My Unwilling Neighbor by Frank R. Stockton
A hurricane-force storm tears an unnamed young vineyard owner's newly built house from its foundations on a Blue Ridge hillside in western Virginia and slides it, with him inside, down into the valley below, where it comes to rest jammed against the back of a house belonging to Mrs. Carson and her daughter Kitty. The narrator, twenty-five and living alone on his vineyard property, had spent a lonely winter and a stormy spring wishing for company, even briefly considering inviting his law-student friend Jack Brandiger to build nearby, before a violent night storm literally solves his loneliness problem by depositing his entire house in a stranger's yard. Waking to find his porch destroyed and a girl's face at a window only feet from his own door, he meets Kitty Carson, who explains with remarkable calm that she had long anticipated the house sliding downhill and had already deduced what happened before he did. Her mother, Mrs. Carson, is far less composed, discovering that the vineyard owner's house has crushed her round flower-garden and buried her well beneath his porch, and she demands the house be removed immediately, rejecting every proposal — hauling it uphill by windlass and cable, dismantling and carting it away, or moving it sideways at the cost of her trees. Practical repairs follow: the narrator rigs a bucket and rope to draw water from the buried well, carpenters brace his house against Mrs. Carson's cellar wall to stop further sliding, and Mrs. Carson, refusing to let an empty house sit against her own or to have his servants on her property, insists he lodge in his own displaced house and take his meals with her family until her absent son George can advise her. George, corresponding from afar, proposes increasingly elaborate jack-screw schemes to lift and relocate one or both houses, none of which materialize, while the narrator spends weeks helping repair fences, the garden, and the vineyard, working closely alongside Kitty on the horticultural restoration. Over this month of enforced proximity, the narrator grows fond of Kitty, who seems more accepting of his unwanted presence than her mother or brother. He seeks her out privately, declares that the only thing he wants to take away from the place is her, and she accepts him. When Mrs. Carson returns and learns of the engagement, her attitude reverses entirely: she reveals she has secretly been satisfied with the arrangement all along, having already worked out how the two houses can be structurally joined into one dwelling — his former parlor becoming a shared sitting-room, another room a guest-chamber, the well piped to her kitchen — and declares that as man and wife cannot be put asunder, neither can the two houses now be separated. Jack Brandiger, visiting, teases the narrator for "courting like a snail, with your house on your back," and the narrator retorts that Jack will find a wife himself someday, provided he doesn't try sliding uphill to do it. The text ends here, with the engagement settled and the houses' permanent union to Mrs. Carson's home implicitly agreed upon.
By Frank R. Stockton · First published 1895 · Genre: Comedy, Satire, Short Story · 10,244 words
First lines
I was about twenty-five years old when I began life as the owner of a / vineyard in western Virginia. I bought a large tract of land, the / greater part of which lay upon the sloping side of one of the / foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, the exposure being that most favorable to / the growth of the vine. I am an enthusiastic lover of the country and / of country life, and believed that I should derive more pleasure as / well as profit from the culture of my far-stretching vineyard than I / would from ordinary farm operations.
What this Textopian page supports
My Unwilling Neighbor is listed on Textopian as a short story by Frank R. Stockton, dated 1895 CE.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Frank R. Stockton
- Date: 1895 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Comedy, Satire, Short Story, Fiction
- Length: 10,244 words
- Structure: 1 section, 118 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for My Unwilling Neighbor by Frank R. Stockton
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Comedy — The plot revolves around humorous situations and witty dialogue.
- Satire — The story uses irony and exaggeration to critique social norms.
- Short Story — The narrative is concise and focuses on a single incident.
- Fiction — The events and characters are imaginary and crafted for entertainment.
Tags
fiction · short story · humor · satire · social commentary · neighborhood · relationships · conflict · irony · character study · dialogue · American literature