The writer reveals the dead woman’s personality by means of narrative description with both implied and explicit judgments. From the author’s characterizations we derive the impression of the dead woman as strong, loving and caring personality. When the narrator informs us that she armed her children with a strict moral code, teaching them religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise; we come to share respect and approval of the dead woman’s doings. The facts that her son had become a judge and handled the law as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without pity and that her daughter was greatly influenced by the virtue which had bathed her in this austere family, had become the bride of the Church through her loathing for man prove that the dead woman had brought up her children in a decent way and instilled high moral values and qualities in them. These comments of the narrator clearly indicate that this woman devoted her entire life to her children.

The author reveals some surface details of physical appearance of the dead woman, for example:

·                 …her eyes closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before dying;

·                 The whole pale countenance of the dead woman…;

·                 On the other side of the long body the other hand seemed still to be holding the sheet in the death grasp…

·                 The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman's hand, an ivory hand as white as the large crucifix lying across the bed.

All these details contribute to the calm atmosphere and suggest the idea that the dead woman had quiet and wise nature. The very first sentence of the story ‘The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman should whose life had been blameless.’ contains the adjective ‘blameless’ which gives the author’s explicit judgment about the dead woman life. Other direct characterization of her personality is driven from the description of the dead woman’s body and the effect it produces: ‘The whole pale countenance of the dead woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led, how easy and pure the death of this parent had been.’ The writer explicitly emphasizes the goodness of the character and her virtues which conveyed through the description of her dead body and the expression of her face.