We expounded on the idea that these bachelors enjoyed their comfort only at the expense of the women’s hardships, and this was a major connection between both stories. We also highlighted the narrator as another major link between the stories since he had the opportunity of witnessing both contrasting sides of life. Literary Critic Karen Weyler points out that this narrator only mimics the attitudes and moods of the both the bachelors and maids, but she never fully expands on why this is the case. I believe the narrator copies their attitudes and moods so that he reveals his empathy for the working women. This is shown by the satiric view of the first story and the seriousness of the second story
Although he may have copied the attitudes of the bachelors, the ironic and satiric view of the bachelor is what hints at his beginning sympathy for the women. This view explains the relation of the narrator’s mind to the serious issues beyond the merriment of these bachelors. After a night of perpetual drinking, all the bachelors seem to be in a state of happiness and good feeling. The narrator finds it natural to only introduce a serious concept of pain just when these bachelors are in their happiest state, unable to feel pain because they are in the farthest possible emotion from pain. He copies the attitudes of the typical bachelor who cannot “suffer himself to be imposed on monkish tales of pain and troubles,” but raises the important issue because his heart and mind definitely remember such a thing as pain, even though it is in light of the bachelor’s attitudes (1264). He is struck by this one important idea of pain that hits his mind and really does not concern the Templars or the bachelors, but the rest of the world outside the bachelors, which, in this period, could be those people who suffer in the society. The narrator may not have directed this idea immediately towards working women but he surely flashes his mind on those who are pain for suffering. The narrator digresses to such an important issue just before the beginning of his journey, furthering the notion that he has thought about the possibility of pain contrary to what the bachelors think. But it becomes clear who he is sympathetic towards working women.
During the second story, the narrator can engage himself by viewing and empathizing with the pain he has reflected on and he can sense that actual magnitude of suffering is enough to experience what these working women experience, “tearing pain…since his “cheeks are white and frozen,” similar to the moods and attitudes of the maids. (1271). Now the narrator is beginning to see the cruel example of suffering and is partially experiencing the suffering of these women through his pale cheeks. He deeply feels their tragic pain from the unrelenting machines to the point he himself is speechless at the sight of them, just observing their pallid faces in their different assignments. Many times, the narrator become concerned and confused by the horrible, negative images of these women next to the unrelenting machines, to the extent that he stammers this question: “why makes these girls so sheet white?” and this answer “These are all maids” (1274, 1278), all filling him with the same miserable emotion and empathy for their state of depression, which he mimics. He is overwhelmed by their suffering and his representation of their frozen looks makes him empathize greatly with them.
