Constantia, Josephine, and Benny’s Mother/The Colonel’s wife Character Analysis in The Daughters of the Late Colonel

The colonel’s wife died when Constantia and Josephine were very young, likely when the family lived in Ceylon for the colonel’s work. As a child, Josephine told Constantia that their mother was killed by a snake (prompted by an image of their mother in a snake-like “feather boa” and “earrings shaped like tiny pagodas” that hung over the piano in their apartment). It is unclear whether this is true, but their mother’s absence has clearly left a gap in Josephine and Constantia’s life, since they lack maternal support; Josephine wonders whether she and Constantia would have married if their mother had lived.

Constantia, Josephine, and Benny’s Mother/The Colonel’s wife Quotes in The Daughters of the Late Colonel

The The Daughters of the Late Colonel quotes below are all either spoken by Constantia, Josephine, and Benny’s Mother/The Colonel’s wife or refer to Constantia, Josephine, and Benny’s Mother/The Colonel’s wife . 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:

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If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody for them to marry. There had been father’s Anglo-Indian friends before he quarreled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a single man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they’d met them, how could they have got to know men well enough to be more than strangers? One read of people having adventures, being followed, and so on. But nobody had ever followed Constantia and her.

Related Characters: Josephine Pinner (speaker), Constantia Pinner (speaker), Josephine Pinner, Constantia Pinner , The Colonel , Constantia, Josephine, and Benny’s Mother/The Colonel’s wife

Page Number and Citation: 257

Explanation and Analysis: