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Miss Strangeworth In The Possibility Of Evil By Shirley Jackson

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The short story “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson was published on December 18, 1965. It was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. The protagonist is Miss Strangeworth. She has a multi-faceted personality that is revealed through her actions and doings, what the narrator says about her, and how other characters interact with her. Miss Strangeworth’s multi-faceted personality is revealed through her actions. When Miss Strangeworth was talking to the Crane family, Helen Crane explains how the baby is just slow, but Miss Strangeworth mentions how “All babies are different. Some of them just develop much more quickly than others” (3). This shows how Miss Strangeworth is trying to help and explain how it's completely normal that the baby is developing and she is doing this in a way that is kind and compassionate. However, with her multi-faceted personality, also believes that the Crane baby will grow up …show more content…

The narrator explains how Miss Strangeworth loves it when tourist stop and see and smell her roses. The roses also represent tradition that is passed down generation starting with her grandmother. When the narrator mentions how she has never spent more than a day out of town, shows how much she cares about her home and roses. Another example of the author revealing Miss Strangeworth’s multi-faceted personality is when the author describes how “Miss Strangeworth liked writing her letters” (4). This shows how while she can be quite kind and compassionate, she also finds fun of sending letters to everyone in the town of their “imperfect” lives. Although the narrator describes Miss Strangeworth’s multi-faceted personality, it is also revealed through how she interacts with other

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She acts in a caring manner to everyone’s face, but when she is alone, she becomes a heartless woman, determined to reveal what she knows. Miss Strangeworth is the one causing the distress in her community, yet she acts oblivious as to what is bothering everyone. She shows her extreme deceitfulness by attempting to ease Helen Crane’s concern about her child by saying “Nonsense… some of them develop… more quickly than others” (Jackson, 1941, p. 167). This is deceitful because she is aware that there is something different about the child and instead of voicing that, she consoles the mother, only to subsequently shatter her in an anonymous letter. Additionally, Miss Strangeworth cleverly utilizes the most common paper and envelops all townspeople use for her letters.

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On June 26 of 1948, Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, made its first appearance in an issue of The New Yorker. Jackson was surprised by the substantial amount of backlash she received in regards to her harrowing writing that manifests the rituals of human sacrifice. The story takes place in a small town on an ordinary summer morning. The villagers assemble at the town square for the annual lottery, where one of the villagers will be randomly chosen to sacrifice themselves to the gods of a fertility religion. The villagers believe that a human sacrifice must take place in June to ensure that a bountiful harvest was ahead of them.

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Is Ms. Strangeworth a victim OR villain In the short story “The Possibility of Evil” written by Shirley Jackson, the protagonist Ms. Strangeworth is a villain because she isn’t what everyone’s aspect of her is, she is very deceptive, and the letters she sends are the very cause of the evil she’s trying to stop. Ms. Strangeworth is a seventy-one-year-old lady who lives in a little town, which she thinks is her own. She always feels the need to know everything, about everyone. Even though, no one knows who she really is.

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The possibility of harmful woman “Karma has no menu you got served what you deserve”. This is what i would say Mrs. Strangeworth and Emily Grierson got and they deserved it. Everyone knew both of them but they both were not just not talkative they did their business and went back home. Adela Strangeworth and Emily Grierson sharply are compared in their stories because they basically do the same thing by hurting other people. Mrs. Strangeworth is hurting people because Mrs. Strangeworth hurt the people that she sent the letters to like they said “Didn’t you ever see an idiot child before”.

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This quote also gives you an idea of how Miss Strangeworth enjoyed gossip or talking about someone behind their back. Miss Strangeworth was writing letters to “The town where she lived had to be kept clean and sweet” it's ironic how she could say this when in reality she was doing all the evil of the town. The way Miss

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Family can describe a lot about Miss Strangeworth. The Strangeworth family has had a big impact on the town and Adela. Miss Strangeworth’s grandfather built the first house on Pleasant Street, while her grandmother and mother planted and tended roses for generations. This generational growth and love of roses spread to Adela and has influenced her life. Another way Miss Strangeworth can be described is through her relationships.

