Summary

Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Legacy” starts with Gilbert Clandon, a well-known politician, finding a pearl brooch left as a gift by his late wife, Angela, to her secretary, Sissy Miller.

Angela died in a sudden car accident, yet she had left gifts for each of her friends, which Gilbert finds strange. Sissy Miller arrives to receive her gift and she appears extremely distressed by Angela’s death since the two women were also friends. Gilbert notes that the brooch looks out of place on Sissy’s somber black clothes. He remembers the woman is mourning, as her brother had died only a couple of weeks before. Sissy offers to help Gilbert with anything he needs, which Gilbert finds surprising, and he assumes that the secretary has always been in love with him.

As ...