The Science Mistress Character Analysis

The Science Mistress is another teacher at the school where Miss Meadows works. She is pale with honey-colored hair and has a sweet manner that Miss Meadows believes is insincere. She and Miss Meadows have a conversation about the chilly autumn weather at the beginning of the story that Miss Meadows interprets as a hostile and smug inquisition about Miss Meadows’s emotional state. When Miss Meadows remembers getting engaged to Basil, she particularly recalls the Science Mistress being surprised that a handsome young man like Basil would want to marry Miss Meadows. When Miss Meadows imagines it becoming known at the school that Basil has broken off their engagement, she particularly dreads having the Science Mistress know what has happened. She believes it would be better to quit her job and disappear entirely rather than face whatever judgment the Science Mistress and the girls would have for her once it is known that her engagement is broken. While Miss Meadows paints the Science Mistress as being cruel, judgmental, and insincere, Mansfield never confirms that Miss Meadows’s impression of the woman is accurate—it’s possible that the science teacher is perfectly nice and Miss Meadows is projecting her fears.