V explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Solitude and Self-Discovery

  The narrator chooses isolation and independence over the safety of her godmother's home, reflecting a journey toward self-definition.

• Deception and Self-Deception

  The narrator admits to being 'double-minded' and acknowledges her own pride and stubbornness, while also recognizing the self-deception in others' complaints about Providence.

• Mortality and Memory

  The narrator reflects on her father's death, the funeral, and the choice to remember the living face rather than the dead, exploring how memory shapes grief.

Characters to notice

• Unknown (Narrator)

  Reflects on her father's death, her stubbornness, and her decision to reject Miss Fenne's offer, choosing independence.

• Miss Fenne

  The narrator's godmother who visits after the father's death, offers a home, and later writes a letter arranging for the narrator to live with Mrs. Bowater.

• Pollie

  The narrator's servant who is asked to keep Miss Fenne away and later escorts the narrator to Mrs. Bowater's.

• Mrs. Bowater

  A respectable servant of Mr. Ambrose Pellew who agrees to board the narrator for thirty shillings a week.

• Mr. Ambrose Pellew

  An old clergyman friend of Miss Fenne who recommends Mrs. Bowater as a suitable home for the narrator.

• Mr. Wagginhorne

  The old painter who painted the narrator's portrait and warned her against being a cynic.

Key passages

• “Am I sorry that almost beside myself with this new affliction, and bewildered and frightened by the incessant coming and going of strangers in the house, I refused to be carried down to bid that unanswering face goodbye? No, I have no regret on that score.”

  I do not regret refusing to see my father's dead body, despite my grief and confusion.

  The narrator justifies her choice to avoid the funeral, emphasizing her preference for memories of the living.

• “If phantoms of memory have any reality—and it is wiser, I think, to remember the face of the living rather than the stony peace of the dead—he has not forgotten his only daughter.”

  I believe it is better to remember people as they were alive, and I trust my father still remembers me.

  The narrator reflects on the nature of memory and its connection to the dead.

• “Double-minded creature I was and ever shall be; now puffed up with arrogance at the differences between myself and gross, common-sized humanity; now stupidly sensitive to the pangs to which by reason of these differences I have to submit.”

  I am contradictory: proud of my uniqueness yet painfully aware of the suffering it causes me.

  The narrator acknowledges her own internal conflict about her dwarfism.

• “But I must beware. Partly from fatigue and partly from dislike of the version of Miss M. that stared out of his picture at me, I had begun, I remember, to be a little fretful when old Mr. Wagginhorne was painting my portrait.”

  I was tired and unhappy with the portrait, which made me irritable during the sitting.

  The narrator recalls her dissatisfaction with Mr. Wagginhorne's painting of her.

• “That is why I am trying as fast as I can to put down my experiences in black and white before the black predominates.”

  I am writing my story quickly before despair overtakes me.

  The narrator explains her motivation for writing the memoir.

• “But though possibly inquiry was made after the small creature that had been left behind, I stubbornly shut myself away in my room under the roof, listening in a fever of apprehension to every sinister movement in the house beneath.”

  I isolated myself in my attic room, anxiously listening to the sounds of the house after my father's death.

  The narrator describes her withdrawal and fear during the period of mourning.