Hope Benham: A Story for Girls — Reading Notes

Dialogue as a Tool of Character

Perry uses dialogue to reveal character with economy. When Dolly Dering presses Hope to participate in a musicale, Hope's replies are brief and evasive: "I don't think I can." Dolly's persistence—"whipping out that tablet with a 'Now, then, give an account of yourself' air"—prompts her brother Jimmy to call her "the biggest bully I ever met." The quarrel that follows exposes Dolly's tearful defensiveness and Jimmy's bluntness, while Mrs. Dering's hushed admonition—"Children, children, stop quarrelling, right here in public!"—underscores the social proprieties that govern their world. Hope's own voice remains largely unheard in this exchange, her reticence a counterpoint to the Dering family's voluble self-assertion.

The Violin as a Marker of Identity

Hope's violin is not merely a prop but a carefully specified object. Dolly reports that it "cost enough" and is "a regular Cremona," made by "an Italian who was a pupil of Stradivari." Jimmy's excited response—"to see a real old Cremona would be worth while"—and his digression about imitations signal the violin's cultural weight. The instrument's provenance, traced through an old teacher and a brother in Paris, links Hope to a lineage of craftsmanship and artistry that transcends her modest circumstances. Perry does not describe the violin's appearance; instead, she lets its reputation and the characters' reactions define its significance.

Setting as Social Commentary

The opening chapter draws a sharp geographical and social line: "In Riverview were manufactories, locomotives, and iron-works... But in Brookside were only fine suburban residences." The railroad station of each town mirrors its inhabitants—Brookside's "fine and elegant stone structure" versus Riverview's "plain little wooden building." This binary is not merely backdrop; it shapes the characters' interactions. The Brookside girls' surprise that arbutus grows "so near Boston as that" betrays their limited awareness of the neighboring town. Perry uses setting to dramatize class distance without explicit editorializing, letting the physical details speak for themselves.

Reticence and Revelation in Narrative Voice

Perry's narrator often withholds direct access to Hope's interiority, especially in early scenes. When Dolly interrogates her, the narrative reports only Hope's spoken words and a few gestures—"glancing up from her contemplation of the flowers to the flower-seller." The reader must infer Hope's feelings from her brevity and from others' reactions. Later, when Mrs. Dering recalls meeting Hope's father in Paris, the information arrives secondhand, filtered through memory and speculation. This indirect method builds curiosity about Hope's inner life while aligning the reader with the limited perspective of the Dering family. The effect is to make Hope's eventual emergence as a musician and individual all the more striking.

Readers attentive to Perry's craft will notice how she weaves economic detail, musical lore, and social friction into a narrative that resists easy sentiment. The arbutus, the Cremona, the stations—each carries weight beyond its immediate function. Hope herself remains partly opaque, a figure whose reserve invites interpretation. This edition preserves the original illustrations by Frank T. Merrill, which capture key moments—Hope with her violin, the flower-selling scene—that complement Perry's verbal textures.

There’s something about Hope’s quiet holding of her violin—that dutiful, almost lonely grip on beauty—that keeps returning to me these days, the way old songs do. It reminds me of how Hope Benham lingers, and how another tale of The Little Colonel in Arizona — Reading Notes carries a similar undercurrent of growing into one’s own, not loudly, but by degrees. Time feels softer when I think of these young women.