The Wide Window
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| Author | Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler) |
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| Illustrator | Brett Helquist |
| Cover artist | Brett Helquist |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Series of Unfortunate Events |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Released | February 2000 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 214 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-06-440768-3 |
| Preceded by | The Reptile Room |
| Followed by | The Miserable Mill |
The Wide Window is a children's novel and the third novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. In this book, the Baudelaire orphans meet the third distant relative, Mrs. Anwhistle, otherwise known as Aunt Josephine, who is afraid of just about everything. After starting to adjust to their aunt's eccentricities, the Baudelaries must worry about a mysterious man who looks like Count Olaf.
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[edit] Plot summary
The Wide Window begins with the three Baudelaire children, Sunny, Klaus and Violet sitting at Damocles Dock after disembarking the Fickle Ferry, which had taken them across Lake Lachrymose. Mr. Poe, had arranged a taxi to take them to their new home. He then gives the children a bag of peppermints (which he always forgets they are allergic to) and sends them on their way.
The taxi pulls up a steep hill to a house which sits just off the side of the cliff, held there by spidery, metal-looking stilts. Inside, they find their next guardian, Aunt Josephine Anwhistle. Although she is a kind old woman, she is frightened by many things. Ever since her husband, Ike, died in Lake Lachrymose, she has developed many fears about the lake and her own kitchen appliances. She won't touch the phone, the radiator, the refrigerator, the doorknobs, and the oven. She also has a terrible fear of realtors. Aunt Josephine loves grammar and possesses an enormous library on the subject in her home. Within the library, there is an enormous window (for which The Wide Window is named), which overlooks the lake.
After the Baudelaires tell Aunt Josephine Hurricane Herman is coming, the children and their new guardian head down to town to obtain food and other house hold supplies. There they meet "Captain Sham," who is actually Count Olaf in disguise. The children try and warn Aunt Josephine, but they cannot prove Sham's disguise, since he has a wooden leg where the ankle bearing his tattoo of an eye should be. Furthermore, Aunt Josephine finds Captain Sham charming, and won't listen to the Baudelaires anyway.
Later that night, Captain Sham calls Aunt Josephine, who sends the children away when they try once more to warn her. The children are awakened later by a loud crash, and they rush to the library to find the Wide Window broken and their Aunt's suicide note.
The three siblings are shocked but suspicious because the note says that the children's new guardian will be Captain Sham and is filled with more spelling and grammar errors than they would have expected of Aunt Josephine. They reason that Olaf is behind it and call Mr. Poe. They cannot prove their suspicions, because the note is written in Josephine's hand writing. While Mr. Poe and Olaf are discussing matters at The Anxious Clown, the children purposefully start an allergic reaction with the peppermints Mr. Poe had given them, and escape back to the house. By this time, Hurricane Herman is already arriving on Lake Lachrymose. At the house, Klaus (who now has a swollen tongue because of the allergic reaction to the peppermints) discovers an encoded message in the suicide note. All the spelling and grammar mistakes in the note form the words "Curdled Cave." The children then scramble to find any kind of map of the lake to find out where the cave is. Shortly afterward, one of the supports holding Aunt Josephine's house in place is struck by lightning. The house then begins to fall off the cliffs edge while the Baudelaires try to get out before it can fall with them still inside. After narrowly escaping with their lives, the Baudelaires watch as their new home crumbles and falls into Lake Lachrymose.
The Baudelaires then hurry down to the docks, steal a ship from Captain Sham's company, and sail out in the middle of the hurricane to Curdled Cave, where they find their aunt hiding. Aunt Josephine claims that Olaf made her write the note, but rather than actually commit suicide she threw a chair through the window and went into hiding, leaving only the spelling code behind.
The Baudelaires convince her to join them, and they sail back across the lake, when they are attacked by the Lachrymose Leeches. The children are sure that the leeches won't attack, since they haven't consumed any food within the last hour. (The Leeches are blind and attack only if they smell food). However, Aunt Josephine admits to having eaten a banana shortly before the Baudelaires arrived. The Leeches ram the ship and are in the act of destroying it when Captain Sham rescues them in another boat. Josephine pleads with Olaf to spare her life, offering to give him the orphans and disguise herself, but Olaf throws Aunt Josephine into the water, where she is supposedly devoured by the leeches. He leaves Aunt Josephine to fend for herself, and takes the children with him.
Back at the docks, Mr. Poe is about to hand the children over to Sham when Sunny bites into Sham's fake wooden leg. When it breaks off, he tries to get away with it by saying his leg somehow came back. However, Sunny already revealed his real leg and the tattoo of an eye on his ankle. Having been once more discovered, Olaf flees and leaves the children miserable, cold, and in search of a new guardian.
[edit] Trivia
- Brett Helquist's self portrait: Brett blindfolded and being forced to walk the plank.
[edit] Other clues
- In the ending picture, there is a sign decorated with two eyes, foreshadowing The Miserable Mill
- Ivan Lachrymose: Lake Explorer is a book mentioned in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography that supposedly is used to hide crucial documents between pages 302 and 303.
- Also, the Baudelaires, Mr. Poe, and Captain Sham dine at The Anxious Clown, and according to Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, they receive a coded message.
- Count Olaf's disguise in this book is Captain Julio Sham - whose initials are JS. In The Penultimate Peril, someone signs into to Hotel Denouement as JS, and it was never stated who it was. There is a possibility that Olaf signed in under the anagram of Julio Sham, although it's more likely the JS was referring to Justice Strauss or Jerome Squalor, both of whom make returns in the book.
- At the end of the book, Lemony Snicket claims that by the time the Baudelaires had to attend a certain preparatory school, two fisherman found what appeared to be the remains of a shredded life jacket. This is an obvious reference to The Austere Academy, and, by the time they attended Prufrock Prep, they found Aunt Josephine's eaten life jacket, meaning she was eaten by the leeches.
[edit] Or, Disappearance!
A Series of Unfortunate Events No.3: The Wide Window or, Disappearance![1] is a paperback rerelease of The Wide Window, designed to mimic Victorian penny dreadfuls. The tentative release date is September 4, 2007. The book will include a serial supplement entitled The Cornucopian Cavalcade, which will include an advice column written by Lemony Snicket [2].
[edit] Cover images
 US cover |
 UK cover |
