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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Son’s Veto, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Class vs. Human Flourishing
Family Duty vs. Desire
Freedom vs. Immobility
Regret
Summary
Analysis
At an outdoor concert, a young woman (Sophy) sits in a wheelchair beside her adolescent son (Randolph), who is wearing a uniform from a prestigious school. The audience members sitting behind the woman admire her intricately-braided hair. As she leaves with her son at the end of the recital, the curious audience members exchange information about her—she is the second wife of the vicar of a nearby parish, and she cannot walk. The others view her as a woman who must have an interesting story in her past.
The beginning of the story lets the reader see Sophy and her son Randolph as an outsider would, through the eyes of the other audience members. The narrator provides only minor, external details—Sophy’s braided hair, her age and beauty, Randolph’s prestigious school uniform—and the audience members’ interpretations of those details, rather than providing any explicit biographical details, or any access to Sophy or Randolph’s thoughts. This situates the reader within the world of social convention, where perceptions of social status matter more than character. The details that the narrator does provide, however, will later become important symbols within the narrative: the braided hair is a useless adornment that Sophy spends hours doing, a symbol of her isolation and unhappiness, although it is perceived by outsiders as a sign of refinement and beauty; the wheelchair stands in for the limitations that have been imposed on her by her marriage to the vicar; and the son’s uniform shows his education (and its accompanying social status) that will drive such a wedge between him and his mother. This phase of the narration comes to a close when the audience members speculate that Sophy must have a story in her past, which anticipates the flashback in the following scene.
Themes
As Sophy goes home with her son Randolph, he becomes impatient with her when she makes a minor grammatical mistake. She accepts his criticism without complaint, but this incident prompts her to think about her past, as she wonders whether she has made the right choices to lead her to this point.
In this scene, and in the rest of the story, grammar is a proxy for social class. Randolph is more educated than his mother, who has never quite escaped from all markers of her low social origin. He is clearly ashamed of his mother’s inability to conform to the expectations of her current social position, and he expresses this through irritation at her slightest mistakes. His cruelty towards his mother in this scene, and her passive acceptance of it, foreshadows his later treatment of her.
Themes
Sophy remembers her life as a parlor-maid in the house of her current husband, the vicar Mr. Twycott. She recalls the death of his first wife. On the night the vicar’s wife died, Sophy had walked home with a young man, Sam Hobson, who worked as a gardener in the same household. In the flashback, Sam flirts with her and hints at the possibility that the two of them might marry in the future, but Sophy rebuffs him, telling him he is going too fast for her.
This flashback scene sets into motion two of the plot’s main events: first, Mr. Twycott’s marriage to Sophy (which is only possible once Mr. Twycott’s first wife dies); and second, Sophy’s unfulfilled relationship with Sam. The relationship between Sophy and Sam in this passage is quite different than the interactions between them later in the story. Here, Sam is overly forward with Sophy (telling her he will have a “try” at her, trying to kiss her), showing that they are on the same social level. Later on, when they reunite following Mr. Twycott’s death, Sam will be much more respectful and indirect, perhaps owing to greater maturity as well the social distance that has opened up between them after Sophy’s elevation to the status of “lady.” Later in her life, this scene may become a source of regret for Sophy, as she wonders what her life might have been like if she had married Sam.
Themes
After his wife’s death, the vicar, Mr. Twycott, goes on living more or less as he had before, with all the same servants: the cook, the housemaid, the parlor-maid (Sophy), and the gardener (Sam). But he soon realizes that he has too many servants now that his wife has died, and he decides to dismiss some of them.
Although this part of the narrative had started out as a flashback of Sophy’s, the perspective shifts now to Mr. Twycott’s point of view. For much of the scene that follows, the reader sees Sophy through the vicar’s eyes. This technique parallels the opening scene in which the narrator first introduces Sophy through the eyes of the anonymous crowd of audience members. In both cases, the way that other characters perceive Sophy becomes more important than Sophy’s own feelings and desires, again foreshadowing her tendency to subsume her desires beneath the wishes of other characters.
Themes
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One day, Sophy tells Mr. Twycott that she wants to leave her job as a parlor-maid, explaining that the gardener, Sam, has asked her to marry him. When the vicar asks if Sophy really wants to marry Sam, she responds that she doesn’t really, but it would “be a home” for her, and she knows that the vicar must dismiss one of the servants anyway.
In this exchange with Mr. Twycott, it seems almost as if Sophy’s actual desires or romantic feelings are irrelevant to her decision about marrying Sam. Instead, she wants to marry Sam because of something else she desires—in this case, having a home. This foreshadows her later decision to marry Mr. Twycott, which she does not so much because she loves the vicar, but because she respects him too much to turn him down. In addition, her admission that she does not really want to marry Sam in this scene might cast some doubt on the question of whether her later desire to marry Sam after the vicar’s death is really a product of her love for Sam, or simply a desire for what Sam represents to her (her old life that she has left behind).
