logo

33 pages 1 hour read

The Old Nurse's Story

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1852

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Character Analysis

Hester, “The Old Nurse”

Hester is the “Old Nurse” who narrates the story. In the frame of the narrative, she addresses the children in her care: the latest generation of children she has cared for over a lifetime of service in the same family. Telling a personal anecdote from her younger days in the first-person, she is the story’s heroine who saves her young orphan charge from the draw of malevolent ghosts and also from the danger of being subsumed into a decaying noble family. When Hester admits in the opening sentences of her story that she comes from a poor, northern village, she creates authority for herself as a narrator. Her work ethic, her courage, her savvy problem-solving skills, and her unfailing devotion to her young charge all contribute to a sense of Hester’s reliability as a narrator and also to her moral authority as a character. Her, youth, commonsense, and poor countrywoman’s lack of sophistication combine to create a sense of veracity and naivety.

Rosamond Esthwaite

The child Rosamond’s character is a device to set the events of the ghost story in motion. She ages from an infant to a small child of perhaps four or five over the course of the main tale, and the frame