Punting (The Pretext)

The term “punting” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637) shows up when Mrs. Margaret Ransom looks at the pictures Guy Dawnish brought her. In one picture Guy Dawnish is punting a girl in a flapping hat (Lewis, 1968, p. 637) and Mrs. Margaret Ransom asks herself if the girl in the punt is Gwendolen Matcher (Lewis, 1968, p. 638). According to Hornby (2015) a punt is “a long shallow boat with a flat bottom and square ends which is moved by pushing the end of a long pole against the bottom of the river” (p. 1247).

Reading that Gwendolen Matcher and Guy Dawnish are in such a punt together gives their relationship a romantic touch whereby the reader can understand the reaction of Mrs. Margaret Ransom to the picture and to Guy Dawnish’s behavior (“of the whole group, he had left only this member unnamed” (Lewis, 1968, p. 638)).

Sources:

Hornby, A. S. (2015). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, R. W. B. (1968). The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.