[In "Mister McGregor" the narrator is all important,] for the story is in fact his own story. At first glance, however, his role seems merely secondary, the agency by which an appalling battle of the sexes is dramatically related to the reader. Mister McGregor, the master of a plantation in slave times, against accepted usage and over the bitter protest of his strong-willed wife, whips his wife's personal female slave for her blatant impudence. In consequence, the slave woman's husband [Rhears]…, makes up his mind to get vengeance by an open attack upon the person of Mister McGregor. (p. 17)

All this and what came after was observed by the narrator, McGregor's son, as a boy of eight. But it is the man, many years later, who is telling the story and whose garrulous comments, first, clarify for us the immediate significance of that remembered action and, second, indirectly...