Close Reading Exercise 1<\/p>\n
\u201cAs she neared that home, within two minutes walk of it, her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily, she saw a little Italian boy, with his humble show-box, – white mouse, or some such thing. The setting sun cast its red glow on his face, otherwise the olive complexion would have been very pale; and the glittering tear-drops hung on the long curled eyelashes. With his soft voice, and pleading looks, he uttered, in his pretty broken English, the words: \u2018Hungry! so hungry.\u2019 \u201d (229) <\/p>\n
I selected this passage in chapter 20 because it seems remarkably out of place. Occurring just after Mary flees Mrs. Wilson\u2019s house, this passage displays her permanent caring nature to those who are suffering. Even though she is distressed and unwell, she stops to help this young Italian boy. His description of being \u201cvery pale\u201d implies that he is sick and starved of daylight. This tragic minute character represents the very bottom of Victorian England\u2019s poor. He is the neglected, immigrant beggar, who is alone and starving. This immigrant child is begging for food only for himself, not to help another family member. \u201c…he looked up and smiled while he kissed her hand, and then poured forth his thanks, and shared her bounty with his little pet companion,\u201d (229). This small characterization shows that the most tragic things can happen to children. We can assume he is alone because his parents are dead or working too hard to take care of him, and the fact that he has a mouse companion shows that he will perform for food. Gaskell is showing that while her characters are in desperate situations, they are slightly better off than those who are homeless and starving. This passage also asks for sympathy from Gaskell\u2019s middle-class audience to always take pity on those who have less. <\/p>\n
Mary embodies this message as she goes out of her way to help the little boy. She never asks for anything in return and is rewarded with a kiss on her hand and a warm smile. While this paragraph is not hugely important in the story, it helps humanize Mary and show her as a generous woman even when she is at her lowest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Close Reading Exercise 1 \u201cAs she neared that home, within two minutes walk of it, her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily, she saw a little Italian boy, with his humble show-box, – white mouse, or some such thing. The setting sun cast its red glow on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-89019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}