Mr. Sommers is an invisible force throughout the story. The reader never meets Mrs. Sommers’s husband, and it is unclear whether he is dead or alive, but he is a strong patriarchal symbol in Mrs. Sommers’s story. It is clear that Mr. Sommers is of a lower class ranking to Mrs. Sommers because she has experienced a social and financial demotion since her marriage to him, a situation that their neighbors gossip about ceaselessly. Although Mrs. Sommers doesn’t like to dwell on her past, it is apparent that this has brought her some unhappiness. Mrs. Sommers’s life is unmistakably and materially bound up in her (inferior) position as wife to Mr. Sommers. This is exemplified through the recurrent use of “Mrs. Sommers”; her first name is never revealed and so, even in her own story, her identity and subjectivity continue to be subsumed by her relation to a man.
Mr. Sommers Quotes in A Pair of Silk Stockings
The A Pair of Silk Stockings quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Sommers or refer to Mr. Sommers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Quotes
The neighbors sometimes talked of certain “better days” that little Mrs. Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time—no second of time to devote to the past.
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Mr. Sommers Quotes in A Pair of Silk Stockings
The A Pair of Silk Stockings quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Sommers or refer to Mr. Sommers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Quotes
The neighbors sometimes talked of certain “better days” that little Mrs. Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time—no second of time to devote to the past.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
