Unit 2. The Beginnings of English

CONTENTS
UNIT 1. GETTING STARTED ............................................................................ 3
1. The Precritical Response: Elements of a Story or a Novel .............................................. 3
2. Critical Approaches ................................................................................................................ 6
UNIT 2. THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH: OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH (6001485) .................................................................................................................. 7
1. Old English............................................................................................................................... 7
1.1.Beowulf ............................................................................................................................ 7
2. Middle English ....................................................................................................................... 12
2.1.
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400). .................................. 12
2.2.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1375-1400) (anonymous). ....................... 12
2.3.
Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory (ca. 1405-1471) ....................................... 13
2.4.
Popular Ballads: Lord Randall................................................................................ 20
UNIT 3. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (1485-1603) ......................................... 22
1. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia. ................................................................................ 22
2. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. .................. 22
3. William Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night’s Dream................................................... 22
Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Charles and Mary Lamb. ........................................... 22
UNIT 4. THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ......................................... 35
1. “Metaphysical poets”: John Donne (1572-1631), George Herbert (1593-1633), Henry
Vaughan (1621-1695), Andrew Marvell (16211-1678). ............................................................ 35
2. “Cavalier poets”: Ben Jonson (1572-1637), Robert Herrick (1591-1674) ...................... 35
3. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623). ................................................................... 35
4. John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost (1667)................................................................ 35
UNIT 5. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY........................................................... 39
1. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)............................................................................. 39
2. Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740-1) ............................................................................... 39
3. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (1759-67)............................... 39
4. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Gulliver’s Travels (1726). ....................................................... 39
PART IV. A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS................................... 40
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6. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (1757-1827)....................................................... 47
6.1. William Blake (1757-1827), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), William Wordsworth (17701850), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Lord Byron (17881824), P.B. Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-1821). ....................................................... 47
6.2. Jane Austen (1775-1817), Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818) .............................................. 47
6.3. Mary Shelley (1797-1851), Frankenstein (1818, 1831). ...................................................... 47
UNIT 7. THE VICTORIAN AGE (1830-1901) ................................................... 55
7.1. Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), “The Lady of Shalott”. ...................................................... 55
7.2. Charlotte Brontë (1816-55), Jane Eyre (1847).................................................................. 55
7.3. Emily Brontë (1818-48), Wuthering Heights (1847) ......................................................... 55
7.4. Charles Dickens (1812-79), Great Expectations (1861)................................................... 55
7.5. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) ................................ 55
7.6. Bram Stoker (1847-1912), Dracula (1897). ........................................................................ 55
7.7. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) ......................................... 55
7.8. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), The Sign of Four (1890). ...................................... 55
A. Focus on Bram Stoker’s Dracula........................................................................................ 56
B. Focus on Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”....................................................................... 61
UNIT 8. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY............................................................. 70
8.1. Prose.................................................................................................................................... 70
From 1900 to 1939 ................................................................................................................. 75
The Novel in the 40s ........................................................................................................... 115
The Novel of the 50s and 60s............................................................................................. 123
The Novel from 1970 ........................................................................................................... 133
8.2. Drama ................................................................................................................................ 133
8.3. Poetry ................................................................................................................................ 133
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................ 139
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INTRODUCCIÓN A LA LITERATURA INGLESA
A TRAVÉS DE ALGUNOS DE SUS TEXTOS
Prof. Dr. Beatriz González Moreno
Unit 1. Getting Started
1. The Precritical Response: Elements of a Story or a Novel
1. PLOT - the story line; a unified, progressive pattern of action or events in
a story
2. SETTING - the time and place of the action in a story
3. TONE - the attitude of the author toward his subject or toward the reader
(Think of tone of voice when someone is talking.)
4. MOOD - the feeling or state of mind that predominates in a story creating
a certain atmosphere (Atmosphere: the mood and feeling, the intangible
quality which appeals. to extra-sensory as well as sensory perception,
evoked by a work of art.
5. CHARACTER - person portraying himself or another
6. POINT OF VIEW - the position from which the story is told (as seen
through whose eyes?)
