Mrs. Clegg Character Analysis

Mrs. Clegg, a middle-aged woman, is the Marsalles sisters’ neighbor. She attends Miss Marsalles’s party because she likes music and was invited to hear the children perform. In some ways, Mrs. Clegg presents a pleasant exterior. She wears a freshly laundered dress to the recital, and she’s supportive of the children’s performances, demonstrating this with enthusiastic applause. But, in other ways, Mrs. Clegg is clearly unpleasant. A bad odor clings to her, and she lacks true kindness and empathy. She’s eager to gossip about the misfortunes of the Marsalles sisters without sensitivity or concern for their privacy. She pities and infantilizes the older women, viewing them as babies who require charity. And she delights in Miss Marsalles’s mistake of putting the food out too early, which allows her to feel superior to the elderly music teacher and to relish the drama of the narrator’s mother’s dismay. Mrs. Clegg’s lack of empathy is also evident in how she talks about Miss Marsalles’s students who have Down syndrome. She others them by emphasizing their differences from “normal” children, by infantilizing them, and by treating them as inferior. Mrs. Clegg is as narrow-minded as the narrator’s mother, but she exhibits her biases more plainly because she isn’t as concerned with social etiquette.