The Violet Hunt and Family Obligations — Alice Adams

Alice and Mrs. Adams plunge into dress alterations for Mildred Palmer's dance, ignoring the lunch gong until their cook quits in a doorway shout of goodbye. Alice once replaced the brass dinner bell with gentle Chinese bowls, a refinement that prevents the household staff from expressing urgency and hastens resignations they can barely afford. Alice washes dishes so her mother can sew, then daydreams at the sink about ballroom entrances, perfect partners, and orchids she cannot pay for. Finding twenty-two violets in the soot-stained yard, she rides to Belleview Park, stoops an hour among old trees, and gathers three hundred blooms with aching back and trembling knees. Her mother mourns the labor other girls avoid with a phone call to a florist. At dinner Walter refuses to escort Alice, mocking the Palmer crowd and preferring his downtown date. Mrs. Adams pleads that Alice lacks background and cannot arrive alone; mentioning the violet hunt finally breaks Walter's resistance. He agrees to hire a cheap tin Lizzie for seventy-five cents rather than a taxi, telling his mother not to reveal the vehicle until Alice is inside. The chapter exposes how much hidden work sustains one evening of attempted belonging.