How Beautiful with Shoes by Wilbur Daniel Steele
"How Beautiful with Shoes" by Wilbur Daniel Steele is a poignant narrative set in early 20th century rural Virginia, focusing on a young woman named Amarantha, who prefers to be called Mary or Mare. The story intertwines themes of love, danger, and the power of poetic expression. At the heart of the tale is Mare's encounter with a seemingly charming young man who turns out to be Humble Jewett, an escaped killer. As the narrative unfolds, Mare's initial romantic innocence collides with the terrifying reality of her situation when Jewett, quoting classic poetry, lures her into the woods.
The poem's influence permeates Mare's experiences, compelling her to reflect on the intersection of language and emotion, particularly in the aftermath of her abduction. This exploration highlights her struggle to reconcile her terrifying ordeal with the beauty and allure of the poetic language used by Jewett. The story culminates in a dramatic confrontation that not only tests Mare's resilience but also deepens her understanding of her own identity and emotions. Ultimately, "How Beautiful with Shoes" emphasizes the complex relationship between artistry and reality, as Mare grapples with the haunting memories of her experience and the evocative power of words.
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How Beautiful with Shoes by Wilbur Daniel Steele
First published: 1932
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The early twentieth century
Locale: Rural Virginia
Principal Characters:
Amarantha Doggett , a teenage farm girlMrs. Doggett , her deaf motherRuby Herter , her betrothed, a farmerHumble Jewett , an escaped killer
The Story
On a remote farm in rural Virginia in the early part of the 1900's, an almost totally deaf Mrs. Doggett calls to her daughter, Amarantha, who prefers being called Mary or Mare. It is spring, and Amarantha has finished some of the more laborious farm chores, milking the cows and feeding the pigs, when her fiancé, Ruby Herter, stops by with his horse and carriage to remind the young girl that she belongs to him. Just as Ruby Herter kisses his betrothed, they hear a car driving up to the farm with the news that someone who is believed to be a killer has escaped from Dayville Asylum.
Ruby Herter immediately joins the other young men in their search for the crazed murderer, as Mare secures the team of horses and runs down the road to tell Ruby's father. Shortly after she returns to the farm, her mother calls her to come and meet a young man who has stopped to see her, and Mare is puzzled by his presence. On meeting her, the young man says, "That's poetry . . . Amarantha in Carolina! That makes me happy!" Mare immediately realizes that this seemingly harmless looking young man is the escaped killer but does not want to alarm her deaf mother. She lures the young man away from her mother and then bolts into the forest. The young man easily catches up to her and begins wooing her in the words of the seventeenth century English Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace, quoting from one of Lovelace's famous love lyrics, "To Amarantha, That She Would Dishevel Her Haire." He not only identifies Mare as the Amarantha from Lovelace's poem but also literalizes the words of the poem: "Do you know how beautiful you are, Amarantha, 'Amarantha sweet and fair?'" He suddenly reaches behind her and begins to unravel the meshes of her hairbraid, saying, "Braid no more that shining hair!" At that instant, Ruby and the other searchers capture him, tie him up, and take him to be locked up at the local courthouse. A neighbor tells Mare that the murderer's name is Humble Jewett, and that he was a teacher in an academy school. Five years earlier, he attacked the headmaster with an axe and tried to strangle a girl.
A few hours later, Ruby returns to tell Mare that Humble Jewett has escaped from jail, killed a man, and set the courthouse on fire. As soon as Ruby leaves, Humble Jewett quickly and calmly abducts a terrified Mare into the woods near her home. As they move deeper into the forest, he continues to quote both the Lovelace poem and erotic lines from the Old Testament's "Song of Solomon," while running his fingers through her hair. They come on the empty cabin of old Mr. Wyker, and Humble breaks down the door and takes her inside. Humble notices Mare's new shoes and recalls the lines from the seventh chapter of the "Song of Solomon": "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!" Humble articulates quite clearly, during his meandering monologue, the exact nature of the tragedies of his life: "I've never lived . . . I knew I'd never loved, Beloved." As he catches his foot in a crack in the wooden floor and falls to his knees, he also admits that he never knew he had never lived. After Mare fails in a second attempt to escape from Humble's embraces, he calls her Blossom, and Mare angrily reminds him that her name is Mary. Hearing that name transforms the mad Humble into the persona of Jesus Christ on the cross addressing his mother Mary.
Finally Humble falls asleep. Old Wyker eventually returns to his cabin, sizes up the situation, and shoots Humble as Mare nimbly escapes from the madman's arms. Although Mare returns home shaken and exhausted, she cannot get the resonating lines from the "Song of Solomon" and Lovelace's poems out of her head; they obsess her to such an extent that she tells everyone, even her mother and her fiancé, to go away and leave her alone. She begins to perceive dimly the connection between words and experience, and the more poetically compelling the verbal images, the more vivid the experience: "Last night Mare had lain stupid with fear on groundpine beneath a bush, loud foot-falls and light whispers confused in her ear. Only now, in her room, did she smell the groundpine. Only now did the conscious part of her brain begin to make words of the whispering." As Mare stares at the wallpaper in her room, she has a romantic vision of herself running through moonlit fields with a young man: "And the world spread down around in waves of black and silver, more immense than she had known the world could be, and more beautiful." She wonders if only crazy people say such things. When Ruby Herter tries to get her to show her gratitude, she violently pushes him out of the door, crying, "Go 'way. . . . Lea' me be!"