Blog Post #4

One thing that really jumped out to me in "The Tenth of January" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, was her descriptive style that she used in her writing.  She really brought her narration to life because she used detailed descriptions to describe things such as the setting or the feelings of the characters in the story.  The first instance of this comes at the very beginning of the story when she describes Lawrence, the town in which Sene works.  One stanza that really stood out to me in this paragraph was "for “bleak, uncomforted” sidewalks, where they chase you, dog you, confront you, strangle you, twist you, blind you, turn your umbrella wrong side out."  This vivid style of imagery enables the reader to really get a feeling for the setting in the story.  Another instance of imagery that was important in this story was the description of looks between Sene and Del.  Phelps describes Sene with a pale face with a long white scar across it and a poor, rounded shoulders, while she describes Del as a beautiful, young, bright girl.  The imagery that Phelps uses to describe Sene helps you to understand the pain that she is suffering because of her unfortunate looks.  Phelps does a great job using her descriptive style to give the reader a vivid image of what she is trying to portray.