This essay draws a compelling parallel between Emily Webb, the fictional protagonist of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Princess Diana, the real-world icon whose fairy-tale life turned tragic. Through comparison of their backgrounds, marriages, and deaths, the paper explores how one woman longed for the extraordinary while living a simple, fulfilling life, and another inhabited a dreamlike existence that became a nightmare. Ultimately, the essay argues that Emily's fictional ability to return from death and reflect on life's small wonders offers a lesson that Diana's very real, very final end could not — that ordinary life, lived fully, is its own kind of magic.
This essay demonstrates the point-by-point comparative method, weaving between Emily Webb and Princess Diana across shared themes — background, marriage, life circumstances, and death — rather than treating each subject in isolation. This technique keeps the comparison dynamic and reinforces the central argument that fiction can illuminate truths about real life that reality itself cannot always provide.
The essay opens with a vivid introductory contrast, then deepens the comparison across four thematic areas: public introduction and social ascent, the nature of each woman's lived experience, the role of fiction versus lived reality, and finally the meaning each woman's death carries for the audience. The conclusion pivots on the distinction between Emily's fictional resurrection and Diana's permanent absence, delivering the essay's central insight about the preciousness of ordinary life.
Emily Webb was a typical young woman who dreamed about becoming a great lady. Diana Spencer was an exceptional young woman who became a great lady. That is where their similarities end. Diana married her prince and Emily married her farmer. Emily married the boy next door; Diana married a reserved royal. Diana was a real person. Emily was a character in a play. However, both of these women lived and died while we watched from the balcony.
When Diana Spencer's life was made public, she was already a princess-to-be. She strolled with her prince arm-in-arm for photographers who greedily snapped pictures published around the world. It was evident that she was in love with her prince and dazzled by her new life. However, she was in unfamiliar territory and about to enter a reality that was totally foreign to her. Diana lived the fairy tale. She instantaneously evolved from middle-class kindergarten teacher to international celebrity.
Emily would have loved to be in Diana's shoes. When we meet Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, she is a young schoolgirl — bright, pretty enough, and ordinary. She lives next door to the boy who will ultimately become her husband, and she has known him since childhood. She is familiar with everything about her life, but longs for the extraordinary. She is comfortable in her surroundings and happy enough, but often indifferent. Unlike Diana, she was never overwhelmed by her circumstances. Her life was predictable, and her death in childbirth was not uncommon for the era in which she lived. Diana's life, by contrast, was unpredictable, and her death was shocking. It is only after Emily dies that she realizes that life is wondrous and every moment is precious.
We must remember, however, that Emily Webb's world is that of fiction. She is an actress reciting lines, portraying a normal small-town girl who goes to school, falls in love, gets married, has babies, and dies. Throughout the production, the omnipresent Stage Manager must remind the audience that they are watching a play — that it is not real life.
Antithetically, Princess Diana lived a life that had the appearance of a dream. She falls in love with the Prince of Wales, has a magnificent storybook wedding, enters a life of pomp and circumstance, moves into a castle, and gives birth to two princes in the following three years. She probably had to remind herself that all of this was real. Yet as time passed, her life progressed from real to surreal. Diana's dream life became a bad dream — a nightmare of self-deprecation, deceit, divorce, and humiliation. Emily's simple, happy, ordinary life was a dream that Diana was never able to realize.
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