Summary

Verena goes to Olive’s home frequently, with her mother’s encouragement and often with her mother. Mrs. Tarrant sees the opportunities that might come with Verena’s association with one of the upper class of Boston society. While Mrs. Tarrant hopes that Verena will some day get married to someone in the public eye, she sees the advantage of having a close friendship with a woman such as Olive Chancellor, who has money and who is interested in reform. She sees that, although Verena may be married, she might want a place to serve as a type of retreat, or in fact to be a second home.

Verena has at last come to value Olive’s companionship. Although she was at first a bit put off by Olive’s enthusiasms, she now has an intense admiration for the woman. Verena realizes that if Olive were not so afraid of speaking in public, she could surpass her in being a spokeswoman for the reform movement. She recognizes the differences in their personalities: Verena is serene while Olive is emotional.

As for Mr. Tarrant, he sees possibilities in his daughter’s new friendship with Olive; not for Verena but for himself. While he believes in his daughter’s gift of speaking, he sees it merely as a way to open doors for him.  He is willing to push Verena into the limelight as long as some of the light reflects on him. He hangs around publishers’ offices, hoping to be interviewed and thus gain publicity for himself and his own views. The fact that he is never interviewed spurs him on to exact his “revenge” by making his daughter famous in Boston society.

Mrs. Tarrant wants desperately for Olive to come to her home in Cambridge, believing that such a visit would help her to rise once more in Boston society. She has been invited several times by Verena when she goes to visit her, but has as yet failed to make an appearance. She despises Mr. and Mrs. Tarrant as people who have a higher claim on Verena than Olive does herself. She consents eventually, however, and Mrs. Tarrant also invites Matthias Pardon, the white-haired newspaper writer. Olive is disgusted by the Tarrants’ home, yet it pleases her for the simple reason that it gives her more leverage in convincing Verena to leave it to come to live with her. Olive rebuffs Mrs. Tarrant’s attempts at conversation about the “principal ladies” of various communities, even though she is conscious of the many fibs she has told in stating that she is not acquainted with them, although she in fact is.

Analysis

In this section, Verena is even more fully revealed as a tool of her self-absorbed parents. Mr. Tarrant, the would-be “mesmeric healer,” wants to use her to draw attention to himself. Yet in his life as a traveling salesman, he has been a supreme opportunist, taking advantage (unsuccessfully) of the gullibility of others. It is not in himself that the attraction to the Tarrant name lies, but to the innocence and eloquence of his daughter, Verena. Rather than stepping back to let his daughter express her talent, he uses it as an attempt to insinuate his own non-existent talent. He cannot melt into the background long enough to let Verena realize her potential without him. As he used his wife for financial backing for his various enterprises, now he does the same with Verena. He has found fertile ground, not in the lower class’s concern for their health in the midst of their poverty, but in the minds and interests of the upper-class reformers. Expounding the...