The Old Nurse's Story

Hester is the “Old Nurse” who narrates the story. In the frame of the narrative, she addresses the children in her care: the latest generation of children she has cared for over a lifetime of service in the same family. Telling a personal anecdote from her younger days in the first-person, she is the story’s heroine who saves her young orphan charge from the draw of malevolent ghosts and also from the danger of being subsumed into a decaying noble family. When Hester admits in the opening sentences of her story that she comes from a poor, northern village, she creates authority for herself as a narrator. Her work ethic, her courage, her savvy problem-solving skills, and her unfailing devotion to her young charge all contribute to a sense of Hester’s reliability as a narrator and also to her moral authority as a character. Her, youth, commonsense, and poor countrywoman’s lack of sophistication combine to create a sense of veracity and naivety.

The child Rosamond’s character is a device to set the events of the ghost story in motion. She ages from an infant to a small child of perhaps four or five over the course of the main tale, and the frame