Blog #4

While reading “The Tenth of January” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, I could not help but recognize the constant repetition or the words red, crimson, and blood. The numerous amount of times these words were mentioned foreshadowed that there would be death or something bloody by the end of the story. It was ironic how everything was red, the fire, her cape… “The silent city steeped and bathed itself in rose-tints; the river ran red, and the snow crimsoned on the distant New Hampshire hills; Pemberton, mute and cold, frowned across the disk of the climbing sun, and dripped, as she had seen it drip before, with blood” (Phelps). Something else that I found ironic was the fact that although Asenath had not taken her crimson cape out in quite sometime she put it on before going to the mill. “She kissed him when she had tied on the red hood, and said good by to Dick, and told them just where to find the squash pie for dinner” (Phelps). Later that evening is when Asenath was caught in the collapsed burning mill. “One of her fingers, she saw, was gone, it was the finger which held Dick’s little engagement ring. The red beam lay across her forehead, and drops dripped from it upon her eyes” (Phelps). After all the repetitive blood, red, crimson imagery, Asenath eventually dies in her red cape which too is very ironic and proves the foreshadowing throughout the story.