Summary
Alone in the winter silence, Ann thinks about all the springs and summers that lie before her. She and John will grow old, their bodies will warp, and their minds will shrivel until they are as dry and empty as their lives. She scolds herself, reminding herself that she married John and he’s a good man. She puts more wood in the fire. She paces around, checking the wadded clothes she used to keep the drafts out. The fire crackles and the clock ticks, making the silence more intense than ever. She hears a moan, then realizes it is the wind.
At the window she thaws the frost with her breath and sees wind pushing snow on the ground. The sky has come close to earth. The sky and prairie merge into one mass. She whispers that John will be here soon: he knows what kind of storm there will be. She goes back to painting, thinking anxiously about John in the blizzard, struggling across hills. She thinks resentfully about how she warned him, and now she’ll have to attend to the animals because he will have to stay at his father’s. But the narrator comments that she doesn’t believe her thoughts: she tells herself she is just convincing herself that John is responsible for her unhappiness.
She cleans her brush, puts wood in the stove, and looks out the window. The storm fills the air with a white mass of snow, the stable roof barely visible. She worries about John trying to come home now. She reassures herself that he wouldn’t dare try to cross the hills. He knows she’s safe and that Steven is coming. She makes coffee and decides to start baking, realizing it is one o’clock. She begins to make dinner but doubts Steven will come. Steven, for all his attractive qualities, was hardly the sort of man to brave walking a mile in a storm to do someone else’s chores. She feels dread at the prospect of spending the night alone. She imagines going to the stable, wrapped up in John’s clothes, keeping a ball of string in her hand, one end attached to the door so she can find her way back to the house. The drama of having to do so suddenly appeals to her.
While baking little cakes with raisins, she puts together a ball of string and tries on John’s clothes. Night comes early. Breathless and dazed, she huddles while advancing out into the snowstorm. The snow is in her mouth and nostrils. Whipped and battered by the storm, she falls down and then gets up again. She feels an anger that makes her want to fight back against the storm, blow for blow. But then the storm makes her exhausted and she realizes her “puny insignificance.” She returns to the house.
Inside her home, she whispers that he shouldn’t have gone and left her alone. She knows how intense the storm is and so distrusts the structure of her house. It had seemed safe earlier but not now. She thinks about how the animals will freeze in their stalls and how John will say it’s her fault and not believe that she tried to feed them. Steven then arrives, startling Ann. She lets him in and lights a lamp. He notices her paleness and, while seizing her arms, tells her she shouldn’t have gone out. He said he was worried he wouldn’t make it himself.
The assurance of Steven’s touch and voice gives way to relief. She seizes his arm and sobs against him. She relaxes into his comforting embrace. Her shoulders tremble and then fall still. Steven brings her toward the stove because she’s shivering. He tells her there’s nothing to be afraid of and that he’ll do the chores for her. His voice is quiet and sympathetic, yet she detects an undertone of insolence and mockery. He smiles, and his smile is also insolent yet companionable. Unlike John, Steven is tall and slim, with arrogant, boyish face. He smiles on her with the assurance of someone who seems to understand women.
She tells him she supposes she should feel flattered that he faced the storm for her. She feels Steven’s presence has roused some feminine instinct. She knows John is her husband and she is his wife, but Steven’s presence speaks of something different from what John gives her. She is both poised around him and wary of a sudden feeling of blind excitement at her core. She evades Steven by reminding him that chores need to be done.
When he returns from the barn an hour later she is wearing another dress, her hair is rearranged, and there is a flush of color in her face. She says that John told her they need not wait for him to eat. Steven asks if she’s still expecting him to return in such a storm. She says of course, and says they’re going to play cards, as John suggested. Over dinner, Steven asks what time she expects John. She says seven and that John always comes home, that there couldn’t be a storm bad enough. She claims she only went to the stable because chores are easier in daylight. Steven says nothing but smiles his same insolent smile.
Steven’s smile makes her flinch. Instead of poise and excitement, his smile reminds her that she changed her dress and arranged her hair. The reminder crushes her in the sudden silence. There is something strange, almost terrifying, about Steven’s quiet and his unrelenting smile. The smile bears a familiarity she had never encountered in him but yet had always known and waited for. She feels the inevitability of him, just as she felt the snow and silence and storm. His face is handsome and young and clean-shaven, so different from John’s. She is helpless in the face of the relentless feeling gaining over her. She senses sudden menace in the vitality of the feeling, even as she is drawn toward it.
The lamp between them flickers as the storm sends shudderings through the room. They add wood to the stove. She spins, thinking she hears John at the door, but Steven says he isn’t coming home tonight and that it would be suicide to try. She is afraid of the certainty in Steven’s voice and afraid of her inability to rebuke his knowing smile. They try to play cards but she stares up at every creak in the walls. Steven tells her to relax and pay attention to him, but his tone implies she is only worrying that John is at the door. The implication persists as they play cards and tend to the stove. Eventually, they hang blankets over the doors to keep the heat in. She smears some paint when carrying the blankets from the bedroom and remembers she painted the door.
Analysis
Having dwelled on her boring and miserable life as John’s wife, Ann rebukes herself for thinking negatively of her husband. She busies herself again, briefly able to ignore the pressing silence of the frozen prairie and disloyal thoughts about John. But after looking at the wind sweeping across the land outside, Ann thinks again how she had warned John not to leave her alone when a storm is coming in. She resents that he will have to stay at his father’s and she will be left to feed the animals alone. But once again her perception shifts: she knows she is unfairly blaming John for her misery.
In an instance of situational irony, Ann goes from resenting John for leaving her to tend to the animals to feeling the excitement of having to go out and face the storm. The sense of adventure the chore requires makes her happily try on the right combination of John’s warm clothes. She also crafts from multiple pieces a ball of string long enough to stretch between her front door and the barn: unfurling the string, she will find her way back to the house if the storm reduces her visibility.
However, once again reality challenges Ann’s perception. The blizzard is not only blinding, it is powerful enough to knock her down. As the snow drowns her, she is forced to accept that she is no match for the ferocious weather and must retreat to the house. Ann’s thoughts again turn to resentment as she imagines having to defend herself to John, who she believes will blame her for not having fed the animals.
Amid Ann’s cascading anxious thoughts, Steven arrives. She is so relieved to feel his confident presence and reassuring grip on her arms that she leans into an embrace, momentarily allowing herself a forbidden intimacy. Ann is ashamed of the confusing mix of fear and attraction she feels in Steven’s presence, so she tries to deflect his appraising smile by acting as though she believes John will be home.
Although Ann feels drawn to Steven’s handsome young face, she is frightened by the possibilities of infidelity his presence gives rise to. She reminds herself of all the times John made it to her in the middle of winter storms, but Steven persists in questioning her certainty. When Steven asks her if she really believes John will come home in such a bad storm, his words are imbued with a deeper question: Does she truly maintain faith and fidelity to John? Or is she in fact liable to believe Steven is there in John's place? As they sit and Ann tries to play cards, she is distracted by the sound of wind whistling through her home, thinking each time that the sound is John at the door. It is a paranoia that foreshadows John coming home only after she has given up on expecting him to arrive.
Eventually they stop playing cards to hang blankets over the doors to keep out the drafts. While taking blankets from the bedroom to the main part of the house, Ann notices that she has smeared the blankets with paint from the bedroom door. With this detail, Ross reminds the reader how Ann painted the door earlier that day and how the paint still isn’t dry. The full significance of the detail will not be revealed until the story’s closing line, when Ann sees the same paint on John’s palm.
