Woman's Trials; Or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us — Text and Context

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Authors: Arthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay), 1809-1885 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2003 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Women -- Fiction; Women -- Conduct of life -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 51,520

Reading time 224 min

Text sections 6

The catalog record for Woman's Trials; Or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us — Text and Context provides practical reading context through 51,520 words, 3 hr 44 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 14.9 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Women -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #4617

T. S. Arthur's 1851 collection of tales uses first-person domestic narration and shifting emotional registers to examine women's trials in household management, financial hardship, and moral dilemmas, with a preface urging sympathy for others.

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Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
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Edition quality

File: pg4617

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A LADY, past the prime of life, sat thoughtful, as twilight fell duskily around her, in a room furnished with great elegance. That her thoughts were far from being pleasant, the sober, even sad expression of her countenance too clearly testified. She was dressed in deep mourning. A faint sigh parted her lips as she looked up, on hearing the door of the apartment in which she was sitting open. The person who entered, a tall and beautiful girl, also in mourning, came and sat down by her side, and leaned her head, with a pensive, troubled air, down upon her shoulder.

"We must decide upon something, Edith, and that with as little delay as possible," said the elder of the two ladies, soon after the younger one entered. This was said in a tone of great despondency.

"Upon what shall we decide, mother?" and the young lady raised her head from its reclining position, and looked earnestly into the eyes of her parent.

"We must decide to do something by which the family can be sustained. Your father's death has left us, unfortunately and unexpectedly, as you already know, with scarcely a thousand dollars beyond the furniture of this house, instead of an independence which we supposed him to possess. His death was sad and afflictive enough--more than it seemed I could bear. But to have this added!"

The voice of the speaker sank into a low moan, and was lost in a stifled sob.

"But what _can_ we do, mother?" asked Edith, in an earnest tone, after pausing long enough for her mother to regain the control of her feelings.

"I have thought of but one thing that is at all respectable," replied the mother.

"Why, mother!" ejaculated Edith, evincing great surprise, "how can you think of such a thing?"

"Because driven to do so by the force of circumstances."

"Taking boarders! Keeping a boarding-house! Surely we have not come to this!"

An expression of distress blended with the look of astonishment in Edith's face.

"There is nothing disgraceful in keeping a boarding-house," returned the mother. "A great many very respectable ladies have been compelled to resort to it as a means of supporting their families."

"But to think of it, mother! To think of _your_ keeping a boarding-house! I cannot bear it."

"Is there any thing else that can be done, Edith?"

"Don't ask _me_ such a question."

"If, then, you cannot think for me, you must try and think with me, my child. Something will have to be done to create an income. In less than twelve months, every dollar I have will be expended; and then what are we to do? Now, Edith, is the time for us to look at the matter earnestly, and to determine the course we will take. There is no use to look away from it. A good house in a central situation, large enough for the purpose, can no doubt be obtained; and I think there will be no difficulty about our getting boarders enough to fill it. The income or profit from these will enable us still to live comfortably, and keep Edward and Ellen at school."

"It is hard," was the only remark Edith made to this.

"It is hard, my daughter; very hard! I have thought and thought about it until my whole mind has been thrown into confusion. But it will not do to think for ever; there must be action. Can I see want stealing in upon my children, and sit and fold my hands supinely? No! And to you, Edith, my oldest child, I look for aid and for counsel. Stand up bravely by my side."

"And you are in earnest in all this?" said Edith, whose mind seemed hardly able to realize the truth of their position. From her earliest days, all the blessings that money could procure had been freely scattered around her feet. As she grew up and advanced towards womanhood, she had moved in the most fashionable circles, and there acquired the habit of estimating people according to their wealth and social standing, rather than by qualities of mind. In her view, it appeared degrading in a woman to enter upon any kind of employment for money; and with the keeper of a boarding-house, particularly, she had always associated something low, vulgar, and ungenteel. At the thought of her mother's engaging in such an occupation, when the suggestion was made her mind instantly revolted. It appeared to her as if disgrace would be the inevitable consequence.

