describe Virginia as the harbinger of love and peace
Answers
Virginia is shown to have a sense of right and wrong. She censures the ghost for murdering his poor wife. She has a great regard for her family. So, she takes offence when the ghost calls her family horrid, rude, vulgar, dishonest. Yet, despite his crime and his offensive remarks, she cannot help pity his forlorn condition. She shows an inclination towards forgiveness and love. She offers him food and later, agrees to help him enter the Garden of Death. Clearly, she is the golden girl of the prophecy. Her selflessness bears fruit and Sir Simon is able to attain everlasting sleep.
Virginia grows up to marry her boy-lover, Cecil, the Duke of Cheshire. For her, the encounter with the ghost is a life-changing event. As she tells her husband, it has helped her understand the significance of life and death, and the power of love over the two.
Virginia as Harbinger of Love and Peace
The Centerville Ghost by Oscar Wilde is an intriguing and engrossing story. Though it appears to be a ghost story, yet it is a story with a message of ‘Love is stronger than both life and death’.
Virginia, Mr. Otis’s daughter has been personified as love and compassion. It is because of the purity of her soul that the ghost makes a request before her to pray for him. Her heart is filled with pity for the ghost when she comes to know he has not eaten anything and has not slept for three hundred years.
Quite fearlessly she faces all the horrible sights and leads the ghost to the Garden of Death. Thus, by feeling pity and sad for her; and praying for the ghost, she brings peace and deliverance to his aching soul.
So, in the end we find ghost freed from the pains of hell and his sins just because of Virginia’s love and compassion.