Other characters in "Mrs Turner Cutting the Grass" and The Purplie Pileus

... as worked hard to achieve his success and does not appear to know how he was treated by a lot of people, especially his wife, before this.

The author's view of Mr Coombes is quite a disparaging one. He is described as "…a pale faced little man…" near the beginning of the story, not a particularly nice way to be depicted. He is portrayed by Wells as a weak little man who is far too obsessed about what the neighbours might think of week day tunes playing on a Sunday, amongst other trivial things. Wells is blatantly belittling him and there is a lot of evidence to support this. The comments made about him by Wells include, "...timid, nervous…" "…with a meagre ambition of self-denial…" "…little Coombes…" There is an overall sense that Wells doesn't like Coombes and views him as a pitiful man. He comes across to me as stuffy and lacking in self-control, respect and power. He also comes across to me as being melodramatic when he storms out of the house and into the woods, dreaming up ways to kill himself, "…he thought of razors, pistols, bread-knives…" These overemotional concepts of violence are short-lived and soon he goes back to feeling sorry himself in a less destructive way.

In both "Mrs. Turner Cutting the grass" and "The Purple Pileus" there are characters that show pity for the central characters. For example the professor who meets Mrs Turner certainly pities her for her lack of class or taste, and lack of knowledge about temples. He makes his feelings known publicly and makes money from the consequent poem that follows. The Saschers and high school girls show pitying feelings towards her also as they cannot understand how she manages to live without knowing about grass clippings, Neil Young and weed killer. The high school girls pity the way her "…striated flesh on her upper thighs…" is bared for the entire world to see. They all look down their noses at Mrs Turner and do not really have any idea what she has been through in her life. The high school girls appear to think her life has been rather boring, that they themselves would never be out mowing the lawn everyday when there is so much more for the ...