Continue Reading →

The preface to T. S. Arthur's 1851 collection frames the stories as "moving pictures" intended to create sympathy for women in various life-trials. The opening tale, "A Lesson of Patience," immediately plunges into a first-person domestic crisis: a mother overwhelmed by a cross chambermaid, a dissatisfied cook, and children "in rags." The narrator's fretful voice and the maid's pert refusal to do washing establish a pattern of tense, dialogue-driven scenes that reveal character through small power struggles.

First-Person Domestic Tension

The volume's early stories employ a close first-person perspective that immerses the reader in the narrator's emotional state. In "A Lesson of Patience," the narrator admits to feeling "exceedingly angry" after a servant's defiance, and the prose mirrors her agitation with short, exasperated sentences. This technique recurs in later tales, where characters' inner turmoil is rendered through direct speech and internal monologue. The voice is consistently that of a middle-class woman managing a household, and the conflicts—over servants, sewing, and money—are grounded in concrete, everyday details. Arthur avoids abstract moralizing in these passages, instead letting the characters' fretful or resentful tones carry the tension.

Shifts in Pace and Emotional Register

As the collection progresses, the narrative pace changes markedly. In the later chapters excerpted, the story of Mrs. Darlington and her daughters shifts from crisis to relief: the family sells furniture and jewelry to pay debts, opens a school, and experiences a "cheerful face" at tea. The prose becomes more measured, with longer sentences and reflective dialogue. Edith's exclamation—"What a scene of trial have we passed through!"—and Mrs. Darlington's shuddering recollection of "the dreadful ordeal" signal a retrospective calm. This contrast between the frantic opening and the subdued resolution highlights Arthur's structural use of pace to mirror emotional recovery.

Recurring Motif of Sympathy and Its Limits

A thread running through the excerpts is the tension between sympathy for others and the pressures of one's own trials. In the preface, Arthur writes that people are "too much engrossed in what concerns ourselves" to give thought to others. This idea is dramatized in the Darlington story: after turning out a destitute woman, Mrs. Darlington laments, "when our own troubles press heavily upon us, we lose our sympathy for others!" Yet Edith defends the decision, saying they "could not bear the weight without going under ourselves." The dialogue does not resolve the moral question, leaving the reader to weigh competing claims of self-preservation and compassion. This ambiguity is a deliberate narrative choice, not a didactic conclusion.

Economic Realities and Domestic Labor

Throughout the excerpts, money and work are constant pressures. The opening tale revolves around a washing crisis; later, the Darlington family's boarding-house experiment fails, costing "little short of a thousand dollars." The solution—opening a school—is presented as a practical, if modest, remedy. Arthur details the arithmetic: twenty scholars at a hundred and twenty-five dollars a quarter, plus Henry's five hundred a year, totals a thousand. This specificity grounds the moral drama in economic reality. The stories do not romanticize poverty or offer easy solutions; instead, they show women calculating, economizing, and making difficult choices about labor and charity.

Readers approaching this collection should attend to the shifts in narrative voice and pace across the six tales. The early stories' agitated, first-person accounts give way to more distanced, third-person narratives in later sections, creating a cumulative effect of moving from immediate crisis to reflective aftermath. Arthur's preface promises sympathy, but the stories themselves complicate that promise by showing how hardship can narrow one's capacity for compassion. The result is a work that rewards attention to its structural and tonal variations rather than a search for consistent moral lessons.

I’ve often returned to T. S. Arthur’s Woman’s Trials, that quiet ledger of domestic burdens and the grace found in bearing them. There’s a kinship with Sandra Belloni — Volume 4 — A Closer Reading, where private feeling strains against circumstance much the same way. Both seem to understand that our hardest trials are rarely loud—they simply wait, patiently, for someone to notice.