by Mobin Skaria

Created on: April 17, 2008

Plainswoman is a short story by William Forrest about a woman named Nora and how she overcomes her fears about living in the plains. In the beginning of the story, she thinks about events that occurred during the time she and her husband Rolf moved to a ranch from New England. Nora thinks that everything would be fine in her life in the plains. An important conflict/point in the plot is that Nora has a baby growing in her. She thinks that Rolf and she would have a happy life, but she is shocked when she gets there and finds out what really goes on. Rolf does not really help her throughout her time of need, but that doesn't mean that he would not care for her. He does not know that Nora is pregnant. She is not confident in the beginning about having a baby, especially because it is a rough season and she is not sure Rolf would take care of the baby. On the journey to the ranch, a baby was born on a train with the help of Nora. When she told her husband, he was thinking about the round-up of the ranch. This worried Nora.

It also caused her questions about her baby being born. She was not sure if she should tell Rolf she was pregnant because of the incident on the train. Nora thinks about going to New England for her pregnancy probably because she thinks that she would get more care there, with her family, compared with Rolf. In addition, the rough climate to come doesn't help. It probably seemed that he didn't care much about the news that a baby was born on the train; she was worried about theirs. Another reason why she might have delayed telling Rolf the news could be that Rolf sent a young man who was seventeen on his own to a ten-day trip to the hospital. Surviving ten days on your own with a broken leg is assumable to be very hard. Event after event, something bad occurs, each playing a good role in how the story turned out to be.

The theme of the story is that life is only beautiful as you think it is. Nora likely realized this at the end of the story. All through the story, Nora looked at the dull sides of the situation, until the very end. Nora was apparently not used to being in the same crowd as Rolf. She was used to being in the midst of comfort and leading a different type of life. That was proven when she had a panic attack in her sleep just because there were others in the room sharing it with them. An important turning point in the story is when she decides to chop Pleny's finger off. She runs away scared at the thought of the thing at first, but

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