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Lizabeth felt confused and angry with the beauty of the flowers because they were a beacon of beauty and hope. Miss Lottie’s ugly house and mean demeanor are a symbol of the ugliness of poverty and the world Lizabeth lived in. Subconsciously, Lizabeth did not want the flowers there because they showed joy and happiness in the mean old woman and Lizabeth’s world of hardship and poverty. Without the flowers, without knowing about the world she was missing out on, Lizabeth felt that she could be happier. So, she sought to destroy that beauty so that she could go back to her own life of innocence.

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Miss Strangeworth loves her little town and believes that her roses and her

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Mr. Norton, as the narrator drives him around the campus, tells the narrator about his daughter, saying: “‘She was a being more rare, more beautiful, purer, more perfect and more delicate than the wildest dream of a poet. I could never believe her to be my own flesh and blood. [...] I found it difficult to believe her my own . . .’” (34). The romantic diction and detail Norton uses remind the narrator of her purity and beauty in a fashion that sits on the border between daughter and love-interest.

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Miss Brill is lonely, has a completely messed up mind, and tries to hide her true self by trying to live other people’s lives. Miss Brill views each person at the garden differently. The people who are mostly like her are the ones she judges the most, “Miss Brill had often noticed-there was something funny about nearly all of them. They were odd, silent, nearly all old, and from the way they stared they looked as though they’d just come from dark little rooms or even-even cupboards!” (Mansfield 185).

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Once her family moves to Toronto after the war to settle down, she was approximately eight years old. At that time, circumstances changes for Elaine who feels unhappy, helpless and yearns for female friends as she has no female friends yet (Vijay Singh Mehta 179). As Pavla Chudějová (34) has suggested in “Exploring the women’s experience”, Elaine become conscious of the society’s gender restrictions for the first time when she starts going to school. At school, Elaine follows the rules where she has to wear skirts to school and “the girls hold hands; the boys don’t” (CE 50-51), as well as to enter the building through the “grandiose entranceways with carvings around them and ornate insets above the doors, inscribed in curvy, solemn lettering: GIRLS and BOYS.” (CE 51) which confuses her and

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In his short story, “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner intends to convey a message to his audience about the unwillingness in human nature to accept change and more specifically the secretive tendencies of aristocrats in the South during the early 20th century. In order to do this, Faulkner sets up a story in which he isolates and old aristocratic woman, Miss Emily, from her fellow townspeople and proceeds to juxtapose her lifestyle with theirs. In doing this he demonstrates her stubborn refusal to change along with the town, but also Among several literary devices the author employs to achieve this contrast, Faulkner sets up his narrator as a seemingly reliable, impartial and knowledgeable member of the community in which Miss Emily lives by using a first person plural, partially omniscient point of view. The narrator is present for all of the scenes that take place in the story, but does not play any role in the events, and speaks for the town as a whole. Faulkner immediately sets up his narrator as a member of the community in the first line of the story, saying that when Miss Emily died “our whole town went to her funeral.”

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In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson, a prominent member of her small town, dies alone in her home. Upon her death, curious townsfolk entered her home trying to learn her secrets. It was thought she was crazy. Emily Grierson was not crazy; she was isolated by her father, which led to her odd social tendencies and unique interactions with others. A Rose for Emily is a short story based in a small town.

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The world she lived in was so ugly and plain and she choose to “create beauty in the midst of [all that] ugliness" (62). This helps to create the theme because even though Miss Lottie had so little she still worked hard to care for the beautiful marigolds. In “Marigolds” the author uses diction, symbolism and point of view, to develop the theme that people can create beauty even in the poorest of situations. Through diction, Collier is able to show the reader the contrast between the beauty of the marigolds compared to the run-down town the story is set in.

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“Miss Strangeworth is a familiar fixture in a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Little do the townsfolk suspect, though, that the dignified old woman leads another, secret life…”. A secret life can be evil or good, in Miss Strangeworth’s case it is suitable, but do others appreciate this secret life. In The Possibility of Evil Shirley Jackson illustrates inner thinking, revealing action, and symbolism to show how Miss Strangeworth tends the people like her roses, but truly state's them evil.

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