The Painted Door: Summary

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and guilt that she
experiences following the central act of the story.
A great deal of this story is spent describing Ann's environment,
both inside and outside her house. The story takes place in the past,
before automobiles or telephones. Ann and her husband are settlers in a
largely uninhabited and desolate area of North America (perhaps
Saskatchewan). The starkness of the land is described early in the story: “
Scattered across the face of so vast and bleak a wilderness it was
difficult to conceive [the distant farmsteads] as a testimony of human
hardihood and endurance.” (246).
The barrenness of the surroundings in which the characters live
produces an impression of extreme, almost unbearable, isolation and
loneliness. This theme, perhaps the most vividly expressed theme of the
story, pervades throughout the entire duration of the narrative. At one
level, it serves to explain how the circumstances of Ann's adultery arise,
but, on another level, the description of the terrain ...

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