# II: Mrs. Brown’s Failure explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Anthony Trollope.

## What happens

Mrs. Brown, having been sent by her supposedly ill husband to fetch a mustard plaster in the middle of the night, returns to their hotel room only to find him sleeping soundly. Suspecting he feigned illness to test her, she applies the plaster anyway as a form of punishment. However, she mistakenly enters the wrong room (353 instead of 333) and applies the plaster to a sleeping stranger. Panicking, she flees without removing it, then wanders the hotel in search of the night-porter to rectify her error, but fails to find him. Exhausted and cold, she eventually returns to her own room, leaving the stranger to suffer the consequences.

## Themes in this chapter

### Gender Roles and Women's Agency

Mrs. Brown is compelled to obey her husband's request despite her doubts, illustrating the limited agency of women in marriage. Her internal conflict and eventual rebellion (applying the plaster as punishment) highlight the tension between duty and personal judgment.

### Morality and Hypocrisy

Mrs. Brown's decision to leave the stranger to suffer rather than face the embarrassment of confessing her mistake reveals the gap between her sense of duty and her actual behavior, underscoring themes of moral failure and hypocrisy.

## Character check-ins

### Mrs. Brown

The protagonist of the chapter, who undertakes a late-night errand for her husband, mistakenly applies a mustard plaster to a stranger, and struggles with guilt and exhaustion.

### Mr. Brown

Mrs. Brown's husband, who claims to be ill but sleeps soundly, leading her to doubt his sincerity.

## Key lines

> She had been determined all through not to forget that. Then she turned the latch and crept in.

She had made sure to remember the room number, then quietly opened the door and entered.

_Highlights Mrs. Brown's carefulness despite her later mistake._

> Let him have the cataplasm; if not as a remedy, then as a punishment.

She decided to apply the mustard plaster either as a cure or as a form of retribution.

_Shows her shift from duty to a desire for revenge._

> Poor human nature! Had he been an old man, even a middle-aged man, she would not have left him to his unmerited sufferings.

The narrator reflects that if the stranger had been older, Mrs. Brown would not have abandoned him.

_Emphasizes the role of age and propriety in her moral calculus._

## Links

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