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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Yellow Halo:
Howard, returning home after a long absence, is met at the door not by his father but by an unfamiliar woman. Smith uses visual imagery and simile in this passage to present this woman as a delicate and ghostlike figure. When she answers the door, Howard greets her:
‘Hello, dear,’ she replied serenely, and pressed on with her smile. Her hair, in the manner of old English ladies, was both voluminous and transparent, each golden curl (blue rinses having recently vanished from these isles) like gauze through which Howard could see the hallway behind.
Howard is expecting his father, and so he’s already disoriented when he sees this unknown person standing before him. The image of the woman’s hair as being “voluminous and transparent” creates a glowing, soft frame around her face, which contributes to how unreal she seems. Her presence feels faint and ghostly, almost absorbed by the space she occupies as she “presses on with her smile.” Smith uses this imagery to blur the figure into the background of the house. She’s more part of the building than she is a character, and she seems to belong to it in the way that its dingy wallpaper does.
The simile “each golden curl […] like gauze” reinforces this sense of fragility and dreaminess. Gauze is a thin, sheer fabric that is used to veil or protect what lies behind it. This woman’s hair is not just light in color but actually translucent. It creates an effect where Howard sees through her, rather than seeing her, turning her into a sort of visual filter for the “hallway behind.”
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