nter set down on Starkfield, and the village lay under a sheet of snow, perpetually renewed from the pale skies"(7). During the entirety of the novel, the Starkfield weather is brutally cold and snowy. Because winter and coldness are some of the predominant images n the book, it was first published under the title L'Hiver, which means winter in French. The snow and cold restate the cruelty of the characters' situations. The setting, using the bleakness of winter, "...provides a complicated time scheme through which the author could dramatically contrast the bleak existence of her characters in the present with their youthful expectations in the past." (McDowell 74). T
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