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Copywork
About This Passage
Burnett closes Mary's time at the English clergyman's house with a small grown-up verdict — 'Mrs. Crawford said pityingly, afterward' — and stacks three adverbs (stubbornly, stiffly, pityingly) that catalog exactly how Mary and the adults around her are failing each other. Copying it trains attention to how Burnett uses adverbs like X-rays.
But she thought over it a great deal afterward; and when Mrs. Crawford told her that night that she was going to sail away to England in a few days and go to her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, who lived...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Narrate Chapter 2 as a sequence of three encounters: Basil at the English clergyman's house giving Mary her nickname, Mrs. Medlock meeting Mary at the London hotel, and the long train ride to Yorkshire during which Mrs. Medlock tells Mary about Mr. Archibald Craven and Misselthwaite Manor.
Discussion Questions
- Basil invents the name 'Mistress Mary, quite contrary' and the other children sing it until it sticks. Why does this nickname wound Mary so deeply, and what does it reveal that the other children have noticed about her?
- Mrs. Crawford says of Mary, 'she had the most unattractive ways I ever saw in a child.' She says it pityingly, not cruelly. Frances Burnett gives us this adult verdict outside Mary's hearing. What does it mean that even the grown-ups who try to be kind to Mary cannot quite manage it?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
In a refusing, unmovable way that will not be changed by argument.
Item 2
With a feeling of gentle sorrow for someone else's hard luck.
Item 3
In a rigid, unbending way, without softening the body or the manner.
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Critical Thinking
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