Two Offers

Frances Harper keeps me guessing...I enjoyed her poetry, but I found "Two Offers" more intriguing. In the short story we become aware of two women. Laura Lagrange and Janette Alston, Laura is more concerned with becoming married, whereas Janette is content with a life of happiness on her own. Although Laura finds herself happy at first, her life becomes more or less pointless, with a husband who is more concerned with drinking and work. Her life changes with the blessing of a child, but this blessing is short lived with the unexpected death of her child. In the aftermath, Laura sinks into a deep depression and envies her cousin Janette's happiness as a lonely woman. To me it seems ironic for her to envy her lonely cousin, but after analyzing the relationship closer, I realized that Janette has the ability to perceive love, desire, and human nature because of her self control to accept that she must endure life alone. I loved her concluding sentence, which states, "...she learned one of lives most precious lessons, that true happiness consists not so much in the fruitition of our wishes as in the regulation of our desires and the full development and right culture of our whole natures." I wonder if Frances had someone in mind while writing this or just the women population in general....I also ponder her role in this story, would she be Janette or Laura, she was married briefly, but it seems to me that her independence would lead her more towards the character of Janette, what do you think??