The Girls

The girls after whom the story is titled symbolize the delineations of social classes. None of the girls are named, and readers are provided little information about them, chiefly because the narrator himself knows very little about their backgrounds. They are, he assumes, part of the aristocracy who spend only a few weeks in the town every year. The girls seem, to the narrator, largely untouchable: he desires more than anything to simply be noticed by them, and he befriends Monsieur T. in order to have the chance to interact with them. The girls are, for the most part, rude and impolite, giving off an air of superiority toward the townspeople. In this way, the girls come to represent the divisions among social classes that the narrator, as an adolescent, could not fully conceptualize.

The Parasol

The parasol that the narrator takes from his mother...