The Difference (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ellen Glasgow
- First Published: 1923
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: About 1920
- Setting: A large eastern seaboard city
- Principal Characters: Margaret Fleming, George Fleming, Rose Morrison, Dorothy Chambers
- Genres: Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Marriage, Betrayal, Hallucinations or illusions, Separation
- Locales: East (U.S.)
The Story
On a Saturday afternoon, Margaret Fleming gazes out at the autumn rains stripping leaves from the trees, as she has every fall for the past twenty years but with quite different feelings. Before she saw them as symbols of loss; now she sees them sweeping away all her illusions. On the hearth of the library study, her husband George's room, lies the fallen letter that has caused this change. It has announced the death of her marriage. Gazing at herself in the mirror, she wonders how he, one year older, could begin a new love, for her an act of desecration. Hearing his...
[The entire page is 1909 words long]
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