Character Analysis Miss Strangeworth

Miss Strangeworth Character Essay: 71 Year Old Spinster

Pleasant Street seemed to be Miss Strangeworth’s play house because she thought she owned the place, at least Strangeworth thought so. Meanwhile on the inside she is evil and thinks she is at the top of the town’s hierarchy. In fact she has a god complex. Miss Adela Strangeworth, a character in the short story “A Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, is a 71 year old who is thought by the townsfolk as a sweet puny lady but she is nothing but that. Because of the way Miss Strangeworth is, all horrible actions must have a consequence and she finds out the truth of that statement when her vintage old self turns into the evil lady that no one has seen before, and she realizes that she wants more control than she has, basically a god complex. Miss Strangeworth has a vintage lifestyle, she takes everything from her grandparent’s and parent’s house and keeps it all. Family reputation is supposed to be a for the Strangeworth

Although she doesn’t see that she is being evil. Strangeworth is a wonderful lady that wants to warn every one of the dangers that are happening around people, but what she doesn’t understand is that she is the evil that is all around this wonderful. Miss Strangeworth thins that she runs the town and she needs to be the protector just because her “grandfather built the first house on Pleasant Street” (Jackson, 1941, p. 163). Miss Strangeworth had the idea that she was at the top of a hierarchy and that she had to make sure that the town was safe and clean from the evil that was actually coming from her. She had written letters to people whom she thought she was trying to protect but the people that got the letters read them and took them differently and once they had discovered who the anonymous writer was they retaliated. At that moment Miss Adela Strangeworth knew that her reputation had started to