Grief

The author uses her first person narrator Lucy Barton's avoidant relationship with grief in order to explore the ways in which loss and sorrow impact the human heart. At the start of the novel, Lucy begins her story insisting that she must "say a few things about [her] first husband, William" (3). However, only a sentence later, Lucy diverts her attention from her first husband and onto her second husband David's recent death. Therefore, although Lucy introduces William as the central figure in her narrative, her formal shifts suggest otherwise. In the novel's third full paragraph, the narrator says, "My second husband, David, died last year and in my grief for him I have felt grief for William as well. Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of...