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The Daughters of the Late Colonel
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Daughters of the Late Colonel, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Patriarchy and Oppression
In “The Daughters of the Late Colonel,” Constantia and Josephine, the adult daughters of a recently deceased colonel, must fend for themselves in a world without their father—their only beneficiary as well as the individual for whom they have provided for many years. After the colonel’s death, Constantia and Josephine’s lives are exposed as stunted and meaningless, since their sole purpose was to care for their elderly father: they have been forced to…
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Ambivalence and Dependency
Constantia and Josephine are in charge of their household and must assume positions of leadership after the colonel’s death, yet they are utterly dependent on each other and the assistance of their cook, Kate. Even though Kate is both rude and potentially spying on her bosses, Constantia and Josephine feel unable to fire her and cannot decide whether she is valuable to them or not. Indeed, the sisters seem unable to make sound…
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Family, Instability, and Fragmentation
Flashbacks in the narrative suggest that Constantia and Josephine’s relationship to their brother, nephew, and deceased mother are as complicated as their relationship to the colonel: Mansfield depicts a fractured family, torn apart by death, money, and conflicting desires. Written in the recent wake of the Victorian era, “The Daughters of the Late Colonel” explores family structures that no longer adhere to the traditional model of stable Victorian living. Instead, the Pinners are…
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