Change in the Midst of a Standstill In the novel The Small Room, the protagonist Lucy Winter undergoes a series of events that helped her to understand her life’s purpose. After a broken engagement, she tried to piece together what her life was supposed to look like. At first, Lucy questioned whether Appleton was the place she belonged. Even though on paper she was more than qualified, in life she was living with internal chaos. “Would she find she had a true vocation? Did she belong in this peculiar order” (13)? Throughout her journey of self-discovery, Lucy forms key relationships at Appleton which prove to be significant components that aid in the reshaping of her life. Before delving into the relationships which Lucy forms at Appleton, it is important to take a look at what kind of relationship she had with herself. The way a person interacts with individuals on a daily basis, is oftentimes a reflection of how he or she may feel about themselves. For instance, it is fitting that Lucy’s last name happened to be winter because her demeanor at the beginning of the novel reminded me of the winter season. When snow falls, it looks like a protective element that has been draped across the land. Then, when the snow melts, it washes away what is not needed and leaves behind what is supposed to be left to grow and blossom. Just like snow becomes a protective covering, so does Lucy’s disposition in order to protect her heart.
Accepting the position at Appleton not only formed the beginning of Lucy’s self-discovery, but also served as protection from dealing with losing the people in her life. John, for instance, was not the only man in her life that she had lost; she also lost her father. Lucy uncovered how deeply this loss affected her when she began to think about how much care he did not put into her. He gave more attention to his cabinet making instead. “There had been hours lately when she had begun to miss acutely the father she never had; at the time of his death her love affair with John had shut out grief, had immunized her. Now that too was finished, she felt doubly deprived” (14). Nonetheless, her father’s death still served as a lesson to her students. “You will discover,” she added with a smile, “that you appreciate teachers rather a long time after you have suffered from them” (34). Lucy’s loss was now replaced by connections to the faculty and her students. Lucy’s first encounter with the faculty at Appleton was at Hallie Summerson’s home. The temperament at the gathering was overly cordial and made Lucy feel a bit out of place. At this point in her life she wanted to be surrounded by truth and honesty.
The conversation seemed to Lucy so mannered and unreal that she felt incapable of uttering a word. It was as if everyone, except possibly Harriet Sommerson, were playing a role, and she suspected that even Hallie Summerson’s brusque naturalness might be a mask, a slightly subtler mask than those the others had chosen to wear. (20)
She sat next to Henry Atwood who seemed quite anxious. His wife used an appropriate metaphor to describe how he may have been feeling at the gathering. “Henry feels like a small cock in a yard of huge hens” (17). Although his wife’s comment may have seemed like a playful dig, it was evident that the sincerity of his nervousness was real. He was just attempting to fit in just like the other new professors and was trying to figure out exactly how to do that. Lucy grew fond of the genuineness she saw in him when he talked about his former college in Michigan. Henry was commenting on how thankful he was to be a part of Appleton, as opposed to his former conservative school, where even smoking was considered a sin. Since he and his wife were smokers, Maria asked, “Didn’t it make you feel like awful snobs” (26)? Henry humbly replied, “We were very uncomfortable” (26). Lucy was enamored by his sincerity and was glad to meet a person who held this quality.
Lucy saw in Hallie Summerson the kind of teacher she wanted to be. Hallie was not a woman of many words, yet she was able to captivate her students and make them think. Her students were excited about what they were learning in class and wanted to take in everything Hallie had to say. They would even stay after the school bell to ensure that they did not miss her words.
Never, Lucy felt sure, would Hallie Summerson be able to speak to one person as she now did to sixty. Something streamed out of her that was absolutely open, passionate, of an intensity that made shivers go up and down Lucy’s spine. It was the freeing of a daimon, as surely as the writing of a poem springs from the freeing of the poet’s daimon. It surrounded Hallie Summerson with the aura of a person set apart, lonely and—Lucy half-smiled at the word, but uttered it to herself nevertheless—sacred. (116)
As Lucy got ready to meet her students for the first time, she began to reflect on her life thus far. “To prepare for this first class, she found herself exploring and recovering areas in herself that had been blotted out by the last years. She had been living in someone else, now she must draw on herself” (31). This would enable her to positively influence her students just like her former teachers did in the past. After her initial moments of nervousness, Lucy began to see that she was undoubtedly connected to her twelve students.
