The Lesson

“The Lesson” is the title of this short story, and it seems ironic in its simplicity and directness. While Miss Moore does intend to teach the children in the story a lesson—in taking them to a fancy toy store in a neighborhood where they are social outsiders—the aim of this lesson is unclear. It moreover seems unclear even to Miss Moore herself, who seems to be looking to the children to interpret the meaning of the excursion and to translate this meaning into decisive action.

The narrator registers Miss Moore’s adult indecisiveness and hypocrisy, and is angrier with her than she is with the rich white denizens of Fifth Avenue, by whom she is merely bemused: “One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy” (89). Rich white people are simply alien to the narrator, and while she is amazed by their level of privilege and entitlement, she also cannot conceive of living in the way that they do. Miss Moore, on the other hand, is a part of the narrator’s community, even while she sets herself apart from it and implicitly tells the narrator that their community is disadvantaged and inferior, something to be transcended and left behind.