The Painted Door Essay Questions

What is the significance of Ann seeing a smear of paint on John's hand at the end of "The Painted Door"?

"The Painted Door" ends with the image of Ann kneeling next to her husband's dead body and holding his frozen hand. In the ending lines of the story, Ross writes that Ann's eyes "suddenly grew wide and clear. On the palm, white even against its frozen whiteness, was a little smear of paint." This detail is significant because it implies John had been inside Ann's bedroom the night before. As evidence of having entered the house and left again when he saw Ann in bed with Steven, a smear of paint from the still-wet bedroom door remains on his hand. Although Ann had convinced herself that she merely dreamt up John's presence in the room, believing it had been a nightmare generated by guilt, in reality John had learned of her infidelity and chosen to go out into the snow to freeze to death. Ann's latent knowledge of John having come home is significant because it means she and Steven had been wrong about him staying the night at his father's: John risked his life to come home to Ann through the worst blizzard in local memory, but she did not return his faithfulness.

How does the setting of "The Painted Door" affect Ann's and John's psyches?

Ross sets "The Painted Door" on a farmstead on an unspecified settlement on the Canadian prairie; the setting is significant because it emphasizes the story's central theme: isolation. Without electricity or telephones, Ann and John are isolated from contact with other humans. When John leaves to check on his father and a severe winter blizzard strikes the farmstead, Ann is even further isolated in the desolate and frozen landscape. Although she tries to busy herself with painting the interior of the house and keeping the wood fire burning, Ann's thoughts turn to her life with John. Feeling especially alone and abandoned by John's decision to visit his father just as a storm hits, Ann thinks of how she often feels emotionally isolated from John: He works himself into a stupor and even when he is sitting across the table from her in the off-season he is incapable of talking about anything other than the farm. Ann's sense of isolation makes her open to the possibility of an affair with Steven, one of the few other humans who lives in the area. Ann sees in an affair with Steven the possibility of awakening the parts of herself that she has had to deny and make dormant in order to live as John's wife. However, after she has sex with Steven, Ann watches his sleeping form and feels isolated from him, too. She realizes he is not responsible in the way John is, and that her future is with John. But Ann's change of heart comes too late: Having discovered her betrayal, John seeks death in the blizzard as a final and irrevocable act of isolating himself from Ann. The theme of isolation ties in at the end of the story with the image of John clutching the wire of his boundary fence after having frozen to death. Ann holds the hand of her husband's corpse, alone on the indifferent, snow-swept prairie.

What role does perception play in "The Painted Door"?

As one of the major themes in the story, perception plays a significant role in "The Painted Door." Perception—in the sense of a person's individualized way of understanding or interpreting something—generates conflict in the story through Ann's often-negative way of seeing John. Feeling abandoned and resentful because of what she understands as John's emotional and intellectual neglect, Ann thinks bitterly about how her husband is slow, unambitious, dull, and lacking in passion. At the same time, Ann rebukes herself for painting herself in her thoughts as the victim of John's naivety. She reminds herself that he is a good and faithful man. Ann's changeable perception arises again when Steven arrives. She sees in his knowing smile an odd mix of condescension, sympathy, and confidence. Some part of her understands his flirtatious intentions, and she is both ashamed and stimulated by the "appraising" look in his eyes. It is only after Ann betrays John and has sex with Steven that she realizes her perceptions about the men had been wrong. While Steven had seemed to unlock a part of her femininity she had denied, she finds he did not meet her expectations. She realizes that her future lays with John, for whom she has a new appreciation, looking upon her marriage as full dignity and stability. The tension between perception and reality also arises when Ann convinces herself that she merely dreamt up John's presence in their bedroom. At the end of the story, she sees a smear of paint on his palm, which stands as evidence that he had in fact entered the home and touched the still-wet painted door. Just as her perception had been wrong regarding Steven's superiority to John, Ann realizes John had been in the room. As with Steven, her change in perception comes too late to right the wrong.