The Unclassed

It told him that Maud's resolve was immutable, and added that aunt and niece, having become members of "the true Church," were about to join a sisterhood in a midland town, where their lives would be devoted to work of charity. Not many days after this, Ida, in London, received a letter, addressed in a hand she knew well.

School violence, Ida's fall, Waymark's divided loyalty, Casti's trap, and the twin endings of sisterhood and restored love fuse into a class-stigma plot with dual release, so plot scores 87.

"How is your wife?" asked his friend, after watching the melancholy face for a while. "She said her headache was worse to-night." "Curiously," observed Waymark, with a little acidity, "it always is when you have to leave home."

Waymark, Casti, and the offstage Harriet are individuated by acid diagnosis of domestic power — restless agent against weak husband under headache tyranny — so cast scores 88.

Mr. Woodstock was not so indifferent with regard to Waymark's failure to bring the rents as the young man supposed. … But Mr. Woodstock had quite special reasons for wishing to see his agent before the following morning; he desired to assure himself once more that Waymark would not fail to be at the prison punctually.

Thirty-eight chapters of Academy and lodging grind; prison timing accelerates, but rent and household dilations slow the middle, so pace scores 81.

There was strange disorder in Miss Rutherford's schoolroom, wont to be the abode of decorum. True, it was the gathering-time after the dinner-hour, and Miss Rutherford herself was as yet out of sight; but things seemed to be going forward of a somewhat more serious kind than a game of romps among the children.

Direct schoolroom report — screams, crowding, decorum broken — without sentimental childhood haze, so prose scores 86.

The ruling spirit of the Academy was Mrs. Tootle. Her husband's constitutional headache, and yet more constitutional laziness, left to her almost exclusively the congenial task of guiding the household, and even of disciplining the school.

School, Academy, rent routes, prison gate — institutions that enclose the unclassed mapped as rooms under petty tyranny, so world scores 88.

There were screams and sobbings, hysterical cries for help; some of the little girls were crowding round an object in one corner of the room, others appeared to be getting as far away from it as possible, hiding their pale faces in their hands…

Childhood violence as origin scene establishes Ida's force before adult stigma arrives — inviting in shock without melodrama alone — so hook scores 86.

There was a flush on her face as she began to read; but presently came the pallor of a sudden joy almost too great to be borne. The letter was a long one, containing the story of several years of the writer's life, related with unflinching sincerity, bad and good impartially set down…

Unclassed life treated as a social formation requiring sincere autobiography for release — not mere individual vice narrative — so innov scores 90.

…leading up to words which danced in golden sunlight before her tear-dimmed eyes. For an hour she sat alone, scarce moving. Yet it seemed to her that only a few minutes were allowed to pass before she took her pen and wrote.

Maud sealed in sisterhood; Ida answers Waymark's unflinching letter at once — release as mutual truth-telling rather than wedding pageantry — so ending scores 85.