The Little Girls: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Little Girls: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the intricate dynamics and personal histories of its main characters, centered around Dinah Piggott Delacroix, a vibrant widow who embodies spontaneity and imagination. As she confronts her past, Dinah embarks on a nostalgic journey to reconnect with childhood friends, Clare Burkin-Jones and Sheila Beaker Artworth, revealing their contrasting personalities and unresolved emotional struggles. Clare, a once-aspiring poet, has become a pragmatic figure, grappling with her father's death and her own choices, while Sheila, a stylish matron, navigates feelings of unfulfillment and lost potential. Each character's journey offers a lens into their individual growth and interactions, emphasizing themes of memory, personal responsibility, and emotional reconciliation. The narrative not only highlights their past connections but also underscores the impact of time on their lives, leading to profound realizations and personal transformations. Through these rich character studies, the story explores the complexities of friendship, the weight of nostalgia, and the importance of coming to terms with one's history.
The Little Girls: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Elizabeth Bowen
First published: 1964
Genre: Novel
Locale: Somerset and London, England
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The late 1950's or the early 1960's, and 1914
Dinah Piggott Delacroix (dee-NAH deh-lah-KRWAH), nicknamed Dicey as a child, the protagonist, a well-to-do English widow and grandmother. She is still slim and attractive, looking younger than her years (sixtyish); she is as spontaneous, willful, and imaginative as a child. Preoccupied with retaining the past, she is collecting treasured objects from her current friends to bury in a time capsule when she recalls the cache of secret treasures she and two eleven-year-old school friends buried some fifty years earlier, just before World War I. She impulsively seeks out those school friends through newspaper advertisements as a means of finding the box and exploring its contents. Although the box is discovered to be empty, by forcing the women (and herself) to confront their buried pasts in reminiscences, Dinah helps them to resolve their emotional problems and herself to grow up. A conflict with Clare brings the imaginative Dinah more respect for the individuality of others and for the passage of time in the world of reality.
Clare Burkin-Jones, nicknamed Mumbo as a child, the daughter of a handsome army major and his pedestrian wife. As a child, she was drawn to poetry and loved Dinah's beautiful and artistically sensitive mother, as did the father whom she adored and whose death in the war she has never been able to accept. A large woman who wears tailored suits and a turban, she has resumed her father's name after an unhappy marriage and now operates a successful chain of gift shops, having denied her youthful literary gifts to deal with emotionally safer opaque objects instead. The antithesis to Dinah's childish buoyancy and trust in chance, she is a rather cynical rationalist with a strong sense of the role of choice and personal responsibility in life. Her jealousy of Dinah and cruelty to her on the last day the children saw one another are resolved when she finally expresses a love and respect for Dinah and her more affirmative perspective on life.
Sheila Beaker Artworth, nicknamed Sheikie as a child, a chic, appearance-conscious, childless matron who never left Southstone, where the three women lived as children. She married a local realtor and settled into a life of provincial respectability, although with a tendency to drink to escape her sense of unfulfillment. She has had a love affair, but the man died, not realizing how much the inarticulate Sheila loved him. As a child, she was high-spirited and talented, an unself-conscious dancer whose bodily movements were her means of self-expression, but she no longer dances. Reliving the past helps her to regain the self-esteem she has lost through failing as a lover, a begetter, and a dancer, and she has begun to refuse drinks and once again to gesture like a dancer before the novel ends.
Major Frank Wilkins, Dinah's neighbor, close friend, and companion. He is also sixtyish and still slim and handsome but generally more adult. He warns her that one cannot go back in time with impunity and, after Dinah's quarrel with Clare, makes Clare realize how much she once meant and still means to Dinah.