Is Gertrude a beauty?
The heroine of the novel is orphaned Gertrude Flint. The author answers the above query about the physical distinction of Gerty in unusually vague metaphorical language. Usually descriptions of beauty using figurative devices are pointed toward a direct image to be conjured. The author goes the other way; in search of metaphorical ambiguity:
“Hers is a face and form about which there would be a thousand different opinions, and few would pronounce her beautiful.”
Young Gerty
Young Gertrude perhaps grew into her face which not be considered beautiful. Indeed, she must have experienced some sort of transformation. The very first description of her face occurs before the above-mentioned authorial conception and arrives as a simile out of the mouth of a man who has found the little ragamuffin hiding in fear:
"My, what an odd-faced child!—looks like a witch!"
“Heaven is anywhere where goodness is”
The question of where heaven is as well as what heaven is plays such a major role in the novel that chapter five is titled “Where is Heaven.” The metaphorical idea of this quote linking heaven to goodness will become significant in the passage through life which Gertrude follows.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Review
While wildly popular in its time—The Lamplighter rivaled Uncle Tom’s Cabin in popularity at one point—today it is primarily remembered for the scathing review it received from Nathaniel Hawthorne when he wrote of its popularity that “America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women." An example of the negative reaction to the widespread commercial success of the novel is exhibited in the writing style permeating the novel which is perhaps best exemplified through this extension of metaphor:
"But you understand the cause of that coldness now," said Gertrude, looking up at him through a rain of tears, which like a summer sun-shower reflected itself in rainbow smiles upon her happy countenance.
A Man of Mystery
The narrator turns to the suggestive power of simile for the purpose of increasing interest and endowing a sense of mystery into a new character as seen through the eyes of Gertrude:
“Again, she was sure that geology must have been with him an absorbed study, so intimate seemed his acquaintance with mother earth; and both of these impressions were in turn dispelled when he talked of the ocean like a sailor, of the counting-house like a merchant, of Paris like a man of fashion and the world.”