•
PERSONAL (if told as seen through the eyes of one of the characters
in the story)
•
OMNISCIENT (if the author stands outside of the story and knows
what each of the characters is doing or thinking at any given
moment)
7. CENTRAL CONFLICT - the main struggle of opposing forces around
which the plot revolves
A. PERSON vs. PERSON
B. PERSON vs. SOCIETY
C. PERSON vs. BEAST
D. PERSON vs. THE ELEMENTS (forces of nature)
E. PERSON vs. HIMSELF (internal struggle)
F. PERSON vs. FATE or DESTINY
8. PROTAGONIST - the main character (usually the hero of the story)
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9. ANTAGONIST - the rival (the bad guy)
10. THEME •
the main idea or message of the story;
•
its generalized meaning;
•
a statement about life or human nature which the author seeks to
prove
through specific developments of the story
11. IRONY - events contrary to what is expected
12. FORESHADOW - a hint or clue to future events in the story
13. FLASHBACK - a break in the continuity of a story to introduce an earlier
event
14. INCITING CAUSE - the event that begins and motivates the action in the
story
15. RISING ACTION - events that build up the plot and lead to the climax
16. CLIMAX - (the turning point)
•
the critical point in the story which changes the course of events
•
the point in the story where the main character faces a crisis and
must make a crucial decision that will effect the outcome of the
story.
17. FALLING ACTION - events that unwind the plot and lead to resolving the
conflict
18. RESOLUTION - the event in a story that resolves the conflict
19. FICTION - written from the imagination; not true
20. NON-FICTION - true; based upon actual fact
21. GENRE - kind or type of art or literature
22. SUSPENSE - anxiety or apprehension resulting from uncertainty
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Elements of Short Stories: Vocabulary
Match the words in the first column to the best available answer in the second
column.
____ theme
1) the hero or good person in the story
_____ plot
2) story told in first person and is a true story
_____ exposition
3) something that stands for something else
_____ rising action
4) story told from the "I" point of view
_____ conflict
5) set of actions bringing the story to an end
_____ climax
_____ falling action
6) the author's attitude toward the subject of
his/her writing
7) the opposing force(s) between the protagonist
and antagonist
_____ resolution
8) where a story takes place
_____ flat character
9) plot in the story that builds to the climax
_____
rounded
10) the high point of the story when the conflict is
character
resolved
_____ protagonist
11) come across as real people
_____ antagonist
12) the force that opposes the protagonist
_____ tone
13) to chart a course
_____ setting
14) position from which the story is told to the
reader
_____ autobiography
15) a piece of prose that can be read in one sitting
_____ first person
16) the main idea or message of the story
_____ third person
17) story told from the "he she they" point of view
_____ point of view
18) stereotype
_____ symbolism
19) background information
_____ short story
20) "wrap up" of the story plot
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2. CRITICAL APPROACHES
I.
Traditional Approaches
II.
The Formalistic Approach
III.
The Psychological Approach
IV.
Mythologycal and Archetypical Approaches
V.
Feminist Approaches
VI.
The Marxist Approach
Russian Formalism
VII. Deconstruction
VIII. Cultural Studies
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Unit 2. The Beginnings of English:
Old and Middle English (600-1485)
1. Old English
™ “Caedmon’s Hymn”
™ Beowulf
Before you Read
¾ Who are today’s heroes? What special qualities do these people
possess?
¾ What is meant by Epic and by Epic Hero?
Introducing the Poem
Background
By the time that Beowulf was written down, Germanic tribes from Scandinavia
and elsewhere in northern Europe had been invading England’s shores for
centuries.
The
principal
human
characters in Beowulf hail from three
Scandinavian tribes: the Geats, the
Danes, and the Swedes. The poem is
set mainly in Denmark and Geatland
(now southern Sweden) during the
sixth century. The map shows the
locations of peoples
mentioned in Beowulf. The proximity
of those peoples to one another,
together with the warrior code they
followed, made for frequent clashes.
About Beowulf
The main heroic text is called Beowulf, the name of the hero of the long
anonymous poem. It describes events which are part of the period’s memory:
invasions and battles, some historic, some legendary. The poem is set around
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the sixth century, but was probably not written down until the eighth century.
Beowulf is the first hero in English literature, the man who can win battles and
give safety to his people over a long period of time.
Beowulf is about 3,000 lines, is a story about a brave young man from
southern Sweden. Beowulf goes to help Hrothgar, King of the Danes, who
cannot defend himself or his people against a terrible monster called Grendel.
One night Beowulf attacks Grendel and pulls off the arm of the monster.
Grendel returns to the lake where he lives, but dies there. Beowulf is then
attacked by the mother of Grendel and Beowulf follows her to the bottom of the
lake and kills her, too.
Fifty years later, Beowulf has to defend his own people against a dragon
which breathes fire. Although he kills the dragon, Beowulf is injured in the fight
and dies. The poem has a sad ending, but the poem is the statement of heroic
values and Beowulf dies a hero.
Key Terms
Alliteration: A figure of speech in which consonants, especially at the beginning of
words, or stressed syllables, are repeated…In [Old English] poetry alliteration was a
continual and essential part of the metrical scheme and until the late Middle Ages was
often used thus.
Caesura: (Latin: "a cutting") A break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated, usually, by
the natural rhythm of the language…In [Old English] verse the caesura was used…to
indicate the half line.
