The nurse at
Hooper's deathbed is Elizabeth, his former fiancee.
Not much mention of
Elizabeth is made at this point in the story, other than to name her as the nurse. This may be
because it is more important for Hooper's personal story arc for her to simply be present,
rather than to really do much of anything.
Hooper's choice to wear the
mysterious veil, obscuring his face, comes as much of a surprise to Elizabeth as it does to
everyone else. Like others, she asks Hooper to remove it for her, appealing to their personal
relationship. This was probably meant to fully round out the depiction of Hooper's resolution,
showing that no common or earthly temptation was enough to change his mind. However, Elizabeth
comes to fear the veil as others do, and breaks off the engagement when she sees that the veil
will always separate her from Hooper. Hooper finds it sad that a piece of cloth should have this
effect.
Elizabeth's presence at his bedside as he dies, with her affection
for him having "endured in secret" tells us that she never stopped caring for Hooper,
and while the veil had a powerful effect on his life, some people still saw him for who he was
and were not completely superficial about it. It also signifies that the veil had a permanent
isolating effect, preventing Hooper from having things that would have been available to him
whenever he wanted, had he taken off the veil.
No comments:
Post a Comment