30 pages • 1 hour read
Henry Sydnor HarrisonMiss Hinch
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of Women
In 1911, most women looked after their children or worked in a domestic setting. This is true of neither the protagonist nor the antagonist in “Miss Hinch.” Miss Hinch is an unmarried, independent woman with an acting career who is involved in a love affair. Miss Mathewson/Jessie Dark works as a crime-fighting journalist and a newspaper detective. The two women reject society’s expectations for women.
The mystery story allows a certain amount of freedom for women. They can move beyond the domestic sphere and be criminals, victims, foils, love interests, or heroes. The parameters of what was considered acceptable for women expanded as urbanization increased with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Yet, when “Miss Hinch” was published, single young females were still rarely permitted the freedoms that Dark and Miss Hinch enjoy. Both characters employ disguises to achieve this freedom. Dark, considered the more socially respectable of the two, outfits herself as an elderly serving woman and “a thoroughly respectable domestic servant of the upper class” (559). This uniform allows her the freedom to move about the city unmolested, giving her anonymity and respectability due to having moved beyond an age that is viewed as sexual and being rather invisible as a member of the service sector. However, she must still bend to the societal expectations of women. When she and the clergyman depart for the restaurant, she finds “an unpretentious little haven which yet boasted a ‘Ladies Entrance’ down the side street” (565). Dark’s respectable guise as an elderly woman allows her more freedom than a single young woman would normally have, but it is still less than her adversary enjoys. Ultimately, “the woman did as she was bidden” (566).
In choosing her disguise, Miss Hinch opts for the total freedom granted to men. Assuming the identity of a minister provides her an excuse for any questioning she might encounter; a minister may be found anywhere when answering the call of his flock. She avoids suspicion by hiding behind piety and quiet grace. Presenting herself as a large man allows her to hide her gender by padding her body. As a man, she can enter restaurants alone, and taking on a beard allows her to camouflage her distinctive chin. asculine clothing offers increased protection from scrutinizing gazes and provides numerous places to hide accessories and tools, such as the handkerchief and pin she uses in her ruse that the other woman was bleeding. Her beard, collar, sack coat, broad hat, and stout cane conceal her gender and identity.
Harrison plays with gender roles and disguises to advance the plot and increase suspense. Recasting both main characters as benign stereotypical figures who are easily overlooked facilitates their anonymity. Dark’s name even offers a degree of gender ambiguity. Harrison’s subversions of gender expectations further the mystery and make the story’s final plot twist possible when a feminine accessory moves the supposed clergyman’s beard.
Paranoia and Suspicion
Miss Hinch and Dark begin the story with what might be considered paranoia. Miss Hinch has made her daring escape into the underbelly; she is well-disguised and independent. What would cause her to question an elderly woman on the train? As the plot advances, the two women’s cautious approaches to each other move from paranoia to suspicion, culminating in death.
From the story’s opening sentence until its conclusion, Harrison sows seeds of paranoia and suspicion. Miss Hinch and Dark begin by circling each other, and the narrative voice intensifies this game of cat and mouse. The clergyman does not just watch the elderly woman; he “continued to study her from behind with a singular intentness” (559). The two move into the same car. As the woman moves down toward the heater, the narrator remarks that “it happened to be a time of mutual doubt and suspicion, of alert suspicions […] when men looked askance into every strange face and the most infinitesimal incidents were likely to take on a hysterical importance” (559). The narrator simultaneously heightens the sense of suspicion and notes that observers are prone to misinterpretations and exaggerated inferences due to tense circumstances. This interplay between suspicion and paranoia continues throughout the story.
As the pair moves from the station to the restaurant, the paranoia becomes open suspicion. At the restaurant, the clergyman “looked hard at the woman, and found that she was looking hard at him. Both pairs of eyes fell instantly” (565). The suspicion reaches a breaking point as Miss Hinch darts away down the street, dropping the cane as she desperately escapes. Dark thwarts her attempt, attaching herself once more to the criminal.
The pair returns to the station, more entwined in suspicion than ever. Their sense of an imminent conclusion to their encounters causes resignation in both of them. Dark placed her trust in the strangers on the surface of the city, hoping they will come to her aid but unsure that they will respond in time. Miss Hinch is also cornered and must rely on her cunning to escape. They find a sense of unity in their struggle as it reaches its climax: “[T]heir looks met, and each was struck by the pallor of the other’s face” (568). Both women are struggling, and the narration reveals their anxiety: “In addition, the woman was breathing hard, and her hands and feet betrayed some nervousness. It was difficult now to ignore the too patent fact that for an hour they had been clinging desperately to each other, at all costs” (568). The need to escape and the need to out one’s enemy create a sense of mutual dependence and connection that becomes clear to them in their final moments. One will die, and the other will be taken prisoner; thus, these are the final moments of freedom and mobility for each of them.
Good Versus Evil
Dark and Miss Hinch capture the timeless struggle between good and evil. The stereotypical plucky detective and writer chases down known criminals using her cleverness. She makes a name for herself in a male-dominated profession even before women have the right to vote. She is also single and lives independently, according to one of the train passengers. Jessie “was a ‘crime expert’ to be taken seriously, it seemed—no mere office-desk sleuth, but an actual performer with, unexpectedly enough, a somewhat formidable list of notches on her gun” (560). She has a reputation for taking down criminal women, and it is asserted that “the woman doesn’t live who is clever enough to hoodwink Jessie Dark” (562). She is a respectable woman who takes pride in taking down other women who refuse to follow the law.
Conversely, Miss Hinch embodies the fallen woman. She is an unmarried actress carrying on an affair with a man of status, and she murders him rather than allowing him to marry his betrothed and maintain the image of respectability with another woman. Her talent even terrifies her friends and dinner guests, who must beg her to stop as they are “frightened out of their lives […with…] the terrible faces she could make” (561). Miss Hinch is described as a creature of the dark, seedy underbelly of the city, a place into which she disappears after committing her heinous crime. A newspaper’s headline claims that the “Earth opened and swallowed Miss Hinch” (560). Even her chosen method of escape, the subway, lies in the dark tunnels under the earth, rather than above ground in visible spaces.
The battle of good and evil goes on as the two women struggle against one another. Dark uses her skill to track and identify Miss Hinch, whose suspicions lead her to mistrust the kindly elderly woman. Miss Hinch catches Dark in a lie about her whereabouts before their meeting, but then wonders if “his silence had not been an error of judgment” (563). When Dark senses that she set her prey on edge, she leads the disguised murderer out above ground and into a restaurant she suggests, taking control of the situation. Dark leaves clues for the train employees and police to follow and even waylays Miss Hinch as she makes a desperate play for escape.
At this turn, evil seems to take the upper hand. Miss Hinch/the clergyman “looked full at the woman, and she saw there was a smile on his face” (566). Dark catches Miss Hinch as she runs, but this is also the moment when her prey decides to kill her. Miss Hinch leads Dark back down beneath the earth, carefully laying the trap that will allow her to escape. Dark tries to slow Miss Hinch down, but she is pulled inexorably to the platform. As the roaring train approaches, Dark’s foot “slipped upon the treacherous ice—or it may have tripped on the stout cane when the clergyman suddenly shifted its position” (568). Miss Hinch led her pursuer into darkness and to death, yet in the final plot twist, the author allows Dark to retain hero status, casting her as having reached out beyond death to catch her final killer.
