Luella Miller quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary tradition best describes "Luella Miller"?

   • Naturalism
   • Correct answer: Gothic Horror
   • Transcendentalism
   • Modernism
   • Romanticism

   Gothic Horror fits best. The story opens on a house that no one in the village will enter, builds dread through a chain of unexplained deaths, gives us a woman who drains the life from everyone who serves her, and ends with the dead rising in the moonlight and the house burning. Freeman sets these Gothic elements in an ordinary New England village, which is why the story is often called New England Gothic.

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2. 2

   Question 2. At the opening of the story, why will no one in the village go near the old Miller house?

   • Its doors were bolted shut and its windows boarded over after Luella's funeral
   • The village minister preached that the house was cursed and forbade anyone to enter
   • Correct answer: An old woman who moved in hale and hearty was found dead in her bed a week later
   • Lydia Anderson keeps watch from across the road and chases away anyone who comes

   The only tenant after Luella was a friendless old woman who had been hale and hearty when she moved in; within seven days she was found dead, with a look of terror on her face. The latch is never lifted even though no bolt secures it, and the minister actually preached against superstition, but the fear prevailed. The village would choose the almshouse over that house.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Lydia says Luella was "as unbreakable as a willow" and walked the way a willow would if it could pull its roots free. What does the willow comparison suggest?

   • Correct answer: Luella survives by bending to everything, so nothing ever breaks her
   • Luella is tall and stern, towering over the people who serve her
   • Luella loves the brook and spends her long days walking alone beside it
   • Luella is weak and brittle, likely to snap at the first hard blow

   A willow bends in every wind and does not break. Luella yields to whatever happens, crying, fainting, letting others take charge, and comes through every loss untouched while the people around her wither. The simile, which pairs a strong yielding to fate with unbreakableness, defines her strength as softness itself.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How did Luella keep her job teaching the district school?

   • The school committee hired a trained assistant to run the classes for her
   • Erastus Miller sat in the schoolroom every day and kept the pupils in order
   • She taught only embroidery, which was all the committee expected of her
   • Correct answer: Lottie Henderson, one of the big girls, did the teaching while Luella sewed

   Lydia says Luella had hardly any education, so Lottie Henderson, a splendid scholar, did all the teaching while Luella sat back doing embroidery on a cambric handkerchief. The committee knew and winked at it. Lottie then faded away and died about a year after Luella arrived, the first in the long line of people who wore themselves out serving her.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What does Lydia remember about Erastus Miller's marriage to Luella?

   • He made Luella take over all of the cooking and washing once they were married
   • Correct answer: He did nearly all the housework and fell dying while getting her breakfast
   • He left the village for months at a time to cut and sell wood up north
   • He grew suspicious of Luella and asked Lydia to watch her while he worked

   Erastus just about worshiped Luella. He did the sweeping, washing, ironing and most of the cooking, and always got breakfast while she lay in bed. The year after the wedding he went into consumption of the blood, though it was not in his family, and he finally fell on the kitchen floor while getting breakfast. Lydia notes that Luella lived like a queen for all the work she did.

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6. 6

   Question 6. The word vampire never appears in the story. How does Luella seem to drain her victims instead?

   • She drinks their blood at night while the household lies asleep
   • She casts spells on them with charms she sews into their clothing
   • She slowly poisons the food that neighbors carry in for the sick
   • Correct answer: By letting them wait on her, while she stays fat and rosy herself

   No one is bitten. Luella feeds by being served: each person who cooks, sews, nurses and cleans for her grows pale and feeble, while after Lily's death she grows "as fat and rosy as ever." Her strength rises as theirs falls. Even the ending follows vampire logic: once no one will serve her, she weakens and dies too.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What was Luella's last name before she married Erastus?

   • Mixter
   • Correct answer: Hill
   • Babbit
   • Henderson

   Her maiden name was Hill. Lydia remarks that there was always a sight of l's in her name, married or single: Luella Hill, then Luella Miller. Mixter is Aunt Abby's name, Babbit is the neighbor family across the way, and Henderson is Lottie, the girl who did Luella's teaching.

