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Dolores Boyle
Miss Marsalles’s older sister is an elderly, unmarried, and childless woman. She’s a retired teacher who used to give private lessons in French and German. Recently, however, she suffered a stroke. Now she is bedridden and unable to speak. The younger Miss Marsalles and the neighboring Mrs. Clegg take care of her, but she spends most of her time alone in an upstairs room of the house.
Miss Marsalles’s Sister Quotes in Dance of the Happy Shades
The Dance of the Happy Shades quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Marsalles’s Sister or refer to Miss Marsalles’s Sister. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Dance of the Happy Shades
Quotes
It must finally have come to seem like a piece of luck to them to be so ugly, a protection against life to be marked in so many ways, impossible, for they were gay as invulnerable and childish people are; they appeared sexless, wild and gentle creatures, bizarre yet domestic, living in their house in Rosedale outside the complications of time.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Here they found themselves year after year […] drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance—not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles’ living room. […] They exchanged smiles which showed no lack of good manners, and yet expressed a familiar, humorous amazement at the sameness of things […]; so they acknowledged the incredible, the wholly unrealistic persistence of Miss Marsalles and her sister and their life.
“Oh well I feel kind of sorry for a couple of old ladies like them. They’re a couple of babies, the pair.”
Get the entire Dance of the Happy Shades LitChart as a printable PDF.
Miss Marsalles’s Sister Quotes in Dance of the Happy Shades
The Dance of the Happy Shades quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Marsalles’s Sister or refer to Miss Marsalles’s Sister. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Dance of the Happy Shades
Quotes
It must finally have come to seem like a piece of luck to them to be so ugly, a protection against life to be marked in so many ways, impossible, for they were gay as invulnerable and childish people are; they appeared sexless, wild and gentle creatures, bizarre yet domestic, living in their house in Rosedale outside the complications of time.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Here they found themselves year after year […] drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance—not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles’ living room. […] They exchanged smiles which showed no lack of good manners, and yet expressed a familiar, humorous amazement at the sameness of things […]; so they acknowledged the incredible, the wholly unrealistic persistence of Miss Marsalles and her sister and their life.
“Oh well I feel kind of sorry for a couple of old ladies like them. They’re a couple of babies, the pair.”
