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Difficulty: MediumNarrator Identification and Perspective

Read the following passage carefully:

We had always known that Mrs. Gable lived on the charity of her past, though she went to great lengths to drape the present in velvet. When she walked down the avenue, her chin was held at an angle that defied the very cobbles to trip her, and her umbrellas, though faded, were always rolled with a military precision. My mother, who possessed the pragmatism of a woman who kept her own accounts, often remarked that pride was a poor substitute for coal. Yet, we children found a certain comfort in Mrs. Gable’s performance. To us, she was the last sentinel of a grander era, a living proof that one could resist the encroachment of the factories simply by refusing to look at them.

Which of the following best describes the narrator’s perspective in the passage?

  1. A
    A third-person limited narrator who details the internal shame and financial anxiety felt by Mrs. Gable.
  2. B
    A first-person narrator who serves as the author's direct spokesperson to critique the industrial revolution's impact on the town.
  3. A collective first-person narrator who recalls a neighborhood figure with a mixture of childhood wonder and retrospective insight.Answer
  4. D
    A first-person narrator who agrees completely with the mother's assessment that Mrs. Gable is a foolish, prideful woman.
  5. E
    A first-person narrator who provides a chronological summary of Mrs. Gable's daily walks and interactions with the factory workers.

Answer

A collective first-person narrator who recalls a neighborhood figure with a mixture of childhood wonder and retrospective insight.
The correct option identifies the narrator's voice as first-person collective ('we', 'us') and accurately captures the narrator's dual perspective, which combines the child's sense of wonder with the adult's retrospective understanding of the subject's financial vulnerability.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the pronouns used by the narrator to establish the narrative point of view.
The narrator uses plural first-person pronouns ('we', 'us', 'our') as well as singular ('my'), indicating a first-person narrator who is part of a collective group ('we children').
Determining the narrative voice is the first step in distinguishing between first-person and third-person perspectives.
2
Analyze the narrator's attitude toward the subject, Mrs. Gable.
The narrator describes Mrs. Gable with childhood admiration ('last sentinel of a grander era') but also acknowledges her socioeconomic reality ('lived on the charity of her past'), revealing a retrospective double-perspective.
This helps determine the complexity of the narrator's attitude, which combines childhood perception with adult hindsight.
3
Evaluate the distractors against the textual evidence to select the correct description of the narrator's perspective.
The description that captures the collective 'we' and the dual nature of childhood wonder and adult retrospection is the correct choice.
Ensures that the chosen description matches both the narrative voice and the tonal complexity of the passage.

Key Concept

Identifying first-person collective perspective and analyzing the combination of childhood and adult viewpoints in short fiction.
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Topics

Narrator Identification and Perspective

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