“The Horse Dealers Daughter” is about a young woman named Mabel who decides to kill herself, but is rescued by the town doctor whom she thinks loves her. The doctor, Jack Fergusson, undresses Mabel in an attempt to save her life. While Jack was doing this out of strictly trying to save her, Mabel sees it as meaning that he loves her, as well as the rescue itself. Jack winds up asking Mabel to marry him, though it seems he is doing this partially out of obligation.
The setting of this story jumps to several different places in the town Mabel and Jack reside. The main setting is in Mabel’s House. The other places in this story are the graveyard Mabel’s mother is buried, and a pond nearby. It seems this story is set sometime in the early 1900’s because of the responsibilities of each sex, and the men leave their home to find work.
The story jumps around from being third person omniscient to third person objective. At the beginning what Mabel’s brothers are thinking and feeling is reveled. Then it turns to objective where nothing is reveled other than what the narrator can see. At the end it goes back to third person omniscient because what Jack Fergusson is feeling is revealed.
It seems the climax of this story is when Mabel tells Jack that he must love her, and Jack agrees that he does but with a heavy heart. To me there is no real falling action; the conflict was never fully resolved. While Jack may have asked Mabel to marry him, he did so with a heavy heart still.
Jack and Mabel both are main characters who develop throughout the story. It seems like Mabel could be consider the antagonist, because of the heavy burden she puts on Jack. A man who wants to do the right thing even though his heart may not be fully into it.
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