Themes
A day or two later, Sophy tells Mr. Twycott that she does not want to leave after all, explaining that she and Sam have had an argument. Mr. Twycott reflects on his affection for Sophy and wonders what he would do if she were to leave. Sophy ends up staying, and one of the other servants leaves instead.
In this passage, the reader continues to see Sophy through Mr. Twycott’s eyes. The reader gets no insight into the nature of the argument between Sophy and Sam that causes her to call off her marriage to him; instead, the narrator shows only the argument’s impact on the relationship between Sophy and Mr. Twycott. Therefore, although we understand Mr. Twycott’s motivation for proposing marriage to Sophy, it is impossible to fully understand Sophy’s motivations for changing her original plan of marrying Sam and deciding to stay in Mr. Twycott’s household instead.
Themes
Mr. Twycott falls ill and Sophy takes care of him. One day, she falls down the stairs while carrying a tray to his room. She badly injures her foot, and the surgeon tells her that she will never again be able to walk or stand for long periods of time. She tells Mr. Twycott that she must leave his household since she can no longer perform her work duties with her injured foot. She hints that she could work as a seamstress instead. Mr. Twycott, moved by what she has suffered on his account, exclaims that she must not leave him. He kisses her and asks her to marry him. Sophy is not quite in love with Mr. Twycott, but she feels that she cannot refuse someone she admires so much, and she agrees to marry him.
Sophy’s injury is the pivotal event that changes her life. Her immobility makes it impossible for her to work as a parlor-maid. At first, she plans to continue working and simply change her occupation, showing how much she values her independence even when circumstances make this difficult. But Mr. Twycott, who has come to recognize how much he depends upon Sophy both practically and emotionally, is troubled by the possibility that she might leave his household, and also feels that her injured foot is a sacrifice she has made on his account, moving him to propose marriage to her. Therefore, Sophy’s immobility on account of her injury coincides precisely with the start of her new life as a wife to Mr. Twycott. Sophy’s physical immobility comes to symbolize the social immobility she feels in this new role, deprived of her independence and freedom to make her own choices, and trapped by a set of unfamiliar social norms. The fact that Sophy has no apparent romantic desire for Mr. Twycott, and simply goes along with the marriage proposal because she respects him too much to refuse, shows her tendency to put others’ desires ahead of her own—a character trait that will resurface in her relationship with her son.
Themes
Sophy and Mr. Twycott have a small, secretive wedding with no guests. Mr. Twycott is aware that he is committing “social suicide” by marrying Sophy. They move from their country home to a small house in London, intending to escape from everyone who knew that Sophy had once been Mr. Twycott’s maid.
Mr. Twycott’s awareness that he has committed “social suicide” by marrying Sophy, and the steps he takes to mitigate the damage to his social reputation, shows that he is in fact quite concerned with the social conventions that he initially seems to flaunt in his marriage to Sophy. Their change in location from the country parish of Gaymead (symbolizing the carefree simplicity of rural life) to London (symbolizing the world of high society), which is undertaken to preserve Mr. Twycott’s social reputation, also symbolizes the shift that is about to take place in Sophy’s life on account of her marriage to Mr. Twycott.
Themes
Sophy and Mr. Twycott remain married for 14 years. Mr. Twycott tries to improve Sophy’s education so that she can fit into the social role of a “lady.” But Sophy still struggles with aspects of this role, including her inability to master proper grammar. This causes other people in their social circle to disrespect Sophy, including her own son (Randolph), who has been highly educated and begins to be irritated by his mother’s “deficiencies.”
Mr. Twycott’s investments into Sophy’s education, intended to fit her into the role of an upper-class wife, show that, despite his affection for her, he is not quite willing to accept her as she is, with all her lower-class mannerisms. Instead, he implicitly treats her use of language and her ignorance of upper-class culture as an object of shame, something that ought to be changed. Yet, unable to fully shed these traces of her upbringing, Sophy finds herself shunned and isolated from the rest of her husband’s social circle. Her own son, absorbing the values of the society he is raised into, begins to reject his own mother, seeing her social origins as something to be ashamed of. This outcome demonstrates the pettiness of superficial social conventions, which damage human relationships.
Themes
Returning to the present moment, Sophy continues to live in London, with her injured foot and fading youth, and spends much time braiding her hair. Mr. Twycott, who is 20 years older than Sophy, has just caught a serious illness.
The narrator never describes Sophy’s life as Mr. Twycott’s wife in detail; fourteen years pass by in the course of two paragraphs. The reader is never given much insight into Sophy’s feelings about her married life, besides the observation that her son’s disdain was her “great grief.” Instead, the passage of time and Sophy’s emotions about the marriage are both expressed through these small details: her habit of “wast[ing] hours braiding her beautiful hair,” her youth fading, and her worsening foot injury that leaves her unable to walk. All of these details express the monotony and isolation of her existence, and implicitly hint at her growing dissatisfaction.
Themes
