Question

Where did Lucy live a lonely life?

Answer 1

Lucy lived a quiet, obscure life in a cottage in an out of the way place in the English Lake District. Because of her isolated life, few people knew her, and therefore few could love her. The narrator compares her to a violet growing so close to a mossy stone that it is half hidden from view.

Lucy is reminiscent of the simple, common people who Thomas Grey comments on in his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Gray compares obscure villagers to flowers that bloom undetected: