This passage appears during Grace Watts’s funeral, when the villagers offer their stories about her to Mr. Watts. With this process of communal storytelling—in which people come together to collaboratively put together the pieces of her life—Grace is finally “included in the village.” The fact that this inclusion is the result of cooperative narration implies that storytelling can either create or destroy divisive situations. When Grace was alive, the villagers didn’t know how to conceive of her; they didn’t “understand” her odd behavior, thus deciding that she “was mad.” It’s significant that Matilda says this conclusion was “convenient,” since the…