Kenning: The term derives from the use of the Old Norse verb kenna 'to know,
recognize'…It is a device for introducing descriptive colour or for suggesting
associations without distracting attention from the essential statement.
a) helmberend—"helmet bearer" = "warrior"
b) beadoleoma—"battle light" = "flashing sword"
c) swansrad—"swan road" = "sea"
Essentially, then, a kenning is a compact metaphor that functions as a name or epithet;
it is also, in its more complex forms, a riddle in miniature.
Comitatus. Germanic code of loyalty. Thanes, or warriors, swore loyalty to their king,
for whom they fought and whom they protected. In return the king was expected to be
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generous with gifts of treasure and land. The king also protected his thanes. Kings
were highly praised for their generosity and hospitality. Warriors were expected to be
brave, courageous, and loyal. Their reputation for such qualities was very important.
Beowulf
The Prologue
Hwæt! We Gardena
þeodcyninga,
in geardagum,
þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas
ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing
sceaþena þreatum,
5 monegum mægþum,
egsode eorlas.
meodosetla ofteah,
Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden,
he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc
10 ofer hronrade
gomban gyldan.
þara ymbsittendra
hyran scolde,
þæt wæs god cyning!
You can listen to the text at
http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/Beowulf.Readings/Prologue.html
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SUMMARY
PROLOGUE TO PART 10 — GRENDEL’S FIRST ATTACK, BEOWULF’S ARRIVAL
In this section, Hrothgar’s ancestors are briefly described. Herot is
constructed, and Grendel attacks it. Beowulf hears of the troubles at Herot
and decides to help Hrothgar. Once he arrives, he is welcomed and feasted.
Unferth challenges Beowulf ’s reputation. Beowulf defends himself and
attacks Unferth’s reputation. Hrothgar makes note that before now he has
never entrusted his hall to a stranger. Beowulf stays awake, waiting for
Grendel, as the rest of the hall settles into sleep.
PART 11 TO PART 18 — GRENDEL’S BATTLE WITH BEOWULF
Grendel attacks Herot again, killing a Geat before Beowulf engages
him in battle. Since no weapons can harm Grendel, Beowulf must fight
Grendel bare-handed, and the other warriors are unable to come to
Beowulf’s aid. Beowulf tears Grendel’s arm off at the shoulder and hangs it
from the rafters. Grendel escapes, though he is mortally wounded. The next
morning, there is a celebration in Herot. Warriors come from far-off lands.
Some of them trace Grendel’s retreat to the lake, boiling with Grendel’s
blood. On the way back to Herot, a scop recounts the story of Beowulf’s
victory and also tells the stories of Siegmund and Hermod. The scop’s purpose is to show that
Beowulf is comparable to Siegmund, an ancient hero. Hermod, however, was a bad king who
“spread sorrow” and “heaped troubles on his unhappy people’s heads.” The next morning, there is a
celebration in Herot. Hrothgar praises Beowulf. Beowulf wishes he had been able to kill Grendel in
the hall and keep the monster from escaping. Herot is cleaned, and Beowulf and his men are
rewarded with treasure. The scop tells the story of the Battle of Finnsburgh. Welthow and her two
sons, Hrethic and Hrothmund, pay homage to Beowulf. Once again, the hall settles to sleep.
PART 19 TO PART 26 — GRENDEL’S MOTHER
Grendel’s mother comes to Herot to avenge Grendel. She escapes, taking Esher, Hrothgar’s
trusted lieutenant. Hrothgar laments the loss of Esher, along with the other sorrows Grendel and his
mother have inflicted on Herot. He asks again for Beowulf’s help. Beowulf agrees to avenge Esher.
Hrothgar leads Beowulf and his own men to the bloody lake, the abode of Grendel and his mother.
The men discover Esher’s head on a cliff above the lake. Unferth gives Beowulf his sword,
Hrunting, and Beowulf dives into the lake to attack Grendel’s mother. After swimming for hours, he
finds her. Like Grendel, she is impervious to weapons — Hrunting is useless. In the heat of battle,
he finds a magic sword hanging on the wall and kills Grendel’s mother with it. He then finds
Grendel’s body and severs the monster’s head. When the men onshore see blood rise to the surface
of the lake, they assume Beowulf has been killed, and the Danes return to Herot. The Geats wait
sadly, believing the worst. Beowulf’s magic sword melts, but he returns to shore with the hilt and
Grendel’s head, leaving behind massive amounts of treasure. Beowulf and the Geats take their
“terrible trophy” to Herot. Beowulf offers the magic sword’s hilt to Hrothgar, who warns Beowulf
against pride and selfishness. Beowulf and his men prepare to return home.
