The Possibility of Evil

While Miss Strangeworth’s behavior may seem antisocial, it also belies a thwarted loneliness. In her own way, she is dependent on the people around her, not merely to fulfill her material needs but as a means by which to measure herself. Her pride in being the “one Strangeworth in town” would mean little, after all, if there were not all of those non-Strangeworths around her, regarding her with what she assumes to be envy and awe: “But the town was proud of Miss Strangeworth and her roses and her house. They had all grown together” (423). It is significant that (at least in her telling) her house is sometimes mistaken for a museum, in its grandness and cleanliness, and that she finds this a desirable quality in a private home. It shows the hampering degree to which private life and public life are mixed in her mind, and how even when she is drinking tea alone at her table, she imagines herself performing graciousness for the benefit of an imaginary audience.

Miss Strangeworth’s pride in her wealth and her ancestry is so noisy and persistent that it comes to seem like a brand of shame.