The House of Veronica
Wells creates a metaphor early to describe the basic fundamental character of Ann Veronica. He first tells the reader that she wants to live and she wants to know. Then he constructs the metaphor:
“All the world about her seemed to be—how can one put it?—in wrappers, like a house when people leave it in the summer. She wanted to know. And there was no intimation whatever that the blinds would ever go up or the windows or doors be opened, or the chandeliers, that seemed to promise such a blaze of fire, unveiled and furnished and lit.”
Miss Miniver’s Reflection
Not to be confused with the other far more well-known Mrs. Miniver, the unmarried Miniver women is proto-feminist enjoying her sense of liberation and a close friend to Ann. She is especially ahead of the curve relative to her belief that diet and nutrition—specifically the consumption of meat—carries with it the potential for impacting mental faculties as well the more physical ones:
“When I am leading a true life, a pure and simple life free of all stimulants and excitements, I think—I think—oh! with pellucid clearness; but if I so much as take a mouthful of meat—or anything—the mirror is all blurred.”
Digestion
Miss Miniver’s disregard for meat is not the story’s only obsession with digestion. In fact, the entire book can be viewed as about digestion in one form or another. Ann Veronica’s scandalous name arrives partly because she pursues her academic interest in Comparative Anatomy. Biological functioning works in part as a thematic blueprint because because of its literal functioning:
“Biology is an extraordinarily digestive science. It throws out a number of broad experimental generalizations, and then sets out to bring into harmony or relation with these an infinitely multifarious collection of phenomena.”
Society’s Warning
Ann Veronica is a rebel. A warrior against the status quo. Society keeps trying to inform her that such an attitude is not just in opposed to her own self-interest but presents a very real danger on a regular basis. As the narrator observes:
“after all it was true that a girl does not go alone in the world unchallenged, nor ever has gone freely alone in the world, that evil walks abroad and dangers, and petty insults more irritating than dangers, lurk.”
Ann Defies to the Darkness
Wells adds to the exponentially increasing volume of authors who turn to darkness to shed metaphorical light when they’ve trapped a character in a dimly lit corner. Ann tells the darkness she will fight it:
“when the universe was presented as making sinister and threatening faces at her, defying her to defy, preparing a humiliating and shameful overthrow.”
