Brympton, the estate where Edith Wharton’s ghost story “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” is set, is a gloomy, lonely place. It is also a place oppressed by illness and alienation—where people keep secrets from each other and, as readers soon learn, a ghost has taken up residence. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the appearance of the ghost is connected to the illness and loneliness of the story’s characters; in fact, readers cannot be entirely certain that the ghost is not a hallucination and thus a product of these afflictions. The story is narrated by Mrs. Brympton’s new lady’s maid, Hartley, who has just recovered from typhoid and still suffers from its effects. Mrs. Brympton herself is also “something of an invalid,” a condition Hartley attributes to a heart ailment. Both characters are also lonely and prone to depression. Hartley complains of loneliness and confesses that her isolation is a weight on her; Mrs. Brympton laments that she has no visitors in the winter and, with time, falls into an even more sickly state. The story hints that neither character is entirely clear-headed: Mrs. Brympton seems to mix up Hartley for her former maid, Emma Saxon, and Hartley, obsessed with the idea that there is a ghost across the hall, is unable to sleep for nights on end. In this context, the appearance of the ghost is presented as a response to the illness and alienation these characters are afflicted with: the ghost appears at the ringing of the lady’s maid’s bell. In the end, Wharton suggests that the haunting of Brympton emerges from the illness and isolation that pervade the place—and that Hartley’s isolation is as central to the ghost’s appearance as Mrs. Brympton’s.
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Illness, Isolation, and Loneliness ThemeTracker
Illness, Isolation, and Loneliness Quotes in The Lady Maid’s Bell
Mrs. Brympton was lying down in her bedroom. Her lounge stood near the fire and beside it was a shaded lamp. She was a delicate-looking lady, but when she smiled I felt there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She spoke very pleasantly, in a low voice, asking me my name and age and so on, and if I had everything I wanted, and if I wasn’t afraid of feeling lonely in the country.
“Not with you I wouldn’t be, madam,” I said, and the words surprised me when I’d spoken them, for I’m not an impulsive person; but it was just as if I’d thought aloud.
In a minute or two he went off, and left my mistress to dress for dinner, and I noticed as I waited on her that she was white, and chill to the touch.
Mr. Brympton took himself off the next morning, and the whole house drew a long breath when he drove away. As for my mistress, she put on her hat and furs (for it was a fine winter morning) and went out for a walk in the gardens, coming back quite fresh and rosy.
I have said that things went on as usual; and so they did with the rest of the household; but as for myself, I had never been the same since the night my bell had rung. Night after night I used to lie awake, listening for it to ring again, and for the door of the locked room to open stealthily. But the bell never rang, and I heard no sound across the passage. At last the silence began to be more dreadful to me than the most mysterious sounds.
