Patty's Perversities — Reading Companion

A Heroine Who Reads Her Own Mind—Poorly

Patty’s internal monologue in Chapter I reveals a character who analyzes her own motives with comic precision. She hopes Tom Putnam will ask her to the picnic “so I can snub him,” then admits he always “come[s] out superior.” This self-awareness does not prevent her from misreading every encounter. When Tom appears on the piazza, she expects him to intuit her softened mood; instead, she calls him cold. The narrator notes that “the sudden changes in Patty were incomprehensible to him,” and that she is “a thousand times more displeased with herself than with him.” The excerpts thus show a courtship comedy driven not by external obstacles but by the heroine’s own perversity—a trait the title announces.

Theatricals, Letters, and the Currency of Affection

Patty’s world includes amateur theatricals, notes exchanged between lovers, and a running joke about keeping letters. Tom preserves Patty’s notes as “exceptions” to his rule; she demands them back; he counters that she must have cared to keep his. The exchange turns on a postscript she wrote after a quarrel, which he reads aloud. These small artifacts—a note, a postscript, a bundle of papers—become tokens in a battle of wits. The catalog subject “Courtship -- Fiction” fits, but the excerpts emphasize the performance of courtship: the picnic invitations, the span, the theatricals. Patty’s world is one where feelings are hidden behind figures of speech, and where a lover’s self-restraint is mistaken for coldness.

Setting and Voice: A Seaside Comedy of Manners

The excerpts place the action on a piazza, in a cottage, with references to a “rustic road” and a church at Samoset. The dialogue is peppered with arch asides: “It is a pity he isn’t—I mean I wish I liked him better.” The narrator uses phrases like “as mischievous fortune chose to have it” and “the lover’s eyes shone with a wistful tenderness.” This is not the broad social canvas of a national survey; it is a localized, almost stage-like comedy. The catalog subjects list “United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century,” but the excerpts show a specific, intimate setting—likely a New England coastal town—and a focus on a small circle of characters. The voice is light, ironic, and attentive to the nuances of flirtation.

Readers should attend to the gap between what Patty says and what she feels—the narrator often supplies the truth she hides. The excerpts offer no resolution, only a series of missteps and reconciliations. The novel’s title promises perversity, and the opening chapters deliver it in the form of a heroine who schemes against her own happiness. The catalog subjects may suggest a broader study of American customs, but the text itself is a focused, witty portrait of one young woman’s romantic education.

There’s something about Patty’s half-serious scheming that stayed with me long after I closed it—that quiet ache of wanting things to matter more than they do. I found a similar, softer echo in The Stickit Minister's Wooing, and Other Galloway Stories — Story, Setting & Ideas, where the small towns hold their own gentle absurdities, and the people, like Patty, just keep trying. It felt like remembering a place I’d never been.