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Hyperbole
Explanation and Analysis—Joe’s Presence:
The first time that Joe visits Louisa at her home in the story, the narrator uses a hyperbole to capture Joe’s large presence, as seen in the following passage:
In about half an hour Joe Dagget came. She heard his heavy step on the walk, and rose and took off her pink-and-white apron […] She had barely folded the [apron] with methodical haste and laid it in a table-drawer when the door opened and Joe Dagget entered.
He seemed to fill up the whole room.
The hyperbole here—that Joe “fill[ed] up the whole room”—is, of course, not literal. It would be impossible for a man to fill up the entirety of a living room. The exaggerated language captures something important about how Louisa views Joe, however—rather than feeling bolstered by his presence, she feels overwhelmed by it. With his “heavy walk” and large size, Joe is, in some ways, the opposite of Louisa, who is small and dainty (as seen in the way she gently removes and folds her apron).
It’s notable that, while the societal story is that women desire this sort of large masculine presence, Louisa does not. She enjoys her feminine lifestyle and wants to have full control over her home. This is one of the reasons she feels glad to have a reason to end her engagement with Joe after seeing him with Lily.
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