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Miss Strangeworth In The Possibility Of Evil By Shirley Jackson

633 Words3 Pages

The short story “The Possibility of Evil”, by Shirley Jackson has a main character named Miss Strangeworth. Miss Strangeworth is a 71-year-old woman who lives in a small town. She possesses three main characteristics: pride, perfection and wickedness. Miss Strangeworth shows a great deal of pride in the story. She has pride in many different things. The first is she has great pride in how her father built the town and how she’s been there the whole time. “My family has lived here for better than a hundred years” (Jackson.) This is an example of how Miss Strangeworth lives in pride because her family developed the town. Miss Strangeworth also has pride about how long she has been around the town. Whenever she gets the chance, she makes sure others know her story. She believes that the town should revolve around her because technically her family started the town, which is how much pride she has. Finally, Miss Strangeworth has a lot of pride towards her roses. Miss Strangeworth won’t let anyone pick her lines and lines of red, pink and white roses expect her. This shows the amount of …show more content…

One-way Miss Strangeworth shows perfection is how neat and organized her house is. “Every window sparkled, every curtain hung stiff and straight” (Jackson.) This shows how much of a perfectionist she is, because she likes to keep her house organized and clean. Another way that she is a perfectionist is with her roses. She keeps them along a narrow lawn, and makes sure that no one touches them. Miss Strangeworth is such a perfectionist because if anyone other than her touches her roses she gets very angry. Miss Strangeworth is so obsessed with making her image perfect. She writes letters judging people to make other people look bad. By making other people look bad, it makes her look better. This way Miss Strangeworth can keep her image perfect. Overall, there are many different ways that Miss Strangeworth shows

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