13 Little Blue Envelopes

Aunt Peg is Ginny’s aunt and mentor, and she is also Ginny’s foil. Where Ginny is cautious and shy, Peg was a risk taker (often to the point of being irresponsible), and her eccentricity often led to her being the center of attention. As foil, Peg motivates Ginny to do things that she would not otherwise do, thus spurring Ginny’s self-discovery and maturation.

Aunt Peg died from a brain tumor prior to the start of the novel. Before she died, Peg wrote Ginny a series of letters. The events of the plot are kicked off when Ginny receives the first of Peg’s letters. The letters establish Peg as a type of mentor for Ginny; Peg has created a series of challenges for Ginny in the form of a trip around Europe. Through these challenges, Peg hoped to help Ginny discover more about herself while also explaining the last years of her life to Ginny.

Peg was an archetypal artist. She was a creator and is celebrated for her vibrant, imaginative paintings. She was spontaneous and energetic and is characterized as having an artist’s intuition, an ability to know and understand things that others may not notice: “She had a weird way of knowing things, an uncanny sense of timing. When Ginny was a kid, Aunt Peg had always managed to call whenever Ginny needed her” (93). Ginny meets several of Peg’s friends as she travels around Europe. All these friends comment on this intuitiveness, this “uncanny sense” that Peg had; Peg’s artistic vision and her trust in her own intuition are central to her character.

Peg also embodies the negative character traits often associated with the artist archetype. She was flighty and impractical, often running away from difficult situations or boredom rather than confronting her issues. As the novel goes on, Ginny remarks more on Peg’s flaws:

Every once in a while, Ginny remembered that along with being charming and whimsical, Aunt Peg could sometimes be a little flaky. She was the kind of person who absentmindedly stirred her coffee with her pinkie and was surprised when she burned herself or left the car in neutral instead of park and laughed when it was occasionally in a different place than where she had left it (133).

Peg’s flaws help Ginny realize that Peg was human too, which is an important step in Ginny’s maturation process; she transitions from idealizing Peg as the epitome of cool and interesting to loving Peg in a more nuanced and reasonable way.

Richard is Peg’s husband and, as such, is Ginny’s uncle. Ginny does not learn this until Chapter 32, toward the very end of the novel. Richard lives in London and works at the famous department store, Harrods.

Richard is reliable and generous; he allowed Peg to live in his house rent free after he found her crying while she was shopping at Harrods. Richard also bails Ginny out of a few scrapes, most notably buying her a plane ticket to London from Greece after her backpack gets stolen.

Richard is a father figure for Ginny in the novel since Peg’s “rules” forbid her from contacting her own parents during her travels. His characterization as a stable, trustworthy father figure is established from Ginny’s first encounter with him, when he opens the door wearing a suit and tie. Ginny is surprised to find that his house is “just a house—not an artists’ colony, or a commune, or any kind of sociological experiment” (27). Because of Peg’s history of making friends with unconventional people, Richard’s normalcy surprises Ginny. His practicality is echoed in his “plainly decorated” home with “low-pile carpet” and “simple furniture in flat navy blues and blacks” (27).

The plainness of his home also reflects Richard’s loneliness. Richard loved Peg, nursed her while she was dying, and is now grieving her loss. His house reflects his quiet bachelor lifestyle now that Peg is gone. Richard’s grief and loneliness are demonstrated by the fact that he kept Peg’s room—painted in bright colors and decorated with a wild collage of found objects—as she left it. This “small, sunny bedroom” is the brightest spot in Richard’s home (27). Richard experiences a healing transformation in the novel by developing a relationship with his niece, Ginny. Through Ginny, Richard learns that Peg loved him as much as he loved her.