4 Best Annie Eliot Monologues

St. Valentine’s Day (Elinor)

Category: Play Role: Elinor From: St. Valentine's Day

Elinor says

I feel utterly dazed.

The only idea that I seem to have saved from the general wreck is that there is an extreme likelihood of Richard sending me a comic valentine! And that’s something I had never thought of. What in the world does he send one to Letty for? Something she said suggested it probably.

Yet why do I refuse to put her own construction on it, — that he likes her! Why should he not? come, now — why should he not? She is pretty enough — in a way — fresh, naïve — just the sort of thing to fascinate a somewhat blasé man like Dick Morrison.

What do men care for crudities of manner or speech, if a girl strikes them pleasantly?

And how should he know that her grand passion is coconut cake?

I have been told that he would tire sometime of fruitlessly playing the lover with me. He has not said a direct word of love to me since Letty came! not a word!

He certainly did talk with her a long time the other day. And to promise to go to a social in Walkerville! That is equivalent to a threat of blowing his brains out from a more emotional character.

Well, I ought to be glad.

I think perhaps I am glad.

I’m not in love with Richard Morrison. I said that half an hour ago — and I’ve said it any number of times before — and he only takes me at my word.

And yet — and yet — Letty! That child! How utterly absurd!

Men have no right to abuse their privilege of being absurd! I do not know what to think. I will let the valentine episode decide the matter! He can’t be going to send the same one to both of us. When we have conned our respective valentines we may understand each other better.

St. Valentine’s Day (Elinor)

Category: Play Role: Elinor From: St. Valentine's Day

Elinor says

How very absurd and medieval on his part to send me a valentine!

A real valentine with, I have no doubt, birds and hearts and cupids and true lover’s knots–and–arrows on it. I do not think I shall be entirely satisfied unless it has a heart penetrated an arrow.

There is something about a heart, in vivid color, penetrated an arrow, that expresses an amount of sentimental suffering otherwise impossible to delineate.

I used to be very fond of the openwork ones over colored paper, but I think now I should be able to do without the colored paper. My tastes have softened down with the faded aestheticism of the age. But I should like some of those appropriate legends “stuck” here and there; something simple but convincing, such as “True Love,” or “Mine is Thine,” “Think of Me,” or “From a True Friend.”

I remember that even to the uncritical eye of youth these aphorisms had rather the air of being attached as a work of supererogation after the real valentine was finished.

They suggest conventionalized emotion in a way that is charming, and Dick and I both like our emotion conventionalized.

St. Valentine’s Day (Letty)

Category: Play Role: Letty From: St. Valentine's Day

Letty says

Say, Aunt Elinor, I’ve been reading an awfully interesting book.

Oh, I’ve forgotten the name of it, but it is awfully interesting. It’s all about broken engagements and misunderstandings, and they go to the most elegant ball, and he sends her the loveliest flowers out of his own greenhouse, you know.

I’ve forgotten what kind of flowers it is, but it is some particular kind, you know, that means something. It’s a sort of queer name. I wish I could think of it, so if anybody ever sent me any I’d know what it was.

It was in England, you know, at a manor house. I wish I could think of it. It isn’t ylang ylang, you know, but–anyway, it’s just as good.

I’ve forgotten what it meant anyway, so I guess I wouldn’t know. Well, he sends them to her, you know, and she doesn’t wear them — oh! there’s somebody else in the house that’s in love with him too, and she interferes — I think she mixes up the flowers, or something — she’s an awfully mean old thing, and I should think he’d have seen through her in a minute, and known she — the other one — wanted to wear the flowers — I would, I know, wouldn’t you, Aunt Elinor? Well, it makes an awful lot of trouble anyway, and he quarrels with her, the nice one, you know, and goes off with the other. She has the most perfectly lovely dress at the ball — all kind of weird and serpent-like and glittering, you know, and oh! I was dreadfully afraid he was going to propose to her — wouldn’t it have been perfectly awful if he had, Aunt Elinor?

St. Valentine’s Day (Letty)

Category: Play Role: Letty From: St. Valentine's Day

Letty says

Well, I was going to tell you about Mr. Morrison.

Well, as I say, he’s talked with me a good deal since I came, and he said to me the other day —

it was that day, don’t you know, that someone rang the bell when he was here, and he said your doorbell was always ringing, and you said something about its being the primary object of a bell, and he said the primary object of that particular bell seemed to be to interrupt him when he had anything important to say, and you said under those circumstances, perhaps he’d have better luck if he wouldn’t always be saying the same important thing,

and he said he hadn’t suspected you of countenancing the chestnut bell, and you said you shouldn’t think he would hint at such an ordinary proceeding, and then Mr. Apgood came in, and you shook hands with him,

and seemed so glad to see him, and I was so surprised, because I heard you tell Mrs. White the other day that you thought he was a dreadful bore, and he always came just when you didn’t want him.