GENERAL. A technically well-wrought piece of realism, both in its
adherence to the point of view, and in the rationalization of events.
When it was first published, it bore the (editorial) sub-title, “A
Story of Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.” “I assure you,” says Mr.
Buzzell, “that woman’s inhumanity to woman never entered my mind in
writing this story. If readers find a moral in any of my stories they
can have it without question; I didn’t put it there and I’ll lay no
claim to it.” What does this statement indicate with regard to Mr.
Buzzell’s ideas of art?
STARTING POINT, AND DEVELOPMENT. “The beginning of a poem, I assume
from my own experience, is a mood, a state of feeling, in the poet. He
is stirred by something and sets to work to express it. Well, then,
this is the way a story begins in me. As a result, the first tangible
thing I have is the atmosphere.... I remembered that there were in
Almont (Romeo) a number of ‘grand’ houses, standing far back from the
road, and occupied by lonely women. I saw these houses buried in trees
in summer, smelled the wild honeysuckle, watched the wrens flying in
and out of the old teapots hung in the vines of the dining-room porch.
In the winter I saw these houses buried in snow.”
Mr. Buzzell then wondered why these women had never married and
concluded that all the young men of their generation had gone to the
city to work.
“The next step was to select a definite setting. For this I took an old
house which I knew thoroughly--my Grandfather’s house--the Orin Crisman
house in ‘Addie Erb and her Girl Lottie.’ In this house I placed a
woman not quite forty years old and I named her Abbie Snover. Then I
gave her Old Chris as a companion. I had reason for placing Old Chris
in the house with Abbie aside from an actual plot requirement. I placed
him there because I wanted to impress my reader in the beginning with
the loneliness of Abbie Snover’s environment rather than with her utter
lack of companionship. The actual beginning of plot, I think, was
when I decided to take Old Chris away from her at the end, so as to
accentuate her loneliness. In searching for a cause that would remove
the old man I decided to resort to gossip. The next question was how
to start the gossip. It seemed most natural to have the children begin
it. But how start the children? Abbie Snover and Old Chris had lived
alone in that big house for fifteen years without any gossip; something
would have to happen to start it. So I decided that Abbie would have
to antagonize the children in some way. To be able to antagonize the
children would necessarily require some kind of personal contact with
them, so I had the children form a habit of going to her door after
cookies. Then I invented the orange tree to give Abbie a reason for
driving them out of the house.
“The rest was simple until I sent Abbie out of the big house on her
journey to Mile Corners. It wasn’t until I reached this point that I
decided to let the reader know that Old Chris was dead; that Abbie’s
journey through the snow was to be a fruitless one; that fate had
robbed her of her victory. If I had been concerned with writing just
a short story I would have given my readers the desired surprise by
withholding Old Chris’s death from them until Abbie found it out. What
I wanted to do was to make them feel Abbie’s tragedy every step of the
way along that country road.”
The difference between the realist’s and the romanticist’s methods may
be seen by a consideration of what a romanticist would have done at any
stage of the action. For example, Abbie’s kindness to the children
would have been the cause, not of her undoing, but rather (under other
circumstances) of her rehabilitation. The business of the orange tree,
again, might have been used to turn the youngsters against her, as Mr.
Buzzell has used it, but in this event then the sender of the orange
tree would have arrived on the scene and by his masterfulness properly
subdued the gossip.... Again, the romanticist would have saved the
surprise, undoubtedly, for the reader as well as for Abbie. He would
have desired to create the shock, and leave reflection to each reader.
Try telling the story from Mrs. Perry’s angle.
What is the struggle? Is it active or passive, or does it pass from one
to the other condition? Are the stages of the plot well-marked, from
initial impulse to climax of action?
What is the atmosphere? What details of setting, character, and action
harmonize in the totality of effect? What notes of contrast but serve
to intensify the prevailing mood?
Has the author attempted to enlist the reader’s sympathy for Abbie? Is
his work finer and truer, as a result?