A Woman of Yesterday — Themes and Context

The Garret Scene and Its Symbolic Weight

The opening chapter uses the garret as a charged space. Anna moves "swiftly and softly" with a candle, and her father’s question—"What were you doing, Anna?"—interrupts her. Her hesitation and the candle’s wavering shadow suggest concealment. The narrator emphasizes her physical awkwardness: "her shoulders were meagre and angular; her arms and body had neither the grace of a girl nor the curves of a woman." This description, combined with the steep stairs and low roof, creates a sense of restriction. The scene foreshadows a pattern of surveillance and self-suppression. Notably, the father’s voice is disembodied, coming from darkness below, reinforcing his authority. The excerpt does not reveal what Anna was hiding, leaving the reader to infer a private act that defies paternal expectation.

John Gregory’s Prophetic Admonition

In a later excerpt, Anna, now married and hosting guests in Fulham, encounters John Gregory, a figure from her past. He delivers a stark message: "No man could paint that picture from you now; you had the vision then. You have lost it now." He accuses her of exchanging "great purposes" for "small ones." The language is biblical in cadence, echoing the novel’s epigraph from Emily Dickinson about bearing "our share of night" and "our blank in bliss." Anna’s reaction is conflicted: she feels "burning indignation" yet also contrition. The narrative notes that by local standards she is "blameless and approved," but Gregory’s words revive her father’s stricter moral framework. This scene pivots on an internal debate between social conformity and spiritual integrity, a tension that likely drives the plot.

The Voice of the Past and Its Persistence

After Gregory leaves, Anna retreats to her room to replay his challenge. The narrator reports her thoughts: she recognizes that she has been learning to love "the world and the things of the world," quoting 1 John 2:15-16. The passage lists "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" as temptations she had thought to put away in girlhood. Yet she now questions where "the absolute right—the truth" lies. The excerpt reveals a pattern of self-examination: Anna measures herself against early convictions and finds herself wanting. The phrase "the voice of her past spoke clearly through the voice of John Gregory" suggests that Gregory acts as a catalyst, not an originator, of her crisis. The reader is left to wonder whether she will yield to this influence or resist it.

Poetic Framing and Thematic Echoes

The novel uses epigraphs to frame its chapters. Book I opens with lines from John Henry Newman: "I rise and raise my claspèd hands to Thee! Henceforth, the darkness hath no part in me." This contrasts with the Dickinson poem on the title page, which speaks of "our blank in bliss to fill, our blank in scorning." Later, Chapter XXI begins with a longer passage from Stephen Phillips, voicing a woman’s thwarted maternal longing: "I, with so much to give, perish of thrift!" These poetic selections mirror Anna’s internal conflicts—between devotion and doubt, fulfillment and emptiness. The Phillips excerpt, with its imagery of "little feet" and "the quickening splash of rain," introduces a theme of unfulfilled potential that may resonate with Anna’s story, though the excerpts do not confirm her circumstances.

Readers should attend to how the novel’s epigraphs and internal monologues interact. The excerpts suggest a narrative that prioritizes psychological and moral struggle over external action. The setting shifts from rural Vermont to Fulham, but the core tension remains Anna’s negotiation between inherited piety and personal ambition. Gregory’s intervention, though brief, may prove pivotal. As you read, note how the narrator’s descriptions of Anna’s body and environment reinforce her inner state, and whether the poetic interludes comment directly on her choices.

Anna Mallison’s struggle—that pull between a calling and a worldly ache—reminds me of another restless soul. In A Woman of Yesterday, her quiet anguish felt like a hand reaching through time. I found the same trembling pulse in The Antelope Boy; or, Smoholler the Medicine Man A Tale of Indian Adventure and Mystery — A Closer Reading, where faith and wandering also wrestle in the dusk. Strange, how far apart they sit on my shelf.