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Similes
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Poor Child!:
The narrator, expressing the thoughts of Mrs. Spragg in Chapter 1, frets that Undine isn't making anything of herself in New York and has received no "social benefit" from the city:
[Undine] seemed as yet––poor child!––too small for New York: actually imperceptible to its heedless multitudes, and her mother trembled for the day when her invisibility should be born in on her. [...] [Mrs. Spragg] had noticed lately that Undine was beginning to be nervous, and there was nothing that Undine's parents dreaded so much as her being nervous.
This worry is in response to the fact that the Spraggs moved out of the Midwest explicitly to improve Undine's social prospects: "They had left Apex because Undine was too big for the place." But now Mrs. Spragg is worried that Undine is invisible and small and nervous—to a hyperbolic degree. Note the certainty in Mrs. Spragg's concern: Undine is "actually imperceptible." There is also great hyperbole in her concern for Undine's "nervousness." It is quite the overreaction to "dread nothing so much" as nervousness, a relatively normal feeling to have. "Nervousness" often had a stronger connotation at the time, referring to a more serious mental health problem, but Mrs. Spragg's worry is still excessive. Mrs. Spragg's worry about Undine is a hyperbole that helps depict the mother's character. Her overreaction shows how fully Mrs. Spragg lives vicariously through her daughter.
This overreaction is also an ironic foreshadowing of the rest of the novel. Far from "invisibility," Undine, at every turn in the novel, works to make herself more visible, always wanting to be in the presence of adoring onlookers. Mrs. Spragg, ironically, worries about the precise opposite of what she ought to be worrying about. This irony serves to further characterize Mrs. Spragg as vapid and as an inaccurate judge of her daughter's character.
Related Themes:
