A Proud Woman

A Proud Woman by Jane Barlow (1897)

"A Proud Woman" by Jane Barlow is a short story narrated by a visiting artist, Charles Hamilton, who comes to the small Irish village of Carrickcrum one summer to paint. The story centers on his growing acquaintance with Anne Daly, an elderly, lame street vendor who runs what she calls the Sentrall Imporeum, a tiny outdoor stall selling oranges and penny sweets beneath a beech tree at the village crossroads. The narrator is immediately charmed by the hand-painted sign above Mrs. Daly's stall, crudely lettered in red on a blue background by a local handy youth named Joe Lenihan, using leftover cart paint. The sign is a deliberate or accidental parody of the General Emporium run by the Gaffney family, the village shopkeepers, who have since taken offense and cut off friendly relations with Mrs. Daly entirely. Mrs. Daly accepts the situation with equanimity and a dry wit that the narrator finds compelling. Over a series of visits and informal portrait sittings, the narrator learns more about Mrs. Daly's circumstances and character. She lives in a tiny, dark, barely habitable cabin and survives on meager earnings from her knitting and her stall. Her lameness limits what work she can take on. She walks two miles each way to Newtownbailey every Saturday to buy her stock of sugar-sticks at a penny less per dozen than the spiteful Gaffneys now charge her. Despite her poverty, Mrs. Daly possesses an iron pride. She insists on paying sixpence weekly in rent to her landlord, who would gladly house her for nothing. She refuses any charity from the narrator, returning overpayments without fail and refusing to sell him bruised fruit at full price. His small attempts to supplement her income are consistently and firmly turned back. The central episode of the story turns on a visit from Mrs. Daly's nephew, a well-off American son of her brother Hugh, who had emigrated to the United States decades earlier. Hugh and Anne had parted badly over her marriage to Andy Daly, a man Hugh considered unsteady and poor, and Hugh had predicted bitterly that the next time he saw her she would be begging or in the workhouse. Though decades have passed and the siblings have never corresponded, Hugh has sent his son to look up his aunt while the young man visits Ireland. Mrs. Daly is acutely anxious that her nephew should not return to his father with evidence that his prediction came true. She cannot bear the thought of Hugh learning she lives in a windowless hovel and sells halfpenny sweets at a roadside stall. Swallowing her considerable pride just enough to ask a favor, she visits the narrator one rainy evening and requests the use of his cottage for the afternoon of the nephew's visit, so that the young man will see her living, as she puts it, rael dacint and comfortable. She intends to pass the narrator off as her lodger should he appear. The narrator agrees readily and prepares a welcoming tea table with cake and good things. Mrs. Daly, however, arrives before the nephew and quietly removes all his contributions to the pantry, replacing them with her own sparse provisions from a basket she has brought. She leaves a pair of knitted socks as a silent gift and peace-offering. The narrator, seeing this from an adjoining room, slips away without interfering, respecting her need to manage the visit entirely on her own terms. The afternoon visit appears to go well. The nephew is charmed by the cottage and stays talking so long he nearly misses his train. As he drives away, a flash of lightning causes the horse to shy violently, smashing Mrs. Daly's stall and throwing her to the ground. She rises unhurt and immediately, from habit or instinct, speaks of the ruined stall in the third person, as though it belongs to a stranger she pities. The nephew, pressed for time, hands the narrator a ten-pound note to pass to the stall's owner as compensation and drives off. Mrs. Daly resists accepting the money through a long negotiation with the narrator, who eventually persuades her by pointing out that the Gaffneys will gloat over her loss if she refuses to be made whole. This argument, appealing to her pride from the other direction, succeeds where appeals to practicality could not. The ten pounds transforms her situation entirely. She moves to a proper dwelling with a window and sets up a much better-stocked shop. The gaudy painted sign disappears from the beech tree, almost certainly removed by the Gaffneys, which vexes her since she had meant to hang it above her new door. She nevertheless prospers and maintains her characteristic dignity, summing up the pettiness of her rivals with the observation that it is a quare low-lived trick people resort to in trying to set themselves up.

By Jane Barlow · First published 1897 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Social Realism, Character Study · 4,882 words

First lines

Peter Mackey, the Carrickcrum Doctor's man, introduced me to Mrs Daly one early summer morning, when her table was flecked with small quivering shadows by the young beech-leaves. That such a ceremony was required argued me a stranger to the place, for "ould Anne Daly" at her stall had a speaking acquaintance with almost every passer-by. Her rickety deal board stood at the cross-roads under the beech-tree whose trunk was built into the wall behind the National School, where she had a view of Carrickcrum's street on either hand, and looked up the road to the bridge, and down the road to the police barracks as well. She was a picturesque figure in her black gown and bluish apron; for her hair made white light beneath broad cap frills hooded with a heavy grey shawl, and the brown eyes among their weather-worn wrinkles still glanced as brightly as the waters of a bog-stream. Her knitting-needles twinkled up at them, in and out of the dark, rough stocking-leg that lengthened in her hands, as she sat perched on a crippled chair, dexterously propped against the beech's roots. Upon the planks before her glowed a small heap of half-a-dozen oranges, and as many pink sugar-sticks protruded from a white Delft jam-pot. That was all her stock-in-trade, and even the golden dance over it of the spangling sunbeams could not give it an opulent aspect. What caught my eye at once, however, was a signboard nailed to the trunk just above her head, bearing on a brilliant ultramarine ground, in letters of fiery vermilion, the words: -

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A Proud Woman is listed on Textopian as a short story by Jane Barlow, dated 1897 CE.

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fiction · character study · pride · Irish literature · 19th century · realistic fiction · women's literature · psychological · social commentary · domestic life · relationships · personal growth

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