In ‘The Son’s Veto’ it goes on about a story of a woman in a wheelchair, with beautiful braided hair, and it is basically a story of the relationships revolving around this woman, and with her. This story starts off with a full-blown introduction of this woman, with a description of her hair, and her stance, and her features. Then it goes onto her past, like a premonition, describing the village of where she lived, and the emotions of the goings on around the village. We meet Sophy; Sophy is the woman from the present, with the beautiful braided hair. She is a strong character, the parlour maid in the parson’s house. Then we move on to meet another character, Sam. He is the gardener of Sophy’s acquaintance. ‘He was a young gardener of her acquaintance. She told him the particulars of the late event, and they stood silent,’ this shows us there is some kind of awkwardness between these two people. They begin to converse. They start walking towards Sophy’s mothers door, with Sam presenting his arm around her waist, as you can see from this, Sam likes her in a sexual way, but from Sophy’s reaction, ‘she gently removed it’ the feeling isn’t mutual.
We move on to meet the Parson, Mr Twycott. He likes Sophy in a sexual manner as well as Sam, but Mr Twycott doesn’t realise that until Sophy breaks her ankle carrying his tray downstairs when he is in ill health, so he asks her to marry him. ‘Sophy did not exactly love him, but she had a respect for him which almost amounted to veneration.’ This proves that there is some form of relationship here, in a loving, sexual and respectful way.
‘Mr Twycott new perfectly well that he had committed social suicide by this step’ he had married his parlour maid, for a parson to marry someone as lower class as a parlour maid in those days it was pure social suicide to even have some form of friendly relationship with anyone as lower class. All respect that Mr Twycott had with his fellow villagers, had now been lost due to this step in life he had just taken. They move to London, and they have one child, Randolph. Mr Twycott dies, and at that point, Sophy felt alone, drawn away. How was she able to handle her son without her husband? Randolph is quite grown up at this point; he’s at the age to understand emotions and to have feelings he can express in different forms. Randolph’s relationship with his mother isn’t very loving. He had a good relationship with his father, but now his father has gone, he has no one to give that respect and love to. His mother he believes is more lower class than him, Randolph goes to a grammar school, in those days it was quite a privilege to be getting an education.
A figure from Sophy’s past comes into light. Sam. Hes back and he wants Sophy more than ever. He wants her hand in marriage.