She was discovering that she could talk to these girls with perfect directness, in a way she had never been able to talk to anyone before in her life, as if the group of twelve were itself an entity, a delightfully giving personality, and as if she—freed by the strangely intimate yet impersonal circumstance—could give it something of herself that she would never be able to give to an individual human being. (34) Although Lucy knew that she would have a strong connection with her students in the classroom, she did not want personal interaction outside the classroom. Lucy wanted to keep the classwork of students, and their personal lives, very separate. However, certain students’ personal lives inevitably managed to unfold within the confines of her office, which is the “small room” being spoken of in the title of the novel. Pippa, who happens to be my favorite character, uses Lucy’s office to express her deepest feeling and shed some tears along the way. At first, Lucy does not know what to do with Pipa. She seemed so unstable with her crying and over dramatizing. However, she later was able to see Pippa as a young, vulnerable girl who was oftentimes misunderstood. In fact, she at one point reminded Lucy of herself when she was young.
As usual those large eyes had filled with tears, and Lucy felt wildly impatient. She waited while Pippa apparently measured the leap she was about to take. The image came to Lucy’s mind of herself as a child crouching before the broad jump, measuring it with her eyes, waiting for the moment when she would have the courage to force her heavy weight through the air, feel the knees release from the tense spring in them—and she smiled. (132) The connection between Lucy and Jane was quite surprising to me. Although Lucy turned Jane in for plagiarism, she still empathized with her despite the gravity of her actions. Lucy was able to see that this was a troubled girl who lived trapped by her own brilliant mind and the need to always attain perfection. She made a decision that would forever change the course of her life due to the amount of pressure she placed on herself. Jane said, “I just got tired of being pushed so hard, tired of the whole racket, tired of having a brain, tired of coming up to the jump and taking it again and again. Lost my nerve” (102). Lucy knew that people had let Jane down and failed to nourish the whole person. Jane was now left to pick up the pieces of what was left of her life.
It had been made abundantly clear in the last hour that teaching is first of all teaching a person. Somewhere along the line, someone had failed with Jane. Carryl Cope? That was Jane’s own excuse and it would be dangerous indeed to jump to any such conclusions. Yet Lucy felt shaken. Was anyone safe from the perils of such responsibility? (104) Lucy and Carryl’s connection mostly had to do with Jane. Lucy expected Carryl to react in a loving and protective manner when it came to her prize student. However, Carryl cared more about the reputation of the school as opposed to the well-being of her troubled student. Lucy saw in Carryl the teacher she did not want to be. She did not want to be a selfish human being that thought about her own needs even when her student was desperately crying out for help. Carryl said, “Where did I go wrong? What happened? Am I crazy to think that for Jane Seamen to behave as a thief is a personal attack; that, consciously or not, it is an attack on me” (125)? Clearly Carryl was in denial of the pressure that Jane had been under. So just like Pippa, Lucy was about to take a leap and try to show Carryl what she refused to see. “Part of Jane wants to fail is my guess, wants to commit suicide, if you will. Part of her wants to be punished. Don’t you see, if she comes out of this without paying the price, she will have to face the burden of her brilliance again—and your expectations of it” (127). Lucy’s journey in The Small Room helped her to understand her life’s purpose through the connections at Appleton. After her broken engagement, she was able to see herself as an individual without John, but did not close herself completely off from having a family one day. She too wanted to have it all just like the young women at Appleton were being taught they could. That “small room” otherwise known as her office, connected her to the brilliant young female minds that would one day contribute to the world. Lucy knew that she would always want to be a part of their journey.

Works Cited
Sarton, May. The Small Room. New York: Norton, 1961. Print.