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8. 8

   Question 8. During Luella's hysterics the night Aunt Abby's daughter leaves, what does Lydia notice?

   • Luella has fainted dead away and has to be laid flat on the floor
   • Luella is calling out for Erastus as if he were still alive in the house
   • Correct answer: Luella keeps a sharp lookout from the corner of one eye to see their reaction
   • Luella quietly slips the valerian into Aunt Abby's cup instead of her own

   Lydia says that while Luella seemed too sick to sense anything, she was "keepin' a sharp lookout" out of the corner of one eye to see how they took it. To Lydia that is proof the hysterics are at least partly a performance. Lydia then forces a dose of catnip tea and valerian down her throat. Luella's real faint comes later, when Mrs. Sam Abbot tells her the truth.

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9. 9

   Question 9. On the morning Aunt Abby lies dying, Luella says, "I never made the coffee in all my life." What makes this line ironic?

   • She has made the coffee every morning for Aunt Abby for many months
   • She is in fact begging Lydia to let her nurse her aunt back to health
   • Coffee was forbidden in the house because Erastus could not abide it
   • Correct answer: A woman is dying of overwork, and Luella can only miss her breakfast

   Luella comes in pink and white like a blossom and is puzzled that Aunt Abby is not up, because she does not smell the coffee. She then lists the people who made it for her: Erastus, then Lily, then Aunt Abby, which is also a list of the dead. The gap between what the reader knows and what Luella seems to notice is dramatic irony, and it makes Lydia angrier than anything else.

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10. 10

    Question 10. How does Maria Brown respond when people warn her about working for Luella?

    • Correct answer: She gets angry and calls Luella a poor, abused woman, too delicate to help herself
    • She thanks them and stops going over, though she still sends Luella warm suppers each night
    • She laughs at them and says she is far too strong to catch anything from Luella
    • She agrees with them but says the Doctor has paid her well to keep up the house

    Maria Brown, unmarried and living alone, offered to do Luella's washing, ironing and baking. When warned, she acted real mad and said Luella was "a poor, abused woman, too delicate to help herself," and that if she died helping those who could not help themselves, she would. Lydia adds the grim last words: and she did.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Lydia tells Luella that Maria Brown "ain't beholden to you to come over here and slave for you and kill herself." What theme does this line express?

    • Neighbors in a small village owe each other help whatever the cost
    • Wealthy families should pay fairly for the domestic work they receive
    • Correct answer: A helper has no duty to destroy herself serving someone who will not try
    • Grief over a husband can excuse a widow from her ordinary household work

    The story asks who is responsible when one person's helplessness becomes everyone else's job. Lydia's answer is blunt: Maria has her own home and her own washing, and nothing obliges her to slave for a woman just as able to work. The deaths stop only when the town finally refuses to serve Luella, which suggests the helpers carry some responsibility for the cycle too.

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12. 12

    Question 12. Lydia later wonders if Luella was "like a baby with scissors in its hand cuttin' everybody without knowin' what it was doin'." What does this image add?

    • It proves that Luella was a witch who planned each death with care
    • Correct answer: It raises the doubt that Luella may not have known the harm she did
    • It shows Lydia has forgiven Luella and now feels sorry for her past
    • It explains that Luella hurt the others on purpose out of jealousy

    Most of the time Lydia calls Luella a dreadful woman, but this image opens a real doubt: perhaps Luella was as unaware as a baby with scissors, harming everyone without understanding it. Freeman never settles whether Luella is a knowing predator or a helpless, hungry thing, and that unanswered question is part of the story's horror.

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13. 13

    Question 13. Lydia remembers Luella as "a slight, pliant sort of creature." What does "pliant" mean?

    • Stiff and slow to give way to pressure
    • Sly and quick to deceive other people
    • Brittle and apt to snap under strain
    • Correct answer: Bending easily; yielding to others

    Pliant means flexible, bending easily, and by extension easily yielding to others. It fits the willow image in the same sentence: Luella bends to fate and never breaks. Stiff and brittle are near opposites, and sly describes a trait some readers suspect in Luella but not what the word means.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Lydia Anderson is the only source for almost everything we learn about Luella. Which detail gives readers the strongest reason to question her account?

