Analysis Of Miss Adela Strangeworth In Shirley Jackson's The Possibility Of Evil

Imagine a town of blissful relationships. While everyone seems to be happy, a dark truth lurks beneath the deceptive appearance of an old lady. This lady goes by the name of Miss Adela Strangeworth. Adela, a character in the short story “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, appears as a nice old lady but is truly evil behind closed doors. Throughout the beginning, Adela greets familiar faces with a delightful attitude, but as the story continues, it is known that she is not so delightful after all. Since Adela Strangeworth is a prideful, evil, and sneaky old lady, her dark secret is unveiled after one simple error.

The first aspect of Adela’s characteristics is that she is very proud of her family history, but in a negative way. She

would brag about what her grandfather did to build the town, and how her mother cared for the roses. When talking to tourists, Adela would “sometimes find herself thinking that the town belonged to her” (Jackson, 1941, p.163). This just shows how proud she is about the accomplishments of her family. Adela even went as far as speaking selfishly about the lumber mill her grandfather built when stating, “ there wouldn’t have been a town here at all if it hadn’t been for [her] grandfather and the lumber mill” (Jackson, 1941, p.163). In addition, Adela is notorious for the way she looks after her house. The front of her house is kept clean along with her roses. And some people say that it looks like a “museum.” After these three examples alone, it is shown that Adela is prideful, but in a selfish way.
While Adela is very prideful, she is truly an evil person.

One example of her cruelty was when she had a friendly encounter with Don and Helen Crane. This sparked a nice conversation about the Crane baby. Although once Adela came home, she decided to write a letter to the Crane family. Contained in this letter was a rude comment about their baby. Adela wrote, “Didn’t you ever seen an idiot child before? Some people just shouldn’t have children should they?” (Jackson, 1941, p.169). This message shows what lengths Adela will go to, just to pursue her evil acts. Along with a rude letter to the Crane family came another disrespectful letter to Mrs. Harper. After the author mentioned that this letter was a follow up to the previous ones Adela already sent, it is assured that Adela is an atrocious person. These two letters further prove how Adela cruelly deceived the Crane family and Mrs. Harper into thinking she was a nice

lady.
Along with Adela’s evil intentions comes her sneaky way of pursuing her acts.

When writing to her friends, she always makes sure to be very secretive about her identity. To be sneaky, Adela “always used a dull stub of pencil when she wrote her letters, and she printed them in a childish block print” (Jackson, 1941, p.169). In addition to her writing style, she used assorted colored paper for her letters and mailed them late in the evening to not get caught. Through her sneaky ways of staying undetected, Adela was able to write letters for a whole year without being caught. Although, this came to an end. Adela’s efforts to stay anonymous were not successful after all. When she was going to mail her letters one evening, a letter had dropped at her feet without her noticing. The children at the post office noticed the letter and tried to tell her that it had dropped, but she still didn’t notice. This then led to Adela’s true identity to be uncovered once the recipient of the letter had figured out it was her who wrote it. Additionally, the recipient destroyed her roses the next morning. While Adela was quite sneaky for a whole year, she could not cover everything in the end.

After deceiving her town into thinking that she is a nice person, Miss Adela Strangeworth is a prideful, evil, yet sneaky old lady. While she deserved to have her roses destroyed based on her cruel actions, could her actions have come from a mental illness? A possible course of action for the townspeople could

be to figure out if Adela’s old age caused her to be in a bad state of mind. And now that the town knows her true colors, what other consequences are bound to occur?