Unveiling the Pressures of Society

I believe the story Unveiling Brenda is the perfect example of how societal expectations can stifle people’s lives. In this short story Peyton Root is a Harvard graduate who is pressured to ignore the feelings he begins to feel for a girl, Brenda, who is the daughter of a milkman. Because of his apprehension he is tormented by the thought of her until he finally has the courage to find out more about her. While his growing affection for this common girl causes quite the commotion among his peers at the University, he continues to see her and allows his feelings to grow even stronger. Brenda, is pressured herself by society as an outcast because of her upbringing. She has grown to take pride in the fact that she is considered to be wild and rebellious because it is rumored she was adopted or stolen from the gypsies. When not knowing her true background leads her on a quest to find out the true story of her birth and adoption by the Munroe family, Mr. Root follows her to a small town in Dakota. By the time he locates her in the small town of Waterburg, she has already discovered the truth of her biological parents. She is devastated by the fact that she is not a gypsy, she had come to accept the fact that that was who she was. She finds out that she is the daughter of a well-respected shop owner and had a mother who was a Sunday school teacher. Under normal circumstances this would be wonderful information but after years of identifying herself with the whispers that she was a gypsy she is disappointed she turned out to be just a normal girl who was orphaned at an early age. She had been judged by society for all those years and finds out it was all just the rambling of those who chose to judge her because she was different.