The Six Apprentices
How Leon Garfield represents Rosy Starling
Garfield depicts Rosy starling as a rather interesting figure, with many different characteristics. The very first things we hear about Rosy is that she is an apprentice, and she is ‘blind as a bat’. Rosy’s mistress, the cage maker, Mrs Berry, thinks that people will try to ‘take advantage’ of Rosy and has taught her many things that she thinks will help her ‘survive’ when she is alone. Rosy is naturally sharp, and her mistress ‘had always encouraged her sharpness’, but Mrs Berry trained her not to trust anyone, and to be cautious; therefore, Rosy has built ‘a cage of suspicion around her’, which shows she has isolated herself from the rest of the people, and she keeps herself …show more content…
she is described as ‘very ladylike’, which implies that she is also polite and courteous, yet she can be domineering on occasion; when she first met turtle, she heard his singing before she saw him, and later, when he is being shy and hasn’t said much, she bossily tells him to ‘sing the next part of the song’, he tells her he doesn’t know it so she says, ‘sing the first part then’. There are many occurrences when Rosy has shouted out to the public something like ‘what are you gawpin’ at’ or ‘ain’t you ever seen a blind lady before’, which affirms that she is keen to be treated exactly like anyone else, especially as she is blind, and she is defensive of it. She is suspicious of Turtle at first but turns out to like him very much, as he is kind-hearted and does not put Rosy down for her …show more content…
As Rosy grows to love Turtle, the walls slowly and silently deteriorate, and Rosy allows herself to do things she wouldn’t usually do, like dancing at the maypole fair, but when she concludes that Turtle was taking advantage of her, the walls quickly rebuild themselves, closer than ever, confining her, oppressing her, and she returns to how she was before, even more so. Rosy asks someone who he was, and is secretly aghast, when she finds out he is a hair merchant, but she doesn’t want to let on that the public knew something that she didn’t, so she claims she did know that and calls him things like ‘ugly as a toad’, but when someone corrects her, saying ‘he wasn't that ugly miss, and he was crying as he went’ she just bluntly replies with ‘any fool can cry’. Rosy obviously cannot see anything, being blind, but still has strong opinions on everything, especially colours. Red is Rosy’s most despised colour, as she pictures red to be the representation of ‘pricked fingers and scrapes and wounds’. Turtle argues that red is the colour of love, the colour of lips, and the colour of the setting sun, to which Rosy replies ‘I know, bleedin’ all over the sky. Gold is the colour of love, or maybe silver’ she adds, referring to the silver chain that Turtle had just bought
How Leon Garfield represents Rosy Starling
Garfield depicts Rosy starling as a rather interesting figure, with many different characteristics. The very first things we hear about Rosy is that she is an apprentice, and she is ‘blind as a bat’. Rosy’s mistress, the cage maker, Mrs Berry, thinks that people will try to ‘take advantage’ of Rosy and has taught her many things that she thinks will help her ‘survive’ when she is alone. Rosy is naturally sharp, and her mistress ‘had always encouraged her sharpness’, but Mrs Berry trained her not to trust anyone, and to be cautious; therefore, Rosy has built ‘a cage of suspicion around her’, which shows she has isolated herself from the rest of the people, and she keeps herself …show more content…
she is described as ‘very ladylike’, which implies that she is also polite and courteous, yet she can be domineering on occasion; when she first met turtle, she heard his singing before she saw him, and later, when he is being shy and hasn’t said much, she bossily tells him to ‘sing the next part of the song’, he tells her he doesn’t know it so she says, ‘sing the first part then’. There are many occurrences when Rosy has shouted out to the public something like ‘what are you gawpin’ at’ or ‘ain’t you ever seen a blind lady before’, which affirms that she is keen to be treated exactly like anyone else, especially as she is blind, and she is defensive of it. She is suspicious of Turtle at first but turns out to like him very much, as he is kind-hearted and does not put Rosy down for her …show more content…
As Rosy grows to love Turtle, the walls slowly and silently deteriorate, and Rosy allows herself to do things she wouldn’t usually do, like dancing at the maypole fair, but when she concludes that Turtle was taking advantage of her, the walls quickly rebuild themselves, closer than ever, confining her, oppressing her, and she returns to how she was before, even more so. Rosy asks someone who he was, and is secretly aghast, when she finds out he is a hair merchant, but she doesn’t want to let on that the public knew something that she didn’t, so she claims she did know that and calls him things like ‘ugly as a toad’, but when someone corrects her, saying ‘he wasn't that ugly miss, and he was crying as he went’ she just bluntly replies with ‘any fool can cry’. Rosy obviously cannot see anything, being blind, but still has strong opinions on everything, especially colours. Red is Rosy’s most despised colour, as she pictures red to be the representation of ‘pricked fingers and scrapes and wounds’. Turtle argues that red is the colour of love, the colour of lips, and the colour of the setting sun, to which Rosy replies ‘I know, bleedin’ all over the sky. Gold is the colour of love, or maybe silver’ she adds, referring to the silver chain that Turtle had just bought