A Woman

Howells narrative style frustrates me to no end. I had a great deal of difficulty following the plot-line. However, Silas’ statement to Bartley concerning women intrigued me greatly. His claim that: “Most of us marry little girls who grow up to look like women” (14). On one side, this makes just a little sense. I mean, there are plenty of women who are considered to be adults by society but who instead enjoy acting like teenagers holding grudges. On the flip side though, are the women who aren’t.  There are some teenagers who act five times older than women five times their age. Then, there is Mrs. Lapham. There are definitely times where she seems to exude this air of “woman” that Silas claims she is. Other times though, she seems to act just like that little girl who has grown up to only look like a woman. She inserts herself into every aspect of his business, when she can, but she doesn’t always make the best business decisions.
           

  The Lapham children are very much like their mother as well. Some of the time they act like little girls who know nothing of the world around them, the rest of the time they have this worldly-wise air about them. Penelope loves reading, but was only able to finish grammar school a year later than everyone else her age, as is her sister Irene. Irene, is incredibly beautiful but doesn’t even acknowledge her beauty at first, she doesn’t even seem to know that she is as beautiful as everyone finds her to be.

I think Silas’ statement to Bartley early on is not completely true. In fact, I think that every woman is sometimes the little girl who only looks like a woman and at other times is in fact the woman that she looks like. And I think that Howells proves this in his depiction of the Lapham women.