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The Hollow of the Three Hills
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Hollow of the Three Hills, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Guilt and Shame
“The Hollow of the Three Hills” tells the story of an unnamed young woman burdened with guilt after having abandoned her family for unspecified reasons. Desperate to learn how her loved ones are faring without her, the woman seeks audience with a wicked old crone in a hollow between three hills and willingly trades her life in exchange for three visions. These visions detail how the woman’s betrayal has affected those she left behind, each…
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Women and Social Expectation
In “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” the protagonist, an unnamed young woman, feels immense guilt over abandoning her family and faces harsh criticism from others for her inability to perform her duties as a daughter, wife, and mother. This story of a woman punished for her failure to act the way society demands is reflective of 19th-century attitudes towards women and in particular addresses the concept of the “separate spheres.” A patriarchal ideology…
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The Triumph of Evil
“The Hollow of the Three Hills” presents the story of a young woman who, out of desperation and shame, strikes an unholy deal with an “ill-favored” and “decrepit” old crone. This agreement between the two leads to the young woman’s untimely death, and in the story’s closing lines the crone celebrates the woman’s demise, proclaiming their transaction to have been a “sweet hour’s sport.” Through this pessimistic narrative, in which no character is truly…
read analysis of The Triumph of Evil
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