"Sissy" and "The Wide, Wide World" comparison

I found many similarities between Sissy and Ellen Montgomery in The Wide, Wide World. Both characters share a close relationship to their mother. Sissy “never asked to play with other boys, seeming to find in his mother all desired companionship” (Kellogg 545). He seems to be completely satisfied by his mother’s company and is always finding ways to please her. This is a very different personality trait than the other little boys we have read about. It is very reminiscent of Ellen whose “love to her mother was the strongest feeling her heart knew” (Warner 25).

I think that both characters had such a strong emotional tie to their parents because they were raised in households with absent father figures. Although Ellen’s father played a vital role in The Wide, Wide World, he certainly did not play a vital role in her life. Ellen’s complete fascination and emotional dependence on her mother reinforced the fact that her father lacked a pivotal role in the little girl’s upbringing. Sissy, on the other hand, never knew his father who died when Sissy was only three years old. His pure and eternal love for his mother was not perpetuated by his father’s cold, aloof personality like Ellen’s.

I also found similarities between the two texts with references to windows. When Sissy is trying to convince his mother to adopt Margie he describes how “she’s got to stay cooped up there in that miserable, dirty place all summer, and just look out the window” (Kellogg 562). The lonely little girl staring out of a window conjured up memories of Ellen Montgomery. “Ellen betook herself to the window and sought amusement there” when no one else would entertain her (Warner 21). Both of these passages have a very sad and forlorn feel to them.