Short Fiction · Chapter
Veriton Villa explained
Penelope Cook, a Boston schoolteacher engaged for fifteen years to Cyrus, travels to Texas to teach at a private school.
What happens
Penelope Cook, a Boston schoolteacher engaged for fifteen years to Cyrus, travels to Texas to teach at a private school. She stays with the aristocratic DeVere family, where she encounters a chaotic household: Mrs. DeVere chews tobacco and keeps a mule in the house, and her son Aubrey DeVere, a towering, barefoot, violent man, kills a servant for spilling gravy. Despite his brutality and crude manners, Penelope finds him educated and complex. He later confronts her about a wrong piano note, insults her Northern culture, and suddenly declares his love for her.
Themes in this chapter
Social Class and Wealth
The DeVere family's aristocratic pretensions contrast with their crude behavior and decaying mansion, highlighting the gap between social status and reality.
Deception and Appearance vs. Reality
The DeVere home appears grand but is filled with neglect and chaos, and Aubrey's noble appearance masks his violent nature.
Humor and Irony
The story satirizes Southern stereotypes and Northern condescension, with absurd details like a mule in the house and a chicken thrown in the narrator's face.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
Penelope Cook, the first-person narrator, a Boston schoolteacher engaged to Cyrus, who travels to Texas to teach.
- Aubrey DeVere
The son of the DeVere family, a tall, barefoot, violent man who kills a servant and later declares love for Penelope.
- Mrs. DeVere
The matriarch of the DeVere family, who chews tobacco and keeps a mule in the house.
- Pete
A colored servant who drives Penelope to Vereton and is later killed by Aubrey DeVere for spilling gravy.
Key passages
“The poor, softhearted, grateful man, whose dark skin covered a heart as pure as snow, still sobbed at the remembrance of the martyred Lincoln, and I made him lay his head upon my breast, where he sobbed unrestrainedly as I drove the mules myself the rest of the way to Vereton.”
The narrator comforts Pete, a black driver, as he weeps over Abraham Lincoln's death, allowing him to rest his head on her while she takes the reins.
Highlights the narrator's paternalistic attitude and the sentimental view of Lincoln among freed slaves.
“He hurled the head of the chicken into my face with a terrible oath, and then dropped on one knee and bowed his kingly head. 'Pardon me, Miss Cook,' he said, 'I do not mean to offend you. Twenty-eight years ago today, my father was killed at the battle of Shiloh.'”
Aubrey DeVere throws a chicken head at the narrator, then immediately apologizes, citing his father's death at Shiloh as an excuse.
Illustrates Aubrey's volatile temper and the Southern obsession with the Civil War and family honor.
“With a yell like a tiger, Aubrey DeVere sprang to his feet and hurled his carving knife to the handle in Pete’s breast.”
Aubrey DeVere kills the servant Pete by throwing a knife into his chest after Pete spills gravy.
Shows the extreme violence and lack of restraint in Aubrey's character, and the devaluation of black lives in the household.