“Quiet” is a key word in The Shadow as a metaphor of Nora’s emotional and imaginative starvation. Befriending Michael Dara, a mercenary, unimaginative young herd, Nora anticipates no change. Her misery is not the consequence of her frustration in marriage merely. She is obsessed by the fact that her youth will fade in old age and regards Mary Brien and Peggy Cavanagh as symbols of the time that awaits her:
… look on Peggy Cavanagh, who had the lightest hand at milking a cow that wouldn’t be easy, or turning a cake, and there she is now walking round on the roads, or sitting in a dirty old house, with no teeth in her mouth, and no sense, and no more hair you’d see on a bit of hill and they after burning the furze from it. (SG.90-1)
She decides eventually to forsake her life with Dan and go off with the Tramp. Although aware of the drawbacks of roaming in the land, she chooses to follow him: “You’ve a fine bit of talk stranger, and it’s with
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He asks her, “Was it a hard woman to please you were when you took himself for your man?” (SG.90). Here, Nora replies him to show that she knows the ways of the world: “What way would I live and I an old woman if I didn’t marry a man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills?” (SG.90). The present argument tries to establish Nora as a strong-willed woman and with deep moral values. She was keen to become a mother but failed; still she did not leave her husband in his old age as she understood the responsibilities of a wife. She decided to go away with the tramp only when Dan compelled her to do so because of his own doubts. She understood the value of family-system and the safety a woman feels in her house, but was unhappy because she could not have any kids with Dan. 42 Nora, also rejects Michael and