Week 3

This week we have read an excerpt  of Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World. Reading this text, it becomes apparent that Ellen's parents function to provide an example to follow and to be teachers to Ellen (though this is mostly to do with her mother, as the father is largely absent). Mr. Montgomery serves as the example of what a man should be: someone who (if he must work) provides for his wife and children and insures their security, as is exampled by him insisting that Mrs. Montgomery be taken overseas to improve her health. Mrs. Montgomery is to Ellen the example of what she should be: a humble servant of God, an obedient wife, and a composed and gentle woman.

Mothers' role is to provide and take good care of Ellen while father is out making money for the family. She does her best to see that Ellen is acquainted with God and to provide Ellen the things that she needs to grow up into a lady. Against even the wishes of her physician, she leaves the house to insure that Ellen has a Bible perfectly suited to her, a writing desk for proper correspondence, and even a work-box so that Ellen may mend her own clothes when Mrs. Montgomery has passed (which she suspects may be sooner rather than later). Mr. Montgomery, on the contrary, takes almost no part in the raising of Ellen. He is not featured in the story but once at breakfast. While Ellen and his wife sit at home all day doing whatever it is that they do, he is at work making the money that will go towards doctor bills and other such expenses. Ellen is brought up almost entirely by her mother, yet the ultimate authority figure in her life is instead her father. Since father has commanded that Mrs. Montgomery will go overseas and that Ellen will stay behind, it shall be done, and neither of the women contemplate disobeying him. Since he provides the means by which they live off of, both defer to him, and they both take care of the domestic activities so he does not have to.

To Ellen, her mother is the ultimate source of love in her life as well as the most trusted. She even tells her mother how she doesn't know how she could ever love God more than her, even as her mother says that she does indeed love God more than Ellen. Since father is so frequently absent, her mother is really all that Ellen has. Naturally, she is much more emotionally invested in her mother than in her father.