The little green door

Nov 27 2022 | Sunday

Hello, beloved reader.

If you had a mysterious little door in your house, that was always locked, and you were not allowed to pass through it, because "it wasn't best for you," would you still pass through it, if one day you came into possession of its key?

In the short story 'The Green Door' by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, the protagonist Letitia Hopkins, despite having "all the care and comforts and pleasant society" that she really needs, is not a very content little girl.

The old house Letitia lives in has a little green door that is always locked and she isn't allowed to open and pass through it.  When she begs to know why she could not go out of the door, her Aunt Peggy replies, “It is not best for you, my dear.” And true to every little one's nature, Letitia does exactly what she's told not to do, the first chance she gets.

She finds the key to the little green door, opens the door, runs out and finds herself "not in the open fields which she had always seen behind the house," instead she is in the midst of a gloomy forest. She turns around to run back into the house through the little green door, but there is no little green door. In fact, there is no house.

The man who rescues her in the forest, turns out to be her great-great-great-grandfather, Captain John Hopkins, and during her stay at her great-great-great-grandparents' house, where she has to work all day, she truly realises the contrast between the spartan lives of her ancestors, and her own comfortable life back home.

I don't have access to such a door, but I'd have loved to pass through it, if I knew that my ancestors were on the other side of the door. My cushy life is, actually, a gift from them, wrapped in several multicoloured ribbons tied by each of them, and decorated with just the right amount of glitter, and I'm deeply indebted to them for it.
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Thank you for reading.​
Sahar Afreen

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