Alice Hindman By Sherwood Anderson

Alice Hindman, a woman of 27, living in Winesburg, Ohio with her mother and stepfather finally unclamped her “heavy iron lid.” All of the pain and misery Alice had been through, and also contained for many years, finally came out in an appalling expression that threw her right back under the lid that laid heavy over her for so many dreadful years. The author, Sherwood Anderson, takes us back 11 years into the past of Ms. Alice Hindman and enlightens us of the past events and gives us an opportunity to explore the “hidden depths of her thoughts and feelings” in this character he’s created. My analysis is; Alice Hindman let the decisions of Ned Currie’s (her 16 year old romance) life determine and control the outcome of her own. As she grew older her natural instinct told her that he would never come back but she pushed those thoughts away and kept on hoping that one day he would return. This lead to loneliness, depression and isolation from the people around her.

She locked away those thoughts which haunted her day and night, then, slowly, loneliness took over and she drew from no one the love she deserved. She pushed anyone and everyone away because she honestly knew what they were all thinking but didn’t want to hear it. What she was doing to herself only made her more miserable and depressed. In the book Anderson tells us that she would only cry when no one was around her or even looking, “Sometimes when her employer had gone out and she was alone in the store she put her head on the counter and wept. “Oh, Ned, I am waiting,” she whispered over and over, and all the time the creeping fear that he would never come back grew stronger within