Question

Read the excerpt from "The Lady Maid's Bell."

But that wasn’t the only queer thing in the house. The very next day I found out that Mrs. Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes about the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before. Agnes said she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was dreaming. To be sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and she had excused herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the woman plain enough to know her again if we should meet. I decided that she must have been a friend of the cook’s, or of one of the other women servants: perhaps she had come down from town for a night’s visit, and the servants wanted it kept secret. Some ladies are very stiff about having their servants’ friends in the house overnight. At any rate, I made up my mind to ask no more questions.
How does this excerpt support the idea that the story is told by an unreliable narrator?
The narrator tries to justify having seen a woman.
The narrator does not trust what Agnes tells her.
The narrator wants to meet the servants’ visiting friends.
The narrator wants to know who Mrs. Brympton’s nurse is.

Answer 1

The narrator's questionable sighting of a woman and her decision to accept a doubtful explanation without further inquiry support the idea of her being unreliable. The correct answer is option 1. and 2.

Step-by-step explanation:

The excerpt from "The Lady Maid's Bell" suggests an unreliable narrator because the narrator admits to seeing a woman whom none of the other characters have seen, raising questions about her credibility. She also concocts a reason for why the woman might have been in the house without fully believing it herself, choosing to stop asking questions rather than investigating further. Additionally, the narrator seems to accept the woman's presence as part of the servants' secrets, which implies a form of denial or avoidance in confronting the truth.