This study will examine the differences between the main characters in two stories, "Louisa," by Mary Wilkins Freeman, and "Rima the Bird Girl," by Rona Jaffe. In fact, the two women could hardly stand in greater contrast to one another. Essentially, Louisa is a wholly admirable character, whereas Rima is thoroughly selfish and unappealing. This difference is not attributable to their relative situations. Louisa is limited by her material circumstances, but she retains her dignity and self-respect. Rima is never wanting materially, but is always willing to betray herself for little or nothing in return. Rima is certainly not heroic; she cannot blame her situation for her problems, which are primarily of her own making. On the other hand, Louisa is thoroughly heroic because she fights against her situation and the temptations which would allow her to escape that situation through lies. Rima is such a shallow, distasteful woman that it is difficult to blame her problems on a "character flaw," for she is nothing but a character flaw.
We find in "Rima the Bird Girl" a woman who simply refuses to grow or learn from her mistakes. She is the child of a dreamy, romantic mother and a weak, unimaginative father (Jaffe 289), so she may simple be wasting her life looking for the strong father she never had, and/or for the fantasy-males from the worlds of poetry and fiction. We first find Rima shouting Yeats' poetry about the mysteries of love (Jaffe 289), and we find her at the end of the story dreaming the same dream that falling in love with some man or other is the answer to all of her needs: "So she was gone again, with the Italian millionaire" (Jaffe 312).
Rima is sad the first time she leads herself down the road to suffering for the sake of romantic illusions (with the diplomat), she is pitiful the second time (with the ad man), irritating the third (with the drunken writer), and boring the fourth (with the millionaire). Jaffe may be...