Transients in Arcadia

How does the use of elegant description persuade the reader to believe Madame Beaumont is of higher class?

If it were not for O. Henry’s extensive use of description, his readers would not believe there was a higher class evident within his story. Almost no attention is paid to the world outside the hotel Lotus where as all eyes are on the hotel and its elegant guests such as the "wealthy" Madame Beaumont.

Firstly, because O. Henry has made the setting of this play a beautiful, expensive, and secret get-away within the core of New York City, it seems as though any person staying in the hotel would be rich and well put together like the characters seem at first. It is very unlikely a hotel with "broad staircases [that] glide dreamily upward in its aerial elevators, attended by guides in brass buttons..." (37) would be a cheap stay in the city. And when "the ceiling is painted in watercolors to counterfeit a summer sky across which delicate clouds drift and do not vanish as those of nature do to our regret," (37) what rich person would rather spend their days outside in the polluted air of busy streets? O. Henry makes his setting seem even more luxurious by comparing the Hotel Lotus to the outside world which he describes very little. The hotel is an "oasis in the July desert of Manhattan" with "the temperature [of] perpetual April." So not only by the use of his description, but also by the use of comparison, O. Henry is able to create a very luxurious setting in which his seemingly higher class characters seem to fit into very well.

Until the real Madame Beaumont is revealed on page 41, I would have never guessed she was actually a lower class woman. I believed so much about her pretend self because O. Henry described her so well and in detail. She must have been important if "she possessed the fine air of the elite...[and a] graciousness that made the hotel employees her slaves," that were always "fighting for [her] honour" (38). O. Henry dedicates many paragraphs to this elegant woman describing her as "a queen whose loneliness was of position only," and a "delicate being who [glows] softly in the dimness like a jasmine flower in the dusk" (38). The author relates this wealthy, beautiful woman to Versailles and Paris, two places that hold such elegance which in turn leads us to believe she holds the same wealth as those in Versailles and the same sophistication of a Parisian.

Another aspect of the story which led me to think of Madame Beaumont as a member of high society was the way they spoke. Oh Henry created a very elegant tone through his use of words. Hardly any phrases in the beginning of the story were simply stated and he had the two main characters speak gracefully compared to how they spoke at the end of the story while displaying their true selves.

So I suppose instead of just using description to create this feeling of a higher class, O. Henry has used comparisons and an effective tone in both the dialogue and narration. Also, he has not only simply described Madame Beaumont in a higher-class sort of way, but he has described the setting which proves to be effective in persuading his readers of the presence of a higher social structure.