Setting

The short story “The Woman of Letters” by Angela Readman is set in an unnamed foreign land where the native language is not English. The time setting is contemporary, as indicated by the references to online dati…

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Physical setting

The main physical setting is the village where the narrator lives in a large house: “There are bigger ones now, monuments of colour scattered along the dusty roadside. They look like doll’s houses, Swiss chalets decorated with balconies and roofs that prove a point.” (ll. 85-87)

The…

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Social setting

The characters in the story live in a poor village where the local women’s only chance of a better future seems to be marrying a foreign man. This is what May and Lilly want, and this is how the narrator succeeded in life.

The narrator married a foreign man who gave her a big house and with whom she has a son. However, he eventually left her, suggesting marrying a foreigner is only a way out of poverty and not necessarily a path to happiness. Now the narrator is in a privileged position because she is the only one in her area who knows English very well, and she uses this to create a small business acting as an interpreter between foreign men and local girls on online dating sites.

The fact that the narrator charges a lot of money for her services shows that she is self-interested, that her business is more about making …