Question

Read the excerpt from "The Lady Maid's Bell."
But that wasn’t the only queer thing in the house. The very next day I found out that Mrs. Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes about the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before. Agnes said she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was dreaming. To be sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and she had excused herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the woman plain enough to know her again if we should meet. I decided that she must have been a friend of the cook’s, or of one of the other women servants: perhaps she had come down from town for a night’s visit, and the servants wanted it kept secret. Some ladies are very stiff about having their servants’ friends in the house overnight. At any rate, I made up my mind to ask no more questions.
How does this excerpt support the idea that the story is told by an unreliable narrator?
The narrator tries to justify having seen a woman.
The narrator does not trust what Agnes tells her.
The narrator wants to meet the servants’ visiting friends.
The narrator wants to know who Mrs. Brympton’s nurse is.

Answer 1

The excerpt supports the idea that the story is told by an unreliable narrator primarily through the statement "the narrator does not trust what Agnes tells her." The narrator explicitly mentions that Agnes did not see anyone and that she perceived Agnes to think she was dreaming. This indicates that the narrator might be questioning her own perceptions of reality, thereby raising doubts about the reliability of her account. The fact that she tries to justify her sighting of the woman and comes up with a plausible explanation also points to her inner conflict and uncertainty, further highlighting her unreliability as a narrator.