Consider the ways Carter uses Grandma Chance and Kitty in the novel.

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0November 24 2004                                                 Anna Carlisle

Consider the ways Carter uses Grandma Chance and Kitty in the novel.

Carter uses the characters of Grandma Chance and Kitty in a variety of ways and for various purposes.  They are both characters the reader is intended to like but are presented differently.  The reader can see Grandma interacting with other characters as the girls grow up and Dora has clear opinions about her character.   As Dora and the reader never actually get to ‘meet’ Kitty, her role in the girl’s lives is less prominent so the reader has to make up their own minds about what she is like

Both character’s pasts are surrounded by mystery.  Because Dora never knew her mother, she doesn’t really know what she was like:

‘We don’t even know what she looked like, there isn’t a picture’

The mystery surrounding Kitty’s past is sad: the reader feels sorry for Dora as her mother never got to see her growing up.  In contrast, Grandma appears to have had a more exotic, fun past, which the reader and Dora can accept as part of her character:

‘Her dancing was the only clue she gave about her past.’

This similarity is significant as it forces the reader to compare the two characters.  Although the twins are blood related to Kitty they do not know her at all.  However, they know and love Grandma very well, even though they aren’t biologically related.  Carter seems to be drawing the reader’s attention to these relationships: the Chance family aren’t blood related but they love each other and are very close.  However, although the Hazard family are biologically related, they are weak and dysfunctional.  By presenting the pasts of between Kitty and Grandma in similar ways, Carter seems to be addressing the issue of whether a family necessarily has to be biologically related to love and care for each other.

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Furthermore, the mystery surrounding the two characters connects them with the reoccurring theme throughout the novel of fairy stories.  Many events and characters can be connected to common make-believe stories.  One example is Perry:

That when our father denied us, peregrine gathered up the orphan girls, pressed us so close, we brushed against his waistcoat.’

Here, carter has changed from present tense to describing herself in the third person: it is as if she is describing someone else or telling a fairy story.  Also the fact that she has referred to the ‘orphan girls’ is related to the idea of ...

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