The Melting of Molly — Reading Notes

A Widow's Unconventional Grief

Molly's widowhood is treated with irreverence. She dismisses her deceased husband as 'poor Mr. Carter' and admits she is 'lonely' but not mournful. Her grief is channeled into a restless energy: she plants flowers crookedly, blushes over her own actions, and feels 'an attack of just old-fashioned happiness.' The bachelor's-buttons she sows and then digs up become a recurring symbol of her ambivalence toward new romantic possibilities. The text does not dwell on her late husband's character, focusing instead on Molly's present emotional state and her determination to 'look the matter in the face' regarding her future.

The Calculus of Suitors

Molly weighs three potential husbands with a pragmatic, almost transactional eye. Alfred offers 'the most wonderful life in the world' and has been faithful, but she suspects her friend Ruth Chester loves him. Judge Wade has 'such eyes' but a religious mother and a dead fiancée whose locket he still wears. Tom Pollard is 'congenial' but requires constant restraint. Molly's internal debate is laced with humor: she notes her hips have 'melted away' on a diet, so she must keep her heart 'cold enough to handle.' The suitors are sketched through Molly's perceptions, not through extended scenes, leaving their true characters open to inference.

Diet as Metaphor and Plot Device

The title's 'melting' refers both to Molly's weight loss and her emotional softening. She mentions her diet explicitly: 'my hips have almost all melted away.' The diet is a means of self-transformation, tied to her romantic prospects. In one scene, she attends a birth and later cries against Doctor John's sleeve, then returns home to tend her bachelor's-buttons. The physical and emotional are intertwined; her body's changes mirror her wavering decisions. The diet is not explained in detail but serves as a constant, tangible reminder of her effort to reshape herself for a new life.

Voice and Structure: The 'Leaves' Device

The novel is divided into 'Leaves' rather than chapters, each with a whimsical title like 'The Bachelor's-Buttons' or 'A Love-Letter, Loaded.' This structure reinforces the diary-like intimacy of Molly's first-person narration. She speaks directly to the reader, using colloquial phrases ('I don't know how all this is going to end') and vivid similes ('Some days are like tin cocoanut graters'). The voice is consistent: self-aware, witty, and unguarded. The excerpts show no third-person intervention, suggesting the entire novel maintains this singular perspective, making Molly's subjective experience the sole lens through which events are filtered.

Readers should attend to the tension between Molly's declared intentions and her actions, as the narrative often undercuts her own pronouncements. The bachelor's-buttons, planted and then dug up, reappear as a motif worth tracking. The suitors' characters are revealed only through Molly's descriptions, so consider how her biases shape the portrayal. The diet, while a plot point, also functions as a symbol of her desire for control and renewal. This is a character-driven story where the interest lies in Molly's voice and her evolving self-awareness.

Reading The Melting of Molly, I kept returning to how Molly’s self-image shifts with each suitor’s glance. It felt like watching someone revise her own story nightly. That flicker of identity—so private, so restless—brought to mind A Prince of Sinners — Key Ideas to Explore, where a man’s outward reform hides a quieter, inner unraveling. Two very different lives, yet both are haunted by the gap between who they seem and who they fear they are.