Munro uses first-person narration to foreground the perspective of Edie, a working-class hired girl whose middle-class employers prefer to think of her as having no subjectivity. The narrative voice challenges Mrs. Peebles’s stereotype by allowing the reader into Edie’s thoughts and by showing her to have agency in how she plans and reflects upon her experience with Chris. When Mrs. Peebles commands Edie to tell Chris that his fiancée will be back at five, Edie, who wants Chris for herself, judges that “he wouldn’t be concerned about knowing this right away” (69), and delays the message to bake Chris a cake. This passage shows Edie strategizing how to serve her employer and look after her own interests at the same time. The business of Edie’s mind contrasts with her perception of Mrs. Peebles’s languidness, as this unconventional heroine takes the middle-class marker of independent thought for herself.

While the first-person perspective tells the story of 15-year-old Edie, the older narrator’s presence often puts the younger self at a distance, as she offers comments that critique or reflect on behavior that resulted from inexperience.