Blog Post #4: Sure as Death

While reading Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s story “The Tenth of January,” I was struck by the sudden, unexpected and very violent ending. However, upon re-examination of the story, I noticed that Phelps had employed the plot technique of foreshadowing Sene’s death several times. The one instance that really jumped out for me occurred relatively early on in the story, when Sene sees Dick and Del together by the stream. Close to heartbreak, Sene resolves to investigate and check to see if the man was really her Dick, saying “I won’t be a fool, I’ll make sure, I’ll make sure as death.” This again brings up the idea of death in relation to Sene’s character in the story. This statement stuck out to me as a parallel to the end of the story in a way that the other mentions of death did not because it is sadly ironic. In the end of the story, it is in fact in death that Sene “makes sure” of her fear that Dick would choose Del over her, and that his love for her is lost, as Phelps says “for a scratch upon [Del’s] smooth cheek, he had quite forgotten her.” To me, by paralleling Sene’s earlier statement, the tragedy of Sene’s horrific death is both enhanced and also paralleled by the tragedy of her lost love.