Point of View

"The Daughters of the Late Colonel" is told from a third person perspective, with limited access into the minds of Josephine and Constantia. This perspective allows readers to compare the sisters' behavior with their thoughts, and provides some context for why their indecisiveness and ambivalence are so engrained in their psychologies. Often, the author will also rely on free indirect discourse – a literary technique in which a third-person narrator adopts the voice of a particular character or characters – to convey what Josephine and Constantia are thinking. For example, when the narrator explains the circumstances of their father's death, she says, "Then, as they were standing there, wondering what to do, he had suddenly opened one eye. Oh, what a difference it would have made, what a difference to their memory of him, how much easier to tell people about it, if he had only opened...