PART 27 TO PART 31 — BEOWULF’S RETURN TO GEATLAND
Beowulf and his men leave. Higd, Higlac’s queen, is compared favourably with the proud
and selfish Thrith. Beowulf and his men are welcomed by Higlac, who asks Beowulf to tell him
about the adventure at Herot. Beowulf caps his tale with a presentation of his gifts from the Danes
to Higlac. Years later, after Higlac and his son Herdred die, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats.
PART 31 TO PART 43 — THE DRAGON AND BEOWULF’S DEATH
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Beowulf gains the crown of Geatland after the deaths of Higlac and Herdred. He has been a
good and generous king for 50 years when a thief rouses a sleeping dragon by taking a gem-studded
cup. Unable to find the thief, the dragon vows revenge and destroys Geatland. Beowulf blames
himself for the tragedy, thinking he must have somehow broken God’s law. He prepares to go to
battle against the dragon, recalling his past successes for motivation. He sets out to fight the dragon
alone and is followed by a group of his men. During the battle, Beowulf’s shield is melted and his
sword is broken. The rest of his men flee, but Wiglaf comes to Beowulf’s aid and slays the dragon.
Beowulf dies in battle, and Wiglaf admonishes the Geats for their desertion of Beowulf. In honour
of their king, the Geats build a pyre for Beowulf.
Questions After Reading The Text
1. Who wrote Beowulf?
2. What is “a scop”?
3. Who kills Grendel and how?
4. What’s the name of Grendel’s mother?
5. What is the name of Beowulf’s sword? Is it useful for killing Grendel’s mother?
4. Who guards a great treasure?
5. What happens with Beowulf’s shield during the battle?
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2. Middle English
2.1. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400).
About The Canterbury Tales:
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The
Canterbury Tales, a collection of
stories in a frame story, between
1387 and 1400. It is the story of a
group of thirty people who travel as
pilgrims to Canterbury (England).
The pilgrims, who come from all
layers of society, tell stories to each
other to kill time while they travel to
Canterbury.
If we trust the General Prologue,
Chaucer intended that each pilgrim
should tell two tales on the way to
Canterbury and two tales on the way back. He never finished his enormous project and
even the completed tales were not finally revised. Scholars are uncertain about the order
of the tales. As the printing press had yet to be invented when Chaucer wrote his works,
The Canterbury Tales has been passed down in several handwritten manuscripts.
About the General Prologue:
The General Prologue is the key to The Canterbury tales that narrates about the gathering
of a group of people in an inn that intend to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury (England)
next morning. In the General Prologue, the narrator of The Canterbury Tales, who is one
of the intended pilgrims, provides more or less accurate depictions of the members of the
group and describes why and how The Canterbury Tales is told. If we trust the General
Prologue, Chaucer determined that each pilgrim should tell two tales on the way to
Canterbury and two tales on the way back. The host of the inn offers to be and is
appointed as judge of the tales as they are told and is supposed to determine the best
hence winning tale. As mentioned before, The Canterbury Tales was never finished.
2.2.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1375-1400) (anonymous).
Sir Gawain is one of the knights of the Round Table, from the court of King Arthur, and
is expected to be brave, honest and honourable. One evening a huge green man enters
the court and challenges a knight to cut his head off. But the knight must have his own
head cut off one year later. Gawain accepts the challenge and cuts off the head of the
green man. A year later Sir Gawain is looking for the Green Knight when he arrives at a
castle. The lord of the castle has a beautiful wife who temps Gawain. She gives him a
magic belt which will save his life. When Gawain finally meets the Green Knight he uses
the belt. He deceives the knight and so he does not accept the challenge with true bravery.
The Green Knight is really the lord of the castle; and when Sir Gawain accepts that he is
not an ideal brave hero, he is forgiven by the Green Knight. Gawain returns to the court of
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King Arthur and is praised for his bravery. Gawain is, in fact, a kind of anti-hero, and the
poem is an ironic questioning of the value of the historical myths of heroism in those
changed times.
2.3.
Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory (ca. 1405-1471)
King Arthur is the figure at the heart of the Arthurian legends. He is said to be the son of
Uther Pendragon and Igraine of Cornwall. Arthur is a near mythic figure in Celtic stories
such as Culhwch and Olwen. In early Latin chronicles he is presented as a military leader,
the dux bellorum. In later romance he is presented as a king and emperor.
One of the questions that has occupied those interested in King Arthur is whether or not he
is a historical figure. The debate has
raged since the Renaissance when Arthur's historicity was vigorously
defended, partly because the Tudor monarchs traced their lineage to
Arthur and used that connection as a justification for their reign. Modern
scholarship has generally assumed that there was some actual person at
the heart of the legends, though not of course a king with a band of
knights in shining armor--though O.J. Padel in "The Nature of Arthur"
argues that "historical attributes of just the kind that we find attached to
The Enthroned
Arthur
Arthur can be associated with a figure who was not historical to start
with."
