Mt. George, Vermont

Mt. George, Vermont, is the immediate setting of both "The Moment of Tenderness" and "The Foreigners," and it is also the hometown of Angel, Amy's mother in "The Foreign Agent." Mt. George is a suffocatingly small town in rural Vermont. The natives are judgmental, vote Republican, and love to gossip. In "The Moment of Tenderness," L'Engle writes that Mt. George "was a monogamous" town, in which both divorce and adultery were entirely unheard of (174). This makes Stella's—the married protagonist—forbidden (though not indulgent) love for Steve Carlton, who is also married man, shocking, just as it makes Mrs. Brechstein's comment that "'every intelligent woman...should have at least one affair after she's married'" essentially unforgivable (194). While Angel, Amy's mother in "The Foreign Agent" owes her commercial success to her folksy, quaint, Vermont background, L'Engle makes clear that this small town is home to as much...