W.E.B. Du Bois once said: “Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” Growing up, Charlotte – the protagonist in the short story “The Metaphor” by Budge Wilson– was affected unconsciously by her mother and Ms. Hancock, her seventh-grade English teacher. Charlotte was introduced to the metaphor, a tool to express her thoughts,  in Ms. Hancock joyful, inspiring class. However, she was made to obey the rules at home by her demanding mother. Both her teacher and her mother have great influence on Charlotte; nevertheless, the differences between the two women resulted in the shift in the young girl’s features.

Charlotte’s appearance changed as soon as she turned sixteen. In junior high, she was taught by Ms. Hancock, who was  “fond of peasant blouses encrusted with embroidery,…luminous frosted lipsticks-in hot pink, or something closer to purple or magenta.”(65) Charlotte described her teacher as a cake “frosted by someone who unschooled in the art of cake decoration”(80) Although it is unconventional for an adult to be so flamboyant, this teacher does not bother how others think of her look. Consequently, Charlotte carefreely went to school with “acne, straight, brown stringy hair.”(74) Contrastingly, her mother was admired for “her dark-blond hair, her flawless figure, her smooth hands.” (73) In Charlotte’s metaphor, the mother was depicted as “a flawless modern building, created of glass and the smoothest of pale concrete,”(68) “a white picket fence-straight, level.”(72) This neat style enabled her mother to fit in the society: “She chaired committees, ran bazaars, sat on boards.” Influenced by her mother, Charlotte started paying attention to her appearance with “hair curled, makeup intact,”(75) perceiving “life’s most precious gifts [as] the admiration of [her] peers, local fame, boys, social triumphs.”(75) This young girl’s transformation from childishness to maturity fashion clearly demonstrates the contradiction in the way Ms. Hancock and Charlotte’s mother presenting themselves.

Not only did Charlotte make an adjustment to her mien, but also her personality. On one hand, Ms.Hancock’s classroom was exciting and ebullient with argument and discussion, with the teacher “fluttered and flitted from desk to desk, inspecting notebooks, making suggestions, dispensing eager praise.”(65) On the other hand, Charlotte’s mother, who “never acted frazzled or rushed or angry,”(73) taught her daughter that “a sure and perfect control is what separates the civilized from the uncivilized.”(80) This ideal made “the eager, skinny fan of grade 7” turn into “the cool and careful person”(77) with her “new self-centered and self-conscious sophistication.”(76)

Besides from these changes which occur in a long period of time, the polarity between Charlotte’s behaviour at school and at home points out the contrast between Ms. Hancock and Charlotte’s mother. Ms. Hancock possessed “that gift of making most of us want to write, to communicate, to make a blank sheet of paper into a beautiful or at least an interesting thing.” (66) She encouraged the students to write “without restraint, without inhibition, with verve”(67), offered to help “with [ones] writing, or, well, with any other kind of problem.”(69) As a result, Charlotte and her classmates “were free to respond positively…without fear of the mockery,…[and they] argued about meanings and methods and creative intentions with passionate caring.”(66) On the contrary, Charlotte’s mother “left [Charlotte] feeling so depraved, so unsalvageable”(72) with her teaching method. Charlotte learned that “to complain is weak, to rejoice is childish, to laugh is noisy, [and to move around] raises dust.”(73) Subsequently, “[she] was well behaved, spoke quietly, never complained, …obeyed all rules without question or argument.”(74) The more enthusiastically she expressed herself in class, the more downheartedly she felt at home.

Ms. Hancock and Charlotte’s mother both played important roles in the young Charlotte’s development. Although their style, their thoughts, their way of treating Charlotte were different, their goal is the same: Charlotte becomes the best person she can be. The two mothers did their best to be the perfect models for Charlotte to follow, like what Carol B Hillman claimed: “ One of the most important things we adults can do for young children is to model the kind of person we would like them to be.”