Stage two The Meaning of Adeline’s Tragic Life
40
Hester knows that Emmeline may be a naughty girl before but with the warmth she shows her, Emmeline starts to change. When Emmeline is with Adeline, she
seems hard to control but when she is not with her twins, she changes her habit into good.
Emmeline should not give up unruliness for good and become permanently the sweet girl she knows how to be at her best. She will
not be clever but still, I see no reason why she should not one day lead a satisfying life separately from her sister p. 166.
It will be different for Adeline, she seems to avoid Hester. She is jealous to Hester because she controls anything in the house. Hester is a threat for Adeline
because she always tries to control the m. Moreover, Hester has taken Emmeline’s
attention. Adeline often gets angry when she looks Emmeline is following Hester. At one night she is hungry but she cannot take the meal from the kitchen because
the door is locked. When Hester comes down from the upstairs, Adeline hides herself behind the curtain while watching Hester meets Emmeline. In that
situation, she is angry because Emmeline does not follow her to hide under the curtain but said ―yum‖ to Hester as a sign that she wants to eat. Hester opens the
door with her key and they go to the kitchen. In the folds of the curtain my hunger pangs gave away to anger.
Hester and the key Emmeline It was like a perambulator all over again. It was love p. 153.
Adeline cannot accept anything that Hester did in the house because she is not used to have it and she does not want anything to disturb her comfort. She is hurt
because she loses her sister. Emmeline used to play with her, followed her, and did everything under her influence. Seeing that Hester is able to
take Emmeline’s
41 heart, it burns Adeline in jealousy. Adeline hates Hester because she is afraid that
Hester will take Emmeline away from her side. Based on human motivation theory, Adeline’s age is the age of high dependency period where she forms a
bound with her mother or caretaker. Since her mother never give the affection and Missus is not capable to take care of her, Adeline forms a bound to Emmeline.
Thus, Hester arrival is a threat for Adeline. The twins are uneducated because in their age they should already have
their thinking skill. Ruffin 2009 concludes that adolescence should have cognitive development and in their age, they are developing their ability to think
about thinking in a process known as meta-cognition . In Adeline and Emmeline’s
case, they do not have these skills. In their adolescence, they still get the introduction of skills by Hester. Hester uses the story telling to educate them
because she assumes that story telling is the best way to grab the twins ’ attention.
With girls like these the classroom is not might be for normal children. There is no arithmetic, no Latin, no Geography. Still, in the
interests of order and routine, the children are made to attend for two hours, twice a day, and I educate them by telling stories
p. 167.
In the normal education, educating students by using story telling is conducted in kindergarten or lower class of elementary school. Hester uses this
method because grabbing the twins ’ attention is not an easy thing to do. However,
getting Adeline’s attention is harder than Emmeline’s. Adeline is difficult to appreciate the lesson. Someone should bring her by force to the room. When
Hester starts the story, Adeline tends to sit on the floor neither looks nor listens to the teacher. She seems to retreat to some inner world of her own. Because of the
42 curiosity of the situation, Dr. Maudsley and Hester agree to separate the twins
with the purpose that they will be able to observe the development of the twins. One night, Hester moves Emmeline to her room without awakening her. On the
other hand, Adeline feels the absence of her sister from the other side of the bed. From that night on, Adeline stays with Dr. Maudsley and Emmeline stays with
Hester. Adeline feels the worse nightmare in her life. She just realizes that she lose her own half. She is nothing without Emmeline.
She awoke at once to her sister’s absence. She sank to the floor, collapsed into a litte heap against the door, and that is where she
stayed at night. She felt nothing. She was broken p. 182.
Emmeline is slower to realize her sister’s absence. The next morning when she
wakes up, she is surprised to find that her sister is gone. She is longing for Adeline everywhere around the house but the result is nothing. All night long she
is crying as if she lost something forever. The next day, the twins ’ life is just as a
rag doll; lifeless. Dr. Maudsley and Hester’s hypothesis is wrong. The twins do not show any responses at all. When they are alone, Adeline and Emmelie
whisper something in their own language. They imagine the presence of each other. One day a trouble comes
to Hester and the doctor’s family that makes the experiment over. John takes Adeline from the doctor
’s house and places her in her bedroom. Emmeline is in the garden when Adeline arrives. She feels the presence
of the sister and runs inside the house. She finds Adeline in their bedroom.