Love
The most important and the major theme of this story is love. Two sisters are in love with some men and share with each other their emotions about it. "She liked him, his quaint ways, his humor, his ignorance, and his slow masculinity." More obvious and significant is Frances’s love. Firstly, her unhappy love to Jimmy is explored and then–to Tom. All situations in the story are followed by this feeling and even moments which seems not to be about love is also metaphorically connected with love. Also, here we see the love of two sisters, they love each other as they are relatives.
Choice
The story shows that we make every choice only by ourselves and we can rule our life and control our feelings, as Frances chooses to kill her feelings to Jimmy and made a decision to be with Tom. Despite the fact that she chooses “second best”, but still this decision was way better to her as far as Tom loved her so much. So, this narrative shows us that only we can choose and only we can make our life better and stop suffering because of unhappy love.
Family relations
In the story, we can follow a substantial line of relations between two sisters. They share with each other feelings and emotions about life and love. The younger one–Anne can’t understand Frances in some moments, but still love her. Frances can’t be called the best sister. She often laughs at Anne, thinking that she is too young and not so smart. But still, they live together and together go through every situation, trying to help and support each other.
