Mrs. Pruitt

Submitted by jbc@ku.edu on Fri, 2018-01-05 15:40
Text: 
"That Will Be Fine"
Character Key: 
Mrs. Pruitt 1
Display Name: 
Mrs. Pruitt
Sort Name: 
Pruitt, Mrs.
Race: 
White
Gender: 
Female
Class: 
Middle Class
Rank: 
Minor
Vitality: 
Alive
First Mentioned: 
Mottstown|Mottson in "That Will Be Fine" (Location)
Biography: 

The wife of the President of the Compress Association in Mottstown is having an affair with Rodney, the uncle of the story's narrator. According to gossip, Mrs. Pruitt would have been an easy conquest for Rodney. However, Rodney's sisters Louisa and Sarah claim that their brother was led astray by Mrs. Pruitt. Their opinion perhaps says more about them than about her, but at least according to Louisa, Mrs. Pruitt is a "Painted common thing, traipsing up and down the streets all afternoon alone in a buggy, and the one and only time Mrs. Church called on her, and that was because of Mr. Pruitt's position alone, Mrs. Church found her without corsets on and Mrs. Church told me she smelled liquor on her breath'" (274).

Note: 
NOTE, SR: I deleted Unnamed Mottstown Woman: This character is a Mottstown woman whose husband has discovered her infidelity with Rodney and her willingness to take the family jewelry and run off with him. She is desperate to warn Rodney: "She kept on trying to say something, only I couldn't tell what it was, and besides she never had time to say very much anyhow because a man ran out from behind another bush and grabbed us both," holding her by the mouth (283). It seems unlikely that there's another woman in the immediate neighborhood with whom Rodney is currently having an affair, so just because Georgie is too young to know it's someone named Mrs. Pruitt - just as he doesn't know about sex - doesn't mean the woman Rodney is planning to run away with isn't Mrs. Pruitt.
Individual or Group: 
Individual
Character changes class in this text: 

digyok:node/character/16380