Hill Street, Wentworth (The Pretext)

Hill Street is a street in Wentworth where the Ransoms live. Further, it is the place “where the university people congregated” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637). The street is adorned with “prim flowerless grass-plots” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637) and there are elm trees growing laterally. The houses have white porches and protruding shingled gables which seem irrelevant (Lewis, 1968, p. 637). It is also the street on which Mrs. Margaret Ransom sees her husband coming home from work which, at the end of the short story, functions as a metaphor for the length of her remaining life (Lewis, 1968, p. 654).