1.) The daughter and woman belong to the low social class. They are very poor as it states in the fourth paragraph, “She bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty.” We are told directly in this sentence that they are poor. In the third paragraph it also states that they wore “severe and poor mourning clothes.” The author might want us to know about their social class so that we can know their desperate situation. Also, the purpose of character descriptions in any story is to create a bond between the reader and the writer.
2.) The mother in the story has very good emotional control. In paragraph 52 it states, “The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind of pious amazement that they were not about to cry.” The priest is shocked to see that the woman and her daughter will not cry and this shows that they both have emotional control. Furthermore, in paragraph 41 it states, “The priest scruntinized her. She stared at him with quiet self-control, and the Father blushed.” Her self-control is so immense that it causes the priest to blush. Another thing we find out about the mother is that she shows pride in herself and that she holds great respect for her children despite their actions. When the priest asks the mother if she tried to “get him on the right track” she says that her son “was a very good man.” She defends her son even though he got murdered after he tried to rob someone’s house. Â