If there is a historical basis to the character, it is clear that he would have gained fame as a
warrior battling the Germanic invaders of the late fifth and early sixth centuries. Since there
is no conclusive evidence for or against Arthur's historicity, the debate will continue. But
what can not be denied is the influence of the figure of Arthur on literature, art, music, and
society from the Middle Ages to the present. Though there have been numerous historical
novels that try to put Arthur into a sixth-century setting, it is the legendary figure of the late
Middle Ages who has most captured the imagination.
It is such a figure, the designer of an order of the best knights in the world, that figures in
the major versions of the legend from Malory to Tennyson to T. H. White. Central to the
myth is the downfall of Arthur's kingdom. It is undermined in the chronicle tradition by the
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treachery of Mordred. In the romance tradition that treachery is made possible because of
the love of Lancelot and Guinevere.
An outline of the hero's life is given by Geoffrey of Monmouth
(twelfth century) in his Historia Regum Brittaniae - History of the
Kings of Britain. Just how much of this life was Geoffrey's invention
and how much was culled from traditional material is uncertain. He
tells us that King Arthur was the son of Uther and defeated the
barbarians in a dozen battles. Subsequently, he conquered a wide
empire and eventually went to war with the Romans. He returned
home on learning that his nephew Mordred had raised the standard
of rebellion and taken Guinevere, the queen. After landing, his final
battle took place.
The Marriage of King
Arthur and Guinevere.
The saga built up over the centuries and Celtic traditions of Arthur reached the Continent
via Brittany. Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur would become what many considered the
standard 'history' of Arthur. In this, we are told of Arthur's conception when Uther
approached Igraine who was made, by Merlin's sorcery, to resemble her husband. The
child was given to Ector to be raised in secret. After Uther's death there was no king ruling
all England. Merlin had placed a sword in a stone, saying that whoever drew it out would
be king. Arthur did so and Merlin had him crowned. This led to a rebellion be eleven rulers
which Arthur put down. He married Guinevere whose father gave him the Round Table as
a dowry; it became the place where his knights sat, to avoid quarrels over precedence. A
magnificent reign followed, Arthur's court becoming the focus for many heroes. In the war
against the Romans, Arthur defeated the Emperor Lucius and became emperor himself.
However, his most illustrious knight, Lancelot, became enamoured of Guinevere. The
Quest for the Holy Grial began and Lancelot's intrigue with the Queen came to light.
Lancelot fled and Guinevere was sentenced to death. Lancelot rescued her and took her
to him realm. This led Arthur to crossing the channel and making war on his former knight.
While away from Britain, he left Mordred in charge. Mordred rebelled and Arthur returned
to quell him. This led to Arthur's last battle on Salisbury Plain, where he slew Mordred, but
was himself gravely wounded. Arthur was then carried off in a barge, saying he was
heading for the vale of Avalon. Some said he never died, but would one day return.
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However, his grave was supposedly discovered at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry II
(1154-89).
THE KNIGHTS
King Arthur
King Arthur is most known for his Kingly leadership, his loving rule, and even his ruthless
judgment of Lancelot and Guinevere. But often a very important part of Arthur's life is
forgotten: his skills as a general and knight.
The name Arthur may be a form of Artorius, a Roman gens name, but
according to J. D. Bruce, it is possibly of Celtic origin, coming from
artos viros (bear man). Bruce also suggests the possibility of a
connection with Irish art (stone).
King Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon and defeated the
barbarians in a dozen battles. Subsequently, he conquered a wide
The Young Arthur
pulls the sword
from the stone.
empire and eventually went to war with the Romans. He returned home
on learning that his nephew Mordred had raised the standard of
rebellion and taken Guinevere, the Queen. After landing, his final battle took place.
Tradition has it that after King Uther's death there was no king ruling all of England. Merlin
had placed a sword in a stone, saying that whoever drew it out would be king. Arthur did
not know his true status but had grown up living with Sir Ector and Sir Kay, his son. The
young Arthur pulled the sword from the stone and Merlin had him crowned the King of
Britain. This led to a rebellion by eleven rulers which Arthur put down. He married
Guinevere, whose father gave him the round table as a dowry.
In the war against the Romans, Arthur defeated Emperor Lucius and became emperor
himself. The last battle of Arthur took place between He and the forces of his evil nephew,
Mordred. Arthur delivered the fatal blow to Mordred in the battle, but in the process Arthur
was struck a mortal blow, himself. It was then that he commanded Sir Bedivere to throw
Excalibur back into the Lake.
