Essay Questions

Why does Esther agree to marry George?

There are a number of reasons for Esther's acceptance of George's proposal. The first of these is that she finds his letters genuinely endearing and believes that a man who can write a letter like that is a man of substance, kindness and good character. He is the kind of man one ought to want to marry, and this makes her start to develop a fondness for him that she believes only stops short of love because they have not met yet.

She is also aware of the fact that she is now a woman in her thirties, which makes her older than most of the unmarried young women looking for love. She is not as much of a catch as she used to be, and she can hear the clock on her marital prospects ticking loudly and insistently. She doesn't really feel that George is the right man for her, but he has come along at the right time.

Esther is very fond of the merchant from whose shop she buys her fabrics, but he is a Hasidic Jew and both know that a marriage between them would be impossible, with too many barriers of religion, society and ethnicity to break down. George is not a man she is in love with but he is a man with whom she feels it would be socially acceptable and rather enjoyable to settle down.

Esther is not desolate when George steals her money. Why is this?

Esther is angry, hurt, and disappointed in George, but she is not broken by his betrayal. One of the reasons for this is that her love for him was never particularly deep and so his actions did not wound her in the way that they might have done had she been so. She is also aware that she earned every dollar of the money she had saved herself, and that she still has the talent to do so again. Since Esther would actually have preferred to remain a single, independent woman the situation that she finds herself in is not completely crushing to her. She has lost what she has earned, but she has the ability to earn it again because she still has the talents that earned it in the first place. She is also back at the boarding house where she has friends and where she felt herself to be the most happy.