where I believe that she has met with considerable success

I’d like to ask about the sentence below, from the Copper Beeches by Conan Doyle.

She is now the head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.

I’d like to confirm that with this sentence, should readers always take as..

A: She met with considerable success AFTER she became the head of a private school, meaning she must be doing great job as a headteacher

Or is there any way you can take this sentence as …

B: She met with considerable success in Walshall as a result of which she’s now risen to such a respectable job as the head of a private school there.

Does the quoted part always mean A?

Answer

She is now the head of a private school at Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.

Like a great many sentences in English, this is syntactically ambiguous: the relative clause “where I believe that she has met with considerable success” could be parsed as attaching either to “Walsall” or to the larger noun phrase “a private school at Walsall”.

So it could indeed be taken as saying that she met with considerable success at Walsall. And I don’t see anything in the grammar of the sentence that strictly specifies whether she became the head of the private school before or after meeting success.

But in practice, I would say there is little ambiguity, because the sentence makes more sense if it means that she met with success after becoming the head of the school.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : giraffe , Answer Author : herisson