The date of Arthur's death is given by Geoffrey of Monmouth as AD 542. Malory places his
life in the fifth century. Geoffrey Ashe puts forward the argument that Arthur is, at least to
some extent, to be identified with the historical Celtic king Riothamus. Was Arthur fictitious
15
or did he really live? Was he really a composite of a number of persons living at different
times in British history? That is for all of us to decide for ourselves.
Sir Lancelot Du Lac (Launcelot)
Lancelot was the son of King Ban of Benwick and Queen Elaine. He was the First Knight
of the Round Table, and he never failed in gentleness, courtesy, or courage. Launcelot
was also a knight who was very willing to serve others.
It has been said that Lancelot was the greatest fighter and swordsman of
all the knights of the Round Table. Legend tells us that as a child,
Lancelot was left by the shore of the lake, where he was found by Vivien,
the Lady of the Lake. She fostered and raised him, and in time Lancelot
became one of history's greatest knights.
Launcelot forces Sir
Mador to withdraw
his false accusation
against Queen
Guinevere.
Legend also says that Lancelot was the father of Galahad by Elaine. It
was another Elaine, Elaine of Astolat, who died of a broken heart
because Launcelot did not return her love and affection.
Many sources tell us of the love shared toward each other of Lancelot and Queen
Guinevere. There may be some truth to this since Lancelot was a favorite of the Queen's,
and he rescued her from the stake on two different occasions. It was at one of these
rescues that Lancelot mistakenly killed Sir Gareth, which led to the disbandment of the
Round Table. After the Queen repented to an abbey as a nun, Lancelot lived the rest of his
life as a hermit in penitence.
Did Lancelot originate in Celtic mythology, was he a continental invention, or did he really
live as a famous knight and hero? We may never know... but Launcelot will always live in
our imaginations as one of the greatest knights in history.
Sir Gawaine
Gawain is generally said to be the nephew of Arthur. His parents were Lot of Orkney and
Morgause (though his mother is said to be Anna in Geoffrey of Monmouth). Upon the
death of Lot, he became the head of the Orkney clan, which includes in many sources his
brothers Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth, and his half-brother Mordred.
16
Gawain figures prominently in many romances. In France he is
generally presented as one who has adventures paralleling in
diptych fashion but not overshadowing the hero's, whether that
hero be Lancelot or Percivale. In the English tradition, however, it
is much more common for Gawain to be the principal hero and the
exemplar of courtesy and chivalry, as he is in Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight and the other Arthurian romances of the Alliterative
Gawaine was the brother of
Gaheris, Gareth, and
Agravaine.
Revival. In Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, however, he has a role
similar to that in the French romances, in that Lancelot is the
principal hero.
The accidental death of Gawain's brothers at Sir Lancelot's hands caused Gawain, one of
the mightiest warriors at court, to become the bitter enemy of his once greatest friend. He
was mortally wounded in a fight with Lancelot who, it is said, lay for two nights weeping at
Gawain's tomb. Before his death, Gawain repented of his bitterness towards Lancelot and
forgave him.
OTHER CHARACTERS
Merlin the Magician
MERLIN, Arthur's adviser, prophet and magician, is basically the creation of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, who in his twelfth-century History of the Kings of Britain combined the Welsh
traditions about a bard and prophet named Myrddin with the story that the ninth-century
chronicler Nennius tells about Ambrosius (that he had no human father and that he
prophesied the defeat of the British by the Saxons).
Geoffrey gave his character the name Merlinus rather than
Merdinus (the normal Latinization of Myrddin) because the
latter might have suggested to his Anglo-Norman audience
the vulgar word "merde." In Geoffrey's book, Merlin assists
Uther Pendragon and is responsible for transporting the
Merlin falls victim to the spells of
his own apprentice, Vivien, who
may have been the Lady of the
Lake.
stones of Stonehenge from Ireland, but he is not associated
with Arthur. Geoffrey also wrote a book of "Prophecies of
Merlin" before his History. The Prophecies were then incorporated into the History as its
seventh book. These led to a tradition that is manifested in other medieval works, in
eighteenth-century almanac writers who made predictions under such names as Merlinus
17
Anglicus, and in the presentation of Merlin in later literature.
Merlin became very popular in the Middle Ages. He is central to a major text of the
thirteenth-century French Vulgate cycle, and he figures in a number of other French and
English romances. Sir Thomas Malory, in the Le Morte d'Arthur presents him as the
adviser and guide to Arthur. In the modern period Merlin's popularity has remained
constant. He figures in works from the Renaissance to the modern period. In The Idylls of
the King, Tennyson makes him the architect of Camelot. Mark Twain, parodying
Tennyson's Arthurian world, makes Merlin a villain, and in one of the illustrations to the first
edition of Twain's work illustrator Dan Beard's Merlin has Tennyson's face. Numerous
novels, poems and plays centre around Merlin. In American literature and popular culture,
Merlin is perhaps the most frequently portrayed Arthurian character.
