Abstract

Character in the Making

The article focuses on three books, "Three's a Crowd," by William Caine; "The Enlightenment of Paulina," by Ellen Wilkins Tompkins and "The World and Thomas Kelly," by Arthur Train. The first one is a story of somewhat surprising effect. The situation is unpromising from the outset-the headlong mating of a conventional Englishman and an over-coddled American girl with an impossible mother. "The Enlightenment of Paulina," begins with a situation of unpleasant "realism" of a wife who loathes and repels the physical approaches of the husband she has married for mainly sordid reasons, the reader is led by way of an atmosphere of Southern village comedy and romance to a conclusion characterised with self-sacrifice and spiritual generosity.