The new doctor (All Souls')

The new doctor is a minor character in “All Souls’” who first appeared in the story to treat Sara Clayburn’s fractured ankle when she wakes up after the strange incident, replacing Dr. Selgrove, who has to take care of another patient. In contrast to Dr. Selgrove, the new doctor is shy and therefore the protagonist “[…] decided that she did not much like him.”[1] While treating Sara, the new doctor is drawn into a discussion regarding the lost thirty-six hours between Sara Clayburn and her maid Agnes. Agnes uses the new doctor to support her argument that the pain has made Sara “[…] a little confused […],”[2] and he affirms this statement by nodding. Furthermore, the new doctor verifies that Agnes was in process of starting the fire again when Sara argues that she made the fire the previous night by herself while Agnes claims that she did it. Afterwards, the “[…] new doctor was evidently embarrassed at being drawn into an unintelligible controversy with which he had no time to deal.”[3] Consequently, he explains that he had also Dr. Selgrove’s patients to visit, gives Agnes the prescriptions and leaves.

The minor character of the new doctor served primarily as a substitute for Dr. Selgrove, but also, through apparently collaborating with Agnes, strengthens the narrative’s claustrophobic paranoia.

[1] Edith Wharton, “All Souls’,” in: The Demanding Dead – More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. Peter Haining (London: Peter Owen Publishers, 2007), 199.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 200.