There were several objects that played an important role in the stories and legends of King
Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The most obvious was the Round Table which
was given to Arthur as Guinevere's dowry when they were married. The Table became the
place where the Knights gathered and symbolized equality, unity, and oneness.
There was also Excalibur, the beautiful, magical sword that was given to Arthur by the
Lady of the Lake. Excalibur was extremely powerful and at the Last Battle of Camlann,
Arthur had Bedivere throw Excalibur back into the lake from whence it came. Finally, there
was the Holy Grail. Much of Arthurian Tradition hinges on the Quest for the Grail.
18
.
QUESTIONS AFTER READING THE TEXT
1. Central to King Arthur’s myth is the downfall of his kingdom. What two interrelated
explanations for the downfall does the text offer?
2. Who gravely wounded King Arthur?
3. Who was King Arthur’s father?
4. Who and by whom was commanded to throw Excalibur back into the lake? When?
5. What happened when Sir Gareth was mistakenly killed?
6. Who is commonly believed to be the principal hero and the exemplar of chivalry?
7. According to Lord Tennyson, who was the architect of Camelot?
19
2.4.
Popular Ballads: Lord Randall
The English and Scottish popular ballads were originally narrative poems
transmitted orally and only rarely recorded in some manuscript or song book. Oral tradition
survives longest in regions remote from urbanisation and written culture. The force of the
ballad often depends on what is not told directly, which must be inferred from dialogue and
action. Some of the best ballads have as their subject a tragic incident, often a murder or
accidental death at times involving supernatural elements.
The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and
their American variants, collected by Francis James Child. While the ballads themselves
are hundreds of years old, it was only in the later 19th century that Child put them to print.
The Child Ballads deal with subjects typical to many ballads: romance, supernatural
experiences, historical events, morality, riddles, murder, and folk heroes (there are an
inordinate number about Robin Hood). Some of the ballads are rather bawdy.
"Lord Randall" is a traditional ballad that includes dialogue. It is catalogued as
Child Ballad 12, and is generally viewed as a British ballad, though versions and
derivations of it exist across the continent of Europe. The different versions follow the
same general lines: the primary character (in this case Randall, but varying by location) is
poisoned, usually by his sweetheart.
Lord Randall has more recently inspired several other similarly themed songs, notably
"Henry, My Son". Bob Dylan borrowed its structure for "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall".
20
Listen to the following version of “Lord Randall” and fill in the gaps
1. ________ have you been all_____, Henry my
4. ________did you ________the snails, Henry my
son?
son?
________ have you been all_____, my beloved one?
________did you ________the snails, my beloved
________, dear mother; ________, dear mother.
one?
O, make my________, there are pains in my
Churchyard, dear mother; churchyard, dear mother.
________
O, make my________, there are pains in my
And I want to go to ________
________
And I want to go to ________
2. ________took you there, my son, Henry my son?
________took you there, my son, my beloved one?
5. What ________you have to________, Henry my
________, dear mother; ________, dear mother.
son?
O, make my________, there are pains in my
What ________you have to________, my beloved
________
one?
And I want to go to ________
________from the________, ________from
the________.
O, make my________, there are pains in my
3. ________did you ________all day, Henry my
________
son?
And I want to go to ________
________did you ________all day, my beloved
one?
6. Where did you ________all day, Henry my son?
________, dear mother; ________, dear mother.
Where did you ________all day, my beloved one?
O, make my________, there are pains in my
________, dear mother; ________, dear mother.
________
O, make my________, there are pains in my
And I want to go to ________
________
And I want to go to ________
21
Unit 3. The Sixteenth Century (1485-1603)
1. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia.
2. Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
3. William Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
™ Introduction.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He is the
most famous writer of plays in the English language, so it is perhaps surprising that
we really know very little about his life. He died at Stratford on 23 April 1616.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ca. 1594-8) is a comedy. It ends happily for
everybody, including the two lovers and the king and queen of the fairies.
Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Charles and Mary Lamb.
Preface to the Tales
The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an
introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever
it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the
regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as
might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore,
words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided.
