The narrators of both short stories-“Marigolds” and “First Love”- are girls aged fourteen; they are right at the limit between the end of childhood and the beginning of womanhood. However, their experience of crossing this limit is very different. In the case of “Marigolds,”, the girl, who lives in a very poor ara during the Depression, is interrupted in her daydreams about love by her little brother, who wants to do something “fun” that summer afternoon. The girl shows off before him and his friends by instructing them togather pebbles and throw them at the marigolds lovingly cultivated by Miss Dottie, an elderly woman who lives in a run-down shack with her ill son. Back at home, the girl witnesses a conversation between her parents and finds that her father, who in her eyes had always been strong , is breaking down because he is unable to find a job, while his mother, a frail woman, has become the sole moral and financial support of the family. The girl’s world is collapsing. In anger and impotence, she goes back to Miss Dottie’s and tramples on what is left of the marigolds. Suddenly she realizes that Miss Dottie is watching her, and that Miss Dottie is not a witch but an old, broken down woman who had been cultivating beauty in a barren world of dust and decay. As this reality dawns on the girl, she discovers compassion for Miss Dottie, whose work of love she has destroyed, and she becomes aware that the has lost her innocence.
The narrator goes from teen-age dreaminess to childish peevishness to shame at her behavior to Miss Dottie to rage at her crumbling world to the realization of the reality in which she lives and of the consequences of her actions, and finally, to compassion for Miss Dottie. The characterization is direct, for she names her feelings towards her own behavior and her situation.
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The narrator in “First Love” also loses her childish innocence, and also experiences a collapse of her world, but in a very different way. She falls in love with an Italian-American boy several years her elder; she believes that the age difference makes her invisible to him and she tries to get as many chances to look at him as she can, visiting his father’s store as often as possible. When performing at a school play, she feels uncomfortable in her poorly sawn costume, which she contrasts with those of her classmates. Her role in the play is secondary, and she profits from this to watch her beloved throughout the entire play. After the play is over, she is getting ready to leave the building, when she is given a surprise kiss by the very boy she is in love with. She is absolutely thrilled. Later that evening, her father announces that, like on other occasions, he will be abroad for a few months, and the family is to spend this time in Puerto Rico. The girl is dismayed: she feels that she will be losing what she thinks is her ‘one chance at true love’. She then finds that the boy has ceased to pay attention to her and has kissed her only for self-gratification. However, she is still able to appreciate that the boy’s kiss gave her the first love-related thrill. Through the realization of how mistaken and innocent she had been to think that the Italian boy was deeply in love with her, she too ceases to be a child.
The narrator goes from childish infatuation to feelings of unworthiness (in her mind, she is “invisible” to the Italian boy, and she thinks that she looks bad in her costume for the play) to the thrill of her first kiss, to the realization that the kiss had meant nothing to the boy but also that this was not the end of the world. The characterization in her case is indirect, through her actions and thoughts and through the impression she causes on the boy.
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