Foil

Character Role Analysis

The Red Girl

The Red Girl serves as the foil to Annie because she is allowed to live and exist in a manner that would make Annie's mother gasp.

The Red Girl doesn't have to bathe often, or clean her nails, or wear clean dresses, or comb her hair or behave in the ways socially required for girls. She climbs trees and goes to the lighthouse. She smells bad. She's masculine.

The Red Girl proves to Annie that there's a big, bad, dirty world out there… and Annie wants to get down and dirty. Even though their whirlwind friendship is short lived, Annie learns what it's like to live on the other side of her mother's strict rules and regulations. There's no turning back after her relationship with the Red Girl: she's seen a life that is diametrically opposed to her mother's clean, domestic world and she wants to be part of it.