| | 1 | Author: | Thompson, Charles Miner | Add | | | Title: | Miss Wilkins: An Idealist in Masquerade  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | ON any walk or drive in rural New England, in the springtime,
one is sure to find on some abandoned farm an unkempt old apple
orchard. The gnarled and twisted trees uphold on their rotting
trunks more dead than living branches, and bear, if at all, only a
few scattered and ghostly blossoms. And in that group of pitiable
trees, dying there in the warm sunshine, there will be nothing to
suggest life and joyousness except the golden woodpeckers with
their flickering flight, and the bluebirds with their musical, low
warble. If, indeed, the orchard stands upon a sloping hillside,
one can glance away and see in the valley prosperous villages,
smiling, fertile farms, and other orchards, well kept, healthy, and
looking from their wealth of blossoms like white clouds stranded.
But if one be of a pessimistic complexion, he can shut his eyes to
that pleasanter prospect, gaze only at the old orchard, and think
of it as typical of New England. So, in fact, in its limited
degree, it is; but almost to the ultimate degree of exactness is it
typical of the New England village which Miss Wilkins delights to
draw. In place of the worn-out trees there are gnarled and twisted
men and women. There are, of course, the young people, with their
brief, happy time of courtship, to take the place in it of the
birds; but her village, like the orchard, is a desolate and
saddening spectacle. In that community of Pembroke which she has
celebrated, what twisted characters! Barney Thayer refuses to
marry Charlotte Barnard because, as the result of a quarrel with
her father, Cephas, he hastily vows never to enter the house again.
Not the anger of his mother, not the suffering of his sweetheart,
not even jealousy of handsome Thomas Paine,—who, seeing her
forsaken, makes bold to woo,—has power to move him from his
stubborn stand. The selfish pride of Cephas is so great that he
lets his daughter's happiness be destroyed rather than admit
himself wrong, or take the smallest step to reconcile him with her
lover. Barney Thayer inherits his self-will from his mother, a
woman of indomitable will, who rules her family with an iron hand.
When she hears that Barney has refused to marry Charlotte, she
forbids him ever to step within her door again; when her youngest
son, Ephraim, who has a weak heart and whom the doctor has
forbidden her to whip, disobeys her, she whips him, and he dies;
when her daughter Rebecca falls in love with William Berry, she
forbids the marriage for a trivial cause, and when Rebecca, denied
the legitimate path of love, steps aside into the other way, she
disowns and casts her out. She loses all her children rather than
yield to them the least shadow of her authority. Charlotte
Barnard's cousin, Sylvia Crane, leaving her own house on the Sunday
night of Charlotte's quarrel with Barney to comfort her, misses the
weekly call of Richard Alger, her lover. His nature, compounded of
habit and pride and stubbornness, does not let him come again, once
his pride has been offended, once his habit has been broken. Silas
Berry—William Berry's father—is determined to sell his cherries
for an exorbitant price. When the young people refuse to buy, he
tells William and Rose, his children, to invite them to a picnic
and cherry-picking. When the guests are departing, he waylays them
to demand payment for his cherries. He outrages common decency
with his mean trickery, but he has his way. Nearly every character
in the book is a monstrous example of stubbornness,—of that will
which enforces its ends, however trivial, even to self-destruction.
The people are not normal; they are hardly sane. Such is
Miss Wilkins's village, and it is a true picture; but it wholly
represents New England life no more than the dying apple orchard
wholly represents New England scenery. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
|
