"Marigolds" by Eugenia W. Collier is a poignant coming-of-age tale which features the sudden epiphany of the narrator, Elizabeth, when she destroys the marigolds of their somewhat ferocious neighbour Miss Lottie.
The crucial moment for the story is when Elizabeth, acting in a fit of anger having heard about her father's lost job and his desperation, goes and annihiliates the marigolds of Miss Lottie, who proudly and carefully grew them. When she has finished, she is surprised to see Miss Lottie there, watching her:
And there was no rage in the face now, now that the garden was destroyed and there was nothing any longer to be protected.
Seeing Miss Lottie after committing this "violent, crazy act" enables her to "gaze upon a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood." She realises the true significance of the marigolds - "beauty in the midst of ugliness" - and loses her innocence:
Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface. In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence.
This act of wanton destruction therefore and the narrator's confrontation with Miss Lottie catapults her into being a woman and no longer a child.
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