The Old Beggar-Woman explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished

  The boy's failure to help the beggar-woman after initially showing kindness implies a moral lesson about the consequences of neglecting one's duty to assist those in need.

Characters to notice

• the boy

  A friendly but negligent boy who invites the beggar-woman to warm herself but fails to extinguish her burning rags.

• Unknown

  The old beggar-woman, who is not named and whose rags catch fire.

Key passages

• “The boy said kindly to the poor old woman as she was standing shivering thus by the door, “Come, old mother, and warm yourself.””

  The boy invited the shivering old woman to come inside and warm herself by the fire.

  The boy's initial kindness is highlighted, setting up the moral dilemma.

• “The boy stood and saw that, but he ought to have put the flames out. Is it not true that he ought to have put them out? And if he had not any water, then should he have wept all the water in his body out of his eyes, and that would have supplied two pretty streams with which to extinguish them.”

  The boy saw the flames but did nothing; the narrator insists he should have put out the fire, even if it meant crying enough tears to douse it.

  The narrator's rhetorical question emphasizes the boy's moral failure and the absurdity of his inaction.