    • Correct answer: She grew up next door to Erastus, and folks once said he was courting her
    • She left the village for many years and heard the story secondhand
    • She admits she never once spoke to Luella face to face in her whole life
    • She tells the tale only once, to a stranger, before she suddenly dies

    Lydia grew up with Erastus, and folks used to say he was waiting on her before Luella came to teach. She denies it, but that history gives her a possible motive to blame Luella for his death. She is also the sole witness to Luella's sharp lookout and to the moonlit procession, and she says she did not expect to be believed. The outer narrator calls her truthful; readers may weigh both views.

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15. 15

    Question 15. What finally causes Luella's own decline?

    • Mrs. Sam Abbot reports her to the town for the death of Aunt Abby
    • Lydia moves in and forces her to do all of her own work each day
    • Correct answer: After the Doctor and Sarah die, nobody in town will lift a finger for her
    • She catches the same chill that Lydia caught carrying her bundles home

    After the Doctor dies and Sarah Jones follows a week later, "Not another soul in the whole town would lift a finger for her." A panic sets in, Luella has to carry her own bundles from the store, and she begins to droop just as her victims did. Without anyone to drain, she fades.

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16. 16

    Question 16. How old was Lydia Anderson when she died?

    • Seventy-six
    • Correct answer: Eighty-seven
    • Seventy-eight
    • Eighty-two

    Lydia Anderson died at eighty-seven. She stayed wonderfully hale and hearty until about two weeks before her death. The village that feared Luella's caretakers would die young saw the one woman who refused to serve her live longest of all.

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17. 17

    Question 17. In the sequel told by the villagers, what happens after Lydia Anderson dies?

    • Her neighbor moves into Luella's empty house and lives there for years
    • Correct answer: Luella's house burns down the next night, leaving stones, lilac and vines
    • The village pulls down Luella's house and plants a willow tree in its place
    • Lydia's own house across the road is found locked and empty the next day

    One bright moonlit evening Lydia cries out, runs across the street, and is found dead before the door of Luella's deserted house. The next night the old house burns to the ground. Only a few cellar stones, a lilac bush and, in summer, "a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds" remain.

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18. 18

    Question 18. The last sentence calls the morning glories "emblematic of Luella herself." Why are they a fitting symbol?

    • Correct answer: They are vines that cannot stand alone and must climb on something else
    • They are rare flowers that bloom only once in a long human lifetime
    • They are poisonous plants that the villagers avoided touching at all
    • They are the flowers that Erastus planted by the door on the day of the wedding

    Morning glories are climbing vines; they cannot hold themselves up and must twine around a fence or another plant. That is Luella exactly: lovely, clinging and dependent, living by leaning on others. The "helpless trail" among the weeds bookends the opening willow simile, and both are plants that survive by yielding or clinging rather than standing on their own.

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19. 19

    Question 19. Which description best fits how Freeman structures and voices the story?

    • Correct answer: A frame: an outer narrator introduces Lydia, who tells the tale in dialect
    • A diary kept by Luella Miller and discovered in the house after the fire
    • A series of letters sent between Mrs. Sam Abbot and her mother in Barre
    • A third-person account that moves freely into each caretaker's thoughts

    An outer narrator describes the feared house and introduces Lydia Anderson, whose thoughts were clothed in the "rude vernacular of her native village." Lydia then tells the story in her own voice, with words like wa'n't and swaller, and the outer narrator returns to tell the sequel. The plain regional voice makes the supernatural feel like local fact, and the frame lets the village's folklore outlive its last witness.

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20. 20

    Question 20. Lydia says Maria "ain't beholden to you." What does "beholden" mean?

    • Unknown or a stranger to someone
    • Freed from all ties to someone
    • Correct answer: Obligated or indebted to someone
    • Openly hostile toward someone

    Beholden means owing something to someone, under an obligation. Lydia's point is that Maria owes Luella nothing: no debt, no duty, no reason to work herself to death. Freed from ties is close to the opposite, and a stranger or an enemy is a different relationship altogether.

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21. 21

    Question 21. Many readers see a feminist critique in the story. Which reading best supports that view?

