How does Michael Henchard Suggest Lucetta Is Shallow where does she come from?
Lucetta enters the story when Elizabeth Jane meets her at her mother’s grave. Elizabeth -Jane noticed that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she. This mysterious woman disappears in to the distance as Elizabeth goes to confront her. Soon Elizabeth Jane meets Lucetta for the second time, she sits on the bench inside the churchyard. Lucceta asks if Michael is well. She tries to help Elizabeth in her troubles. She soon leaves after she made a proposal about Elizabeth coming to stay with her. Elizabeth accepted the offer and soon she had moved in with Lucetta. The story continues from there.
Lucetta’s antics begin at chapter twenty one. She begins to show us how shallow she is when she hears her servant showing a visitor into the room. Lucceta decides to put on a little show for a visitor ” she flung herself onto the couch in the cymarecta curve with her arm above her brow.” She puts herself into a curved position to make her self look irresistible to any visitor who may happen to step up to her quarters. It turns out that it is Donald Farfrae and of course lucceta knows how to play him like an instrument. At first she stupidly jumps up in fright and hides behind a curtain because she is so pathetic this is already a good example to show how shallow she is, to take time to beautifully arrange herself and when it comes to it she is startled by the thought of herself being seen when that is what she really wants. She hid behind the curtain ” in a freak of timidity”.
She seems to have a lot of fun taking farfrae to pieces. She explains to him that he must sit down now that he is here. They start chatting and we gather that Lucetta knows a lot about men in the way that she turned a level headed business man to the colour of “modest pink”. The impression that we get from the conversation with farfrae is that she loves to play with people and she doesn’t worry about the consequences. At first she is just playing with Donald, then she finds that he has seemed to get the wrong idea out of the act and has fallen in love with her. Still she plays along in the game and entices him even more with lines such as: ” you are quite interesting”.
From the window Lucetta sees that a young family is being torn apart because the young man is finding it hard to find a job in Casterbridge. “The girl’s lips quivered” she horrified in the thought. Donald goes to impress Luccetta by giving the men jobs. We can definitely see that he is trying to impress Lucetta because this is something that he would usually do. She explains after that” Lovers ought not to be parted like that. Donald quite agrees and then leaves because he has important work to carry out.
