Elsie Ashby

Although Elsie Ashby does not appear as human character, she plays an increasingly important role during the story.

Elsie Ashby, née Corder, was married to Kenneth Ashby for twelve years before she died about three years ago, at which point the story begins. She gave birth to two children.

Elsie is described as “distant, self-centred woman" with a “coldly beautiful face”. It is pretty evident that she must have been the dominant, almost ruling element within the marriage to Kenneth. Not only Kenneth’s nature lets us draw that conclusion but also the fact that he was “more like an unhappy lover than a comfortably contented husband”. Because Elsie hated travelling, “she was always finding pretexts to prevent” going anywhere deepens the impression of a rigid and authoritative woman in life. Her desire for controlling and manipulating Kenneth seems to persist beyond death. The goal of Elsie’s letters is clearly to persuade him to abandon Charlotte and to follow her into her world, into death. The only two words Charlotte can decipher at the end of the story – “mine” and “come” – recapitulate Elsie’s nature as well as her aim: Elsie, an egocentric woman, is annoyed by the fact that Kenneth married again, she is probably even. Therefore, she tenaciously requests him to way to “come” to her.

Key phrases:

- She does not appear as a human being in the story, but she nevertheless plays a very important role

- Her death is about three years passed when the story begins

- She is the first wife of Kenneth Ashby with whom she had two children

- During her lifetime she was a dominant wife, controlling and manipulating Kenneth, described as being distant and self-centered

- She is the presumed author of the grey letters