    • Luella proves that women are naturally too weak for any kind of work
    • Lydia is punished for never marrying by dying alone at Luella's door
    • Correct answer: The ideal of the delicate, dependent woman is shown to be deadly
    • The story argues that women should leave housework to their husbands

    Luella embodies the era's ideal of delicate, dependent femininity, and the men around her find it irresistible: Erastus just about worships her, and the young Doctor is "led away by a pretty face." Freeman makes that ideal literally fatal to everyone who props it up. Against Luella stands Lydia, unmarried, independent and strong in her arms, whom the story rewards with a long life.

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22. 22

    Question 22. Which statement about the story's publication and kind of horror is accurate?

    • Correct answer: It appeared in 1902, five years after Dracula, as a quiet tale without fangs
    • It appeared in 1850 as one of the earliest Gothic tales written in America
    • It appeared in 1925 as a magazine tale meant to parody vampire novels
    • It appeared in 1902 as a grisly tale full of graveyards and bloody bites

    Luella Miller appeared in Everybody's Magazine in December 1902 and was collected the next year in The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural. Coming five years after Bram Stoker's Dracula, it reimagines the vampire as a pretty woman in a village parlor. Its horror is quiet: no fangs, no graveyard, just a pattern of deaths everyone can see and nobody stops.

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23. 23

    Question 23. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • Lydia Anderson forced a cup of catnip tea mixed with valerian down Luella's throat.

      Happened

      During Luella's hysterics, Lydia ran home, mixed catnip tea with nearly half a wineglass of valerian, tipped Luella's head back and made her swallow it. Luella stopped crying and laughing and slept like a baby, while Aunt Abby lay awake all night.

    • Aunt Abby left to stay with her married daughter in Barre.

      Didn't happen

      Mrs. Sam Abbot wrote again and again and finally came in person, crying and nearly on her knees, but Aunt Abby would not stir one inch. She said Luella needed her and her daughter did not. Her daughter never saw her alive again.

    • Mrs. Sam Abbot told the Doctor there was nothing weak about Luella.

      Happened

      When the Doctor talked about Luella's weak heart, Mrs. Sam Abbot answered, "weak heart; weak fiddlesticks!" and said Luella had strength enough to hang onto other folks till she killed them.

    • Doctor Malcom married Luella shortly before he died.

      Didn't happen

      The Doctor wanted to be married first so he could leave what little he had to Luella, but he died before the minister could get there. Sarah Jones, the girl he hired to work for Luella, died a week afterward.

    • The boy who helped Luella teach after Lottie died later went mad.

      Happened

      One of the big boys took over Lottie's work. Lydia says folks blamed overstudy when he was taken crazy the year after Luella married, but she adds, but I don't know. Like Lottie, he paid a price for helping Luella.

    • The village minister preached that Luella Miller had been a witch.

      Didn't happen

      The minister did the opposite: he preached with covert severity against the sin of superstition. The fear survived anyway. Villagers did whisper that the days of witchcraft had come again after Maria Brown died, but that came from the townsfolk, not the pulpit.

    • Lydia fell sick with a chill the night after she carried Luella's bundles home.

      Happened

      Lydia could not stand watching Luella stagger home from the store, so she carried her bundles to the house. That night she was taken with a chill and was sick for two weeks, and Mrs. Babbit told her she was going to die on account of it.

    • Sarah Jones survived Luella and left the village afterward.

      Didn't happen

      Sarah Jones, the girl from out of town who swept, washed and helped Luella up and down the steps, died a week after the Doctor. She is one of the white figures Lydia sees leading Luella out of the house.

    • Lydia saw Luella's dead caretakers shining white in the moonlight as they led her away.

      Happened

      At midnight under a full moon, Lydia saw Luella going out of her door with Erastus, Lily, Aunt Abby, Maria, the Doctor and Sarah, all but Luella shining white and helping her along. When Lydia went in, Luella was dead on her bed.

    • Luella's house burned to the ground the night after Lydia was found dead at its door.

      Happened

      Lydia died at eighty-seven, found stretched on the ground before Luella's deserted house. The next night a red gleam of fire showed in the moonlight and the house burned, leaving only cellar stones, a lilac bush and the morning glories.

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