How I Met My Husband

Edie is most definitely a sympathetic character. By being "the hired girl", the author, Alice Munro, puts Edie in a subordinate role. Her purpose at the house is that of a nanny, so she tends to the children, fixes dinner, and cleans the house and the clothes and things like that. Obviously, Edie's life is not glamorous and this puts her in the sympathetic role. Also, Munro puts her far from her family on a farm nothing like the one she lives on, which is actually used as a farm and not as a statement piece. Edie expresses her awe at having running water, which now seems so standard. Even at the end, the author gives us more reason to feel sorry for Edie when she sits by the mailbox day after day and no letter arrives, and she realizes that she was just another girl along the way for Chris. On top of that, the mother she works for is cold and does not play the motherly role that a girl of 15 needs. With all of these things put together, Munro paints a naive, somewhat lost picture of Edie that endears the reader to her particular situation.