
“Please don’t, Uncle Joe! You hurt me.” Each of
Joe’s friends gave her a bag of candy, and she
kissed them all around, though she did not like
country candy very well. Perhaps that was why
she bethought herself of Emil. “Let me down,
Uncle Joe,” she said, “I want to give some of my
candy to that nice little boy I found.” She
walked graciously over to Emil, followed by her
lusty admirers, who formed a new circle and
teased the little boy until he hid his face in his
sister’s skirts, and she had to scold him for
being such a baby.
The farm people were making preparations to
start for home. The women were checking over
their groceries and pinning their big red shawls
about their heads. The men were buying
tobacco and candy with what money they had
left, were showing each other new boots and
gloves and blue flannel shirts. Three big
Bohemians were drinking raw alcohol,
tinctured with oil of cinnamon. This was said to
fortify one effectually against the cold, and they
smacked their lips after each pull at the flask.
Their volubility drowned every other noise in
the place, and the overheated store sounded of
their spirited language as it reeked of pipe
smoke, damp woolens, and kerosene.
Carl came in, wearing his overcoat and carrying
a wooden box with a brass handle. “Come,” he
said, “I’ve fed and watered your team, and the
wagon is ready.” He carried Emil out and
tucked him down in the straw in the wagonbox.
The heat had made the little boy sleepy, but he
still clung to his kitten.
“You were awful good to climb so high and get
my kitten, Carl. When I get big I’ll climb and
get little boys’ kittens for them,” he murmured
drowsily. Before the horses were over the first
hill, Emil and his cat were both fast asleep.
Although it was only four o’clock, the winter
day was fading. The road led southwest,
toward the streak of pale, watery light that
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 122
glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell
upon the two sad young faces that were turned
mutely toward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who
seemed to be looking with such anguished
perplexity into the future; upon the sombre eyes
of the boy, who seemed already to be looking
into the past. The little town behind them had
vanished as if it had never been, had fallen
behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern
frozen country received them into its bosom.
The homesteads were few and far apart; here
and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a
sod house crouching in a hollow. But the great
fact was the land itself, which seemed to
overwhelm the little beginnings of human
society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It
was from facing this vast hardness that the
boy’s mouth had become so bitter; because he
felt that men were too weak to make any mark
here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to
preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar,
savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted
mournfulness.
The wagon jolted along over the frozen road.
The two friends had less to say to each other
than usual, as if the cold had somehow
penetrated to their hearts.
“Did Lou and Oscar go to the Blue to cut wood
to-day?” Carl asked.
“Yes. I’m almost sorry I let them go, it’s turned
so cold. But mother frets if the wood gets low.”
She stopped and put her hand to her forehead,
brushing back her hair. “I don’t know what is to
become of us, Carl, if father has to die. I don’t
dare to think about it. I wish we could all go
with him and let the grass grow back over
everything.”
Carl made no reply. Just ahead of them was the
Norwegian graveyard, where the grass had,
indeed, grown back over everything, shaggy
and red, hiding even the wire fence. Carl
realized that he was not a very helpful
companion, but there was nothing he could say.
“Of course,” Alexandra went on, steadying her
voice a little, “the boys are strong and work
hard, but we’ve always depended so on father
that I don’t see how we can go ahead. I almost
feel as if there were nothing to go ahead for.”
“Does your father know?”
“Yes, I think he does. He lies and counts on his
fingers all day. I think he is trying to count up
what he is leaving for us. It’s a comfort to him
that my chickens are laying right on through
the cold weather and bringing in a little money.
I wish we could keep his mind off such things,
but I don’t have much time to be with him now.”
“I wonder if he’d like to have me bring my magic
lantern over some evening?”
Alexandra turned her face toward him. “Oh,
Carl! Have you got it?”
“Yes. It’s back there in the straw. Didn’t you
notice the box I was carrying? I tried it all
morning in the drug-store cellar, and it worked
ever so well, makes fine big pictures.”
“What are they about?”
“Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and
Robinson Crusoe and funny pictures about
cannibals. I’m going to paint some slides for it
on glass, out of the Hans Andersen book.”
Alexandra seemed actually cheered. There is
often a good deal of the child left in people who
have had to grow up too soon. “Do bring it over,
Carl. I can hardly wait to see it, and I’m sure it
will please father. Are the pictures colored?
Then I know he’ll like them. He likes the
calendars I get him in town. I wish I could get
more. You must leave me here, mustn’t you?
It’s been nice to have company.”
Carl stopped the horses and looked dubiously
up at the black sky. “It’s pretty dark. Of course
the horses will take you home, but I think I’d
better light your lantern, in case you should
need it.”
He gave her the reins and climbed back into the
wagon-box, where he crouched down and made
a tent of his overcoat. After a dozen trials he
succeeded in lighting the lantern, which he
placed in front of Alexandra, half covering it
with a blanket so that the light would not shine
in her eyes. “Now, wait until I find my box. Yes,
here it is. Good-night, Alexandra. Try not to
worry.” Carl sprang to the ground and ran off
across the fields toward the Linstrum
homestead. “Hoo, hoo-o-o-o!” he called back as
he disappeared over a ridge and dropped into a
sand gully. The wind answered him like an
echo, “Hoo, hoo-o-o-o-o-o!” Alexandra drove off
alone. The rattle of her wagon was lost in the
howling of the wind, but her lantern, held
firmly between her feet, made a moving point of
light along the highway, going deeper and
deeper into the dark country.
1. The tone set by Willa Cather within the first paragraph of the story is
a. humorous.2. Why was the little boy sitting outside the store and crying?
b. angry.
c. somber.
d. terrifying.
a. He was lost.3. Read the following sentence and then select, from the choices below, the word that is closest
b. His kitten had climbed up a pole and couldn’t get down.
c. His parents had accidentally left him behind while they were out shopping.
d. He was afraid of the approaching storm.
in meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew
exactly where she was going and what she was going to do next.
a. angrily4. What had Alexandra learned from her visit to the doctor?
b. nervously
c. purposefully
d. agitatedly
a. She learned that she was ill.5. Carl’s magic lantern is actually a
b. She learned that she was pregnant.
c. She learned that her father had no chance for recovery.
d. She learned that her little brother would need expensive medical treatment.
a. camera.
b. light.
c. slide projector.
d. flashlight.
6. What kind of person is the little boy’s sister? How do you know? Give an example from the
story to support what you say.
7. Describe the atmosphere inside the store. How does it compare to the atmosphere outside?
Has the author arranged this contrast purposefully? Why?
8. How do you interpret the last line, “The rattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the
wind, but her lantern, held firmly between her feet, made a moving point of light along the
highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country”? What do you think Alexandra’s
future will hold?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
No comments:
Post a Comment