One question some of you raised in the comments had to do with the point-of-view of “The Doll’s House.” Who is telling this thing, anyway?
The use of “our Else” implies the story is being told by someone in the community. This narrator considers Mrs. Hay “dear.” It could be one of the characters represented, although it would be a little odd, for her to refer to herself in the third person. It could be someone not represented in the story, a member of the community, say. But this narrative viewpoint seems to drift around from character to character, having insider knowledge only that person could have. Usually, even as it is confined to a particular person or person, it maintains a polite, third-person distance: “The Burnell children could hardly walk to school fast enough the next morning,” but now and then it drops into voice (“now that she had frightened those little rats of Kelveys…her heart felt lighter.” (Italics mine).
The truth is, Mansfield has made – has self-declared –…