Gwendolen Matcher (The Pretext)

Gwendolen Matcher is a woman from England who is only mentioned in the short story but never actually appears. It later turns out she is or rather was the fiancée of Guy Dawnish.

Gwendolen Matcher is from Wiltshire and the daughter of Samuel Matcher, Esq., of Armingham Towers, Wilts (Lewis, 1968, p. 648) and an heiress. She first appears while Mrs. Margaret Ransom looks at the photographs Guy Dawnish had handed her (Lewis, 1968, p. 637 - 38). On one picture there is a “girl in a flapping hat” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637) which hides her face while Guy Dawnish is “punting” (Lewis, 1968, p. 637) her on the river, which means he pushes them across the river in a boat with a pole (Hornby, 2015, p. 1247). Mrs. Margaret Ransom hates the flapping hat that hides the girls face (Lewis, 1968, p. 637). It is unknown to the reader in the first place why she does so but one can guess it is because she is jealous because she thinks it could also be Gwendolen Matcher, a beautiful girl appearing on another picture. On this other picture Gwendolen Matcher laughs together with Guy Dawnish which makes them seem happy and enjoying their time. If the girl in the punt is also her is never revealed to the reader. It later turns out she was engaged with Guy Dawnish while he was in Wentworth and that this engagement was dissolved by Guy Dawnish because of the unfortunate attachment he made in America. It is said that it “was not a positive engagement” (Lewis, 1968, p. 647) but that Guy Dawnish was always attached to her and that both families expected the marriage would take place. The engagement is dissolved by Guy Dawnish as he returns from Wentworth and the reader is not informed about her life after this point in the short story.

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.