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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Kezia and the Kelveys:
A few scenes before Kezia secretly invites Else and Lil Kelvey to come see her family’s dollhouse, she asks her mother if she can invite them—an example of foreshadowing. This comes across in the following passage:
“Mother,” said Kezia, “can’t I ask the Kelveys just once?”
“Certainly not, Kezia.”
“But why not?”
“Run away, Kezia; you know quite well why not.”
At last everybody had seen it except them.
In this passage, Kezia demonstrates that she empathizes with the Kelveys and thinks it isn’t fair that “everybody had seen [the dollhouse] except them.” The fact that she pushes back on her mother’s rejection of the idea—asking, “But why not?”—foreshadows the way that she will go on to push back against her mother again when inviting the Kelveys into their home behind her mother’s back.
Kezia—the youngest child in the family—has not yet internalized the classist logic of their community the way the rest of her family has (who ignore and belittle the Kelveys on the basis of their lower-class status). As she retains her childish innocence, she is more comfortable challenging the ways that the Kelveys are shunned as outsiders. She sees their humanity—something that Mansfield suggests everyone has a moral responsibility to do.
Related Themes:
