When Joe is reflecting on his visits to Louisa’s home, the narrator uses hyperbole and a metaphor to capture his view of Louisa’s decorations:
He came twice a week to see Louisa Ellis, and every time, sitting there in her delicately sweet room, he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace. He was afraid to stir lest he should put a clumsy foot or hand through the fairy web, and he had always the consciousness that Louisa was watching fearfully lest he should.
The hyperbole here—“he felt as if surrounded by a hedge of lace”—compares Louisa’s living room decorations to an imposing bush made of lace. While Louisa’s decorations are certainly lacy, this is clearly an exaggeration meant to capture how out-of-place Joe feels as a large, masculine man in a soft, feminine home.
The metaphor in the passage—in which Joe refers to Louisa’s lacy decorations as “the fairy web”—communicates how Joe feels he does not belong in this kind of “delicately sweet” space. Referring to it as a “web” also implies that Joe feels trapped in this room, as well as in his relationship with Louisa. The fact that he chooses to come and visit her despite how awkward and out-of-place he feels demonstrates how important it is to him to honor the promise he made to Louisa 14 years ago to marry her one day.
When introducing readers to Louisa’s dog Caesar—who has been tied up outside for 14 years, ever since he bit a neighbor—the narrator uses a metaphor, as seen in the following passage:
Caesar was a veritable hermit of a dog. For the greater part of his life he had dwelt in his secluded hut, shut out from the society of his kind and all innocent canine joys.
The metaphor here—in which Caesar is called a “veritable hermit”—shows how, in some ways, Caesar’s life parallels his owner’s. While Louisa is compared to a “nun” due to her celibate and solitary lifestyle, Caesar is compared to a “hermit” who lives in a “secluded hut, shut out from the society of his kind.” With her family members all dead and Joe off in Australia, Louisa has spent the past 14 years as isolated as Caesar has.
That said, there is an important difference between their hermit-like situations. While Louisa is choosing solitude because she finds freedom in this sort of social restriction—enjoying the daily maintenance of her home along with hobbies like distilling fragrances—Caesar is being forced into a lonely life “shut out from […] all innocent canine joys.” In juxtaposing these two experiences, Freeman demonstrates that she is aware of the fact that solitude is not always a positive. Rather than suggesting solitude is a universally beneficial experience for everyone, Freeman is showing that what is good for Louisa isn't good for everyone—like Caesar, some people may be harmed by it.
After Louisa sees Joe for the first time, she reflects on how much her life has changed since Joe left for Australia 14 years ago (and her family passed away), using a metaphor in the process:
In that length of time much had happened. Louisa’s mother and brother had died, and she was all alone in the world. But greatest happening of all—a subtle happening which both were too simple to understand—Louisa’s feet had turned into a path, smooth maybe under a calm, serene sky, but so straight and unswerving that it could only meet a check at her grave, and so narrow that there was no room for any one at her side.
The metaphor here—in which Louisa’s future is compared to a smooth, narrow path in the woods—communicates a lot about who she has become over the past 14 years and who she will continue to be. The fact that the path is described as “smooth” and “straight and unswerving” shows how Louisa is very comfortable with her life and confident in what she likes. While someone being on a bumpy or meandering path can metaphorically signal challenges or large changes, Louisa’s future is free from those things—she loves her simple, solitary life and wants to continue living this way until she dies.
That Louisa’s path is “so narrow that there was no room for any one at her side” is Freeman’s metaphorical way of communicating that Louisa is not only disinterested in Joe, but is disinterested in romantic relationships of any kind. In this way, Louisa is challenging the enormous pressure put on single women in her time to get married—she feels complete and whole without a husband or family.
