The Garden Party

Author: Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand, 1888-1923)
Published: 1922
Category: Society
Text: Classic Reader

Summary:
The accidental death of a young husband and father is the seed that allows the illusion of class distinction to take root and grow in the fertile ground of a young girl's mind.


Analysis:
Mansfield deftly employs an array of metaphors: flowers, hats, food, topography, and technology to describe a gradual change in a young girl's, Laura's, view of the people and events that fill her life on a day when "Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold"; implying the girl's changed view will be the result of an illusion created by a golden veil thrown over her head to turn her clear (true blue) vision hazy.

The story's title, "The Garden Party", itself, suggests a lovely summer's day of innocent pleasures while at the same time reminding us of the Garden of Eden and the possible loss of innocence as well as an indulgence in pleasures that may be sins. The idea of supplanted innocence is reinforced in the first paragraph where we are told

The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine.

Daisies, white spring flowers often associated with children and innocence, have been replaced with "dark flat rosettes". Later in the story we find that fake gold daisies decorate the brim of a hat given to Laura by her mother; not a "sweet hat" like the one her friend Kitty "wore on Sunday" but a "black hat" that made Laura look "Spanish", "striking" and "stunning" and directed her thoughts away from others

Just for a moment she had another glimpse of that poor woman and those little children, and the body being carried into the house. But it all seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. 

and onto herself "Never had she imagined she could look like that."  Her new hat induces new thinking. The man's death, which took place "just outside the front gate", and his family's grief, which she first viewed as personal, "they're nearly neighbours", are now seen impersonally "like a picture in a newspaper." In fact, the whole impoverished community is now unreal to her, they are like the old woman with "her feet on a newspaper."; they no longer tread on common ground. Laura, her family, the garden, occupy the top of the hill, the dead carter, his family, neighbours and "cabbage" patches, the bottom. She does not bring them the "bread and butter" she nourished herself on at breakfast but the "fancy cream puffs" she indulged in later; filled with a "whipping cream" that induces an "absorbed inward look".

Instinctively recognizing her new view as false, "if only it was another hat", Laura blurts out "Forgive my hat", knowing she is no longer capable of putting it aside.  As she re-climbs the hill, her brother emerges from the shadows and asks if she was crying "Laura shook her head. She was."  She has learned to lie.

The Little Gypsy Girl

Author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spanish, 1547 - 1616)
Published: 1613
Category: Tale
Text: Project Gutenberg

Summary:
A young nobleman falls in love with a young gypsy girl; pledging her two years of his life in exchange for her hand in marriage, he joins the gypsy band, abandoning his parents and his city but not his values.


Points of Interest:
More of a morality tale than a short story, it is full of negative comments on gypsies except for the young gypsy girl, Percosia, who is always described in glowing terms, as is her suitor. The reason becomes clear in the end, when we discover Percosia had been stolen away from her true parents when she was very young and was not really the old gypsy woman's granddaughter.

The Story of An Hour

Author: Kate Chopin (American, 1850-1904)
Published: 1894
Category: Character Study
Text: VCU, Ann Woodlief's English Web


Summary: 
Life, is it what you expect?

Analysis:
What do you expect from life? And who sets those expectations? You? Your family? Your friends? Your  husband? Do your expectations shape your life? Can changing your expectations, change your life? For a few precious moments, Mrs. Mallard, the protagonist in Kate Chopins' "The Story of An Hour", discovered they do, and they can.

Mrs. Mallard's expectations of life were shaped by her husband, whose "kind intentions" masked a  "powerful will" which sought, with "blind persistence", to force her life into a shape of his choosing; his loving looks "fixing" her in a "gray and dead...procession of years" the "thought" of which made her "shudder [,] that life might be long."  

Young, she lived as a child in a "dream", presenting "a fair, calm face" to the world; locking up her troubled thoughts in a troubled heart. It was only on receiving news of her husband's death that she dared, for a moment, to release them.

Fearfully, at first, then wildly, with a powerless abandonment, she allowed her old expectations of a long and dreary life to be replaced with the expectation of a new life holding the promise of a freedom of both "body and soul"; and, to her surprise, she discovered that with the release of the old expectations, came the release of "a monstrous joy".  A joy that refused to be locked away when her husband walked through the front door, alive and well.

There were signs that Mrs. Mallard knew her expectations of life were not her own; her "heart trouble" for one, the "physical exhaustion" that "haunted her soul"; her sense of "something coming to her" for which she had been "waiting".  And there were signs that her sister, Josephine, and her husband's friend, Richard, colluded with her husband's expectations for her; both acted to shield her from the news of his death, to break it to her gently, with "veiled hints"; an implicit recognition that her life was not her own, but his.

When Mrs. Mallard, on hearing the news of her husband's death, locked herself up in her room her sister, ironically, implored her to "open the door", fearing she would make herself ill, when she had been ill her entire married life. And although it was Mrs. Mallard who had entered the room, it was Louise who came out, joyful, victorious, "clasping her sister's waist", giving, rather than needing, support; standing tall above Richard, a man, waiting below.

Joyful and victorious until the "latch-key" turned and the front door of her larger world opened, re-admitting her "stained" husband, who carried with him the "grip-sack" of her old expectations, and her death.

Il Conde

Author: Joseph Conrad (Polish-British, 1857 - 1924)
Published: 1908
Category: Concept
Text: Classic Reader


Summary:
A cultured gentleman who summers in Southern Italy for his health leaves the area forever after an unpleasant encounter.

Points of Interest:
Conrad appears to have gotten the idea for the story from a common Neopolitan phrase: "Vedi Napoli e poi mori." "See Naples and then die." One can imagine him dreaming up a scenario illustrating a belief in the phrase.

The character sketch he draws of Il Conde (The Count) is quite strong and convincing; one can easily visualize the man. I love the line "He was really much too well-bred to be a nuisance." 

The Shoemaker and the Devil

Author: Anton Chekhov (Russian, 1860 - 1904)
Published: 1888
Category: Fantasy
Text: Classic Reader

Summary:
The devil fulfils a poor cobbler's wish to be a wealthy gentleman.

Points of interest:
There is a feeling of unrelieved grumpiness affecting all the characters, and the story itself. Not sure if this was what Chekov intended given his closing sentence:

"...and there was nothing in life for which one would give the devil even a tiny scrap of one's soul."

Haven't read enough of his work to get a feel for his religious opinions; in this story Fydor, the cobbler, notes, while in church, that "In church the same honor is done to rich and poor alike." He makes no comment on how the church deals with different states of the soul although it is implied that sinners go to hell. Or perhaps this is the whole point; there is nothing in life of equal value to the soul, nothing  worth the risk of an eternity in hell. Yet you get the definite sense, from the story, that this fact leaves everyone, rich and poor alike, dissatisfied with their situation in  life.

To Build a Fire

Author: Jack London (American, 1876-1916)
Published: 1908
Category: Man and Nature
Text: Classic Reader

Summary:
A newcomer to the Yukon ventures out in -75 degree weather with one husky and no sled, only to freeze to death.

Points of Interest:
The story details a man's thoughts and actions as he blithely walks across a frozen and unforgiving landscape. While he makes a study of the world around him he has no real sense of his place within it; in the end, he pins his hope of survival on building a fire which nature quickly extinguishes. The dogs instinctive actions and musings are described in counterpoint.

The title To Build a Fire echoes the adage "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness"; here, the protagonist is unaware that he is 'in the dark' and by the time he realizes he should 'build a fire' it is too late. We are left with a sense that lighting a candle is just as ineffective against the darkness, if one is blind.

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

Author: Irwin Shaw (American, 1913-1984)
Published: 1939
Category: Modern, Psychological (?)
Text Available at: American Literature

Summary
A young man with a pretty wife can't help looking at every pretty girl he sees; a habit his wife finds dismaying.

Points of Interest:
The story is written as a dialogue between the couple as they take a Sunday stroll along 5th Avenue; eventually stopping for drinks where the attitude of their waiter acts as a counterpoint to their emotions.