The characters personalities are very significant in the story. Molly’s husband seems to be a greedy and boasting person who does not care at all of her wife feelings and only tries to show off:
”He had already told the hotel-
keeper about the samphire, and
he had said how he had recognized
it at once from lower down […]
although he had only seen specimens
in a hortus siccus and illustrations
in books”.
He made his wife call him “Lacey” and treat him like his lord and master. Meanwhile, Molly seems to have two different personalities during the narration. At first, she is shown as a cautious, scared and distrustful woman, who can not be without his husband and who is afraid of heights.
This can be seen in the following quote, when her husband makes her lean over the cliff to look down:
“Heights terrified her, always had.
She could not close her eyes; that
only made it worse. She stared
unseeing, while the brilliant air and
and the sea and the noise of the sea
assaulted her terrified mind and she
clung insanely to the thin grass.”
Nevertheless, at the end of the story, her personality changes, and she turns to be fed up of her husband, tired of him telling her what to do. She thinks he is annoying and does not stand anymore her husband’s attitude. As a consequence, she tries to kill him.
“She was already there, close to him (…)
God give me strengths, but as she pushed
him she felt her arms weak like jelly.”
On the one hand, in the first quote, Molly does not understand her husband. Why does he find it interesting to look down the cliff while she thinks it is so terrifying? His husband bossing attitude is also shown, for example, when he shouts at her “Go on, oh, go on…”. Molly now thinks his voice is an “unceasing dumb cry”. On the other hand, in the second quote, we can spot the consequences of what Lacey has been doing to her. She almost murdered him and he has lost her forever, because she does not want to share her life with him anymore. That is why the book says that “He had fallen of a cliff all right”.
To our mind, the story is mostly written in the omniscient point of view which enables the writer to present the inner thoughts and feelings of all his characters. We are not only able to know about Molly’s feelings, like what she thought of heights and how se hated his husband, but also the writer shows us her husband’s feelings and personality. This helps the reader to know more about the whole story than any single character in it.
All in all, we believe that the story leaves a strong impression on the reader. It deals with gender discrimination and shows people that both husband and wife should be respectful and kind to each other, because, otherwise, they will go separate ways and the marriage will not be sustained. In “Samphire”, the man’s attitude is terrible, and it almost ends up in him being killed by her.
