Melissa Cartway - Nonconformist Spirit
| Type | Aspect |
|---|---|
| High Concept | An Inventive Girl that works her way as she can |
| Trouble | “What?! How so… I can’t do this?!” |
| Knows also about etiquette and deportment | |
| Madam Sheridan’s Orphan’s House And Boarding School | |
| Is not against mess herself while doing things |
| Approach | Level |
|---|---|
| Careful | Fair (+2) |
| Clever | Fair (+2) |
| Flashy | Good (+3) |
| Forceful | Average (+1) |
| Quick | Mediocre (+0) |
| Sneaky | Average (+1) |
Anyone that see Melissa Cartway thinks that, when she grow out as a debutante, she’ll be the typical Southern Belle for sure: big green eyes, red hair and a Snow white skin. Helps the fact that she knows how to dress gracefully and appropriate for the occasion. However, her eyes shows that she want to go over what people think she should be.
Melissa is being educated and prepared to be the typical christian woman and accept this for sure…
Or at least is what everyone thinks.
In fact, Melissa want to go over this: at the same time she learn well their Home Economy classes, learning how to bake cakes and sweets, she also wants to learn everything she can that could be useful, being good in topics that people never would imagine a little girl like her would like, like Latin, economy, maths and history.
In everyone’s mind, this is a way that Mellisa have to assure a good marriage in the future. For her, this is a good disguise and maybe even a good prospect, as far this assure she achieve what she wants.
For the Cartways, what would be a great blessing turned into tragedy.
In December 31st, 1900, Jeniffer Cartway, Ms. Robert Cartway, farmers in New Mexico, started to fill the contraptions a little before the New Year’s Mass. They so got into the doctor that explained her birth-giving would be a complex one, as Melissa (the name chosen by the mother, nee Jeniffer McCullough, as it means The Servant of God, from the Irish Maoilíosa) was into a wrong position, so they would try a Cesarean.
To turn things worse, they didn’t know about the bandits in the region. And they invaded the doctors’s house.
They had opened fire and Robert chose to protect his wife and daughter-to-be, and was shot and died, although he shot the bandits menace away.
With all this, even Melissa’s birth, in the strokes of the new Century beginning gave Jeniffer no happiness. She, saddened and unhappy with his husband lost, had not lived much more, staying alive just time enough to wean Melissa at 6 month, and died.
In their will, they opted to send her child to Madam Sheridan’s Orphan’s House And Boarding School, in New York City, their property being sold and the money put into a Fund for her education till she got over a College, even a University.
Those were the terms that Esther Sheridan accept to create a great friend’s daughter she lost into tragedy into her Orphanage. Although things were not as good as she wanted, she did her best to warrant Melissa (and all the kids in the Boarding School) a good schooling and education, using for this the support of the good men and women from the Society she’s part of, the Century Club. They help her, offering classes for the kids at low cost, or even pro bono.
In the meantime, Melissa learned everything she could about everything. However, from the beginning, three behaviors marked her: politeness, learning and following the social norms; cleverness, being able to learn everything she want; and nonconformism: although she learned the polite ways of a Lady, she never looked to be conformed with this.
It was when Mellisa learned about her past from Madam Sheridan: she always knew she was her personal tutor, but never about her origins, or about her mother dying just a little after her birth. And also not about why were so important she being born at January 1st, 1901. And since then, Esther had tuteled her, after school, into some specific topics that Melissa should need to learn, with her friends from the Century Club.