31 never shows her effort to make Adeline interested in the class. Then, Adeline
decides to lock herself in an empty hall inside her mind.
3. Ignorant
Adeline is never taught how to behave and act to face things in her life. She loves to react based on her own willingness. In the family, there is no such a
role model who is able to teach her. There is only one person who cares to Adeline. She is Missus, the housekeeper of Angelfield family. However, she is
not capable to train the twins to be discipline. She had a plan. Under their noses, in the heart of all their chaos, she
meant to raise two normal, ordinary little girls. Three square meals a day, bedtime at six, church on Sunday.
But it was harder than she thought p. 81.
Despite of all of Missus’ effort to discipline the girls, it always gives no result. This situation is going on as the time goes by. There is a teacher who called
to educate the girls. One night, she finds rooms open while they are not in use. She sets a rule that every room which is not in use should be locked. It is difficult
because the twins always find the way to play in the rooms. What need is there, she asked,
For rooms to be left open when they are not in use? You can see what happens: The girls go in as they please and make chaos where there
was order before. It makes unnecessary work for you and for me p. 162
Moreover, Adeline is different from the other normal girls in her age. If a normal
girl will feel fear or worry, Adeline never feels it. There is nothing she is afraid of. One day Adeline and Emmeline go to the village and they find a perambulator.
32 Perambulator is a strange thing and new for them. Because of their curiosity of its
function, they take it and play with it. They do not care that there is a baby. When the villagers cornered her and angry to her, Adeline does not afraid to them but
she makes them for fun. The teacher who called to educate Adeline finds difficulties also because Adeline always refuses her order and efforts.
Adeline is a hostile and aggressive child. She resents my presence in the house and resists all my efforts to impose order. Her eating is
erratic; she refuses food until she is half starving, and only then will she eat but the merest morsel. She has to be bathed by force, and,
despite her thinness, it takes two people to hold her in the water p. 167.
Adeline only thinks that she lives by and only for herself. That is the reason of
why she never obeys the rules. She is not used to appreciate others. This is the reason of why she becomes heartless. She does not even know herself well.
I doubt she knows herself. Most of the time she is governed by impulses that appear to have no conscious element. Whatever the
reason, the result was devastating for John. His family has tended this garden for generations.
Heartless. All the more shocking coming from a child. Heartless indeed. Though children are capable of great cruelty. Only
we do not like to think it of them. p. 165
The core of Adeline’s ignorant character is the condition that she never had someone to guide her through her adolescence life. Adolescence is the phase
when children develop their psychosocial ability. In this phase, adolescent establishing their identity and live by their own self and rules which is known as
autonomous Ruffin, 2009. Adeline already has her own set of rules of life and no one can ever control her. When the teacher come to the house and tries to
control Adeline, she shows her rejecting action. It has been too long for Adeline
33 to live without the presence of the caretaker. Therefore, it is difficult for her to
revise her own rule and to live under someone else’s rules.
4. Uneducated
Since there is no one who can accommodate the twin s’ education, thus, it
is rationale that they do not know how to act. They never talk to people and it makes Missus doubt whether they can talk or not. One day she hears voices,
giggling, and laughing from the twins. When she asks them to talk, they just keep silent and this frustrates her. When the twins enter the house, they do not notice
that Missus is in the kitchen. It is the first time for Missus to hear the twins. However, they do not use the proper language which is English to talk, they use
their own language. Sounds flew backward and forward between them, like tennis ball in
some game; sounds that made them smile or laugh or send each other malicious glances. But he heart sank. It was no language she had ever
heard. Not English, and not the French that she had got used to when
George’s Mathilde was alive and that Charlie still used with Isabelle. They did not talk properly pp. 82-83.
Knowing that their mother left to the asylum, a teacher sent to the house to fix the twins
’ lack of manner and education. The teacher thinks that it will be an easy thing to do with the twins. Her expectation is wrong. She realizes that the twins
are not as normal as other children; they are odd. Adeline cannot appreciate any warmth the teacher showed. In the class, the twins cannot appreciate the lesson
because they know nothing about it. Adeline is a big problem for the teacher because when she tells a story, Adeline chooses to sit in the corner of the room or
to sleep.