In those Tales which have been taken from the Tragedies, the young readers will
perceive, when they come to see the source from which these stories are derived, that
Shakespeare's own words, with little alteration, recur very frequently in the narrative as
well as in the dialogue; but in those made from the Comedies the writers found
themselves scarcely ever able to turn his words into the narrative form: therefore it is
feared that, in them, dialogue has been made use of too frequently for young people not
accustomed to the dramatic form of writing. But this fault, if it be a fault, has been caused
by an earnest wish to give as much of Shakespeare's own words as possible: and if the
'He said,' and 'She said,' the question and the reply, should sometimes seem tedious to
their young ears, they must pardon it, because it was the only way in which could be given
to them a few hints and little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in their
elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless
coins are extracted; pretending to no other merit than as faint and imperfect stamps of
Shakespeare's matchless image. Faint and imperfect images they must be called,
22
because the beauty of his language is too frequently destroyed by the necessity of
changing many of his excellent words into words far less expressive of his true sense, to
make it read something like prose; and even in some few places, where his blank verse is
given unaltered, as hoping from its simple plainness to cheat the young reader into the
belief that they are reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from its own
natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of its native beauty.
It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children. To
the utmost of their ability the writers have constantly kept this in mind; but the subjects of
most of them made this a very difficult task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of
men and women in terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young
ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write; because boys being generally
permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much earlier age than girls are, they
frequently have the best scenes of Shakespeare by heart, before their sisters are
permitted to look into this manly book; and, therefore, instead of recommending these
Tales to the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the
originals, their kind assistance is rather requested in explaining to their sisters such parts
as are hardest for them to understand: and when they have helped them to get over the
difficulties, then perhaps they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a
young sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these stories, in the
very words of the scene from which it is taken; and it is hoped they will find that the
beautiful extracts, the select passages, they may choose to give their sisters in this way
will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general
story from one of these imperfect abridgements; - which if they be fortunately so done as
to prove delightful to any of the young readers, it is hoped that no worse effect will result
than to make them wish themselves a little older, that they may be allowed to read the
Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor irrational). When time and
leave of judicious friends shall put them into their hands, they will discover in such of them
as are here abridged (not to mention almost as many more, which are left untouched)
many surprising events and turns of fortune, which for their infinite variety could not be
contained in this little book, besides a world of sprightly and cheerful characters, both men
and women, the humour of which it was feared would be lost if it were attempted to
reduce the length of them.
What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is
the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and
mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach
23
courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his
pages are full.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
There was a law in the city of Athens which gave to its citizens the power of
compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter's
refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was
empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire
the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory,
this law was seldom or never put in execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that
city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with the terrors of it.
There was one instance, however, of an old man, whose name was Egeus, who
actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning duke of Athens), to complain
that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of
a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian,
named Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this cruel law
might be put in force against his daughter.
Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience, that Demetrius had formerly
professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to distraction;
but this honourable reason, which Hermia gave for not obeying her father's command,
moved not the stem Egeus.
Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to alter the laws of his
country; therefore he could only give Hermia four days to consider of it: and at the end of
that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death.
When Hermia was dismissed from the presence of the duke, she went to her lover
Lysander, and told him the peril she was in and that she must either give him up and
marry Demetrius, or lose her life in four days.
Lysander was in great affliction at hearing these evil tidings; but recollecting that
he had an aunt who lived at some distance from Athens, and that at the place where she
lived the cruel law could not be put in force against Hermia (this law not extending beyond
the boundaries of the city), he proposed to Hermia that she should steal out of her father's
house that night, and go with him to his aunt's house, where he would marry her. 'I will
24
meet you,' said Lysander, 'in the wood a few miles without the city; in that delightful wood
where we have so often walked with Helena in the pleasant month of May.'
To this proposal Hermia joyfully agreed; and she told no one of her intended flight
but her friend Helena. Helena (as maidens will do foolish things for love) very
ungenerously resolved to go and tell this to Demetrius, though she could hope no benefit
from betraying her friend's secret, but the poor pleasure of following her faithless lover to
the wood; for she well knew that Demetrius would go thither in pursuit of Hermia.
The wood in which Lysander and Hermia proposed to meet was the favourite
haunt of those little beings known by the name of Fairies.
Oberon the king, and Titania the queen of the fairies, with all their tiny train of
followers, in this wood held their midnight revels.
Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad
disagreement; they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but
they were quarrelling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide
themselves for fear.
The cause of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing to give Oberon a
little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's friend; and upon her death the fairy
queen stole the child from its nurse, and brought him up in the woods.
The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania was walking
with some of her maids of honour, she met Oberon attended by his train of fairy courtiers.
'Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,' said the fairy king. The queen replied: 'What,
jealous Oberon, is it you? Fairies, skip hence; I have foresworn his company.' 'Tarry, rash
fairy,' said Oberon; 'am not I thy lord? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your
little changeling boy to be my page.'
'Set your heart at rest,' answered the queen; 'your whole fairy kingdom buys not
the boy of me.' She then left her lord in great anger. 'Well, go your way,' said Oberon:
'before the morning dawns I will torment you for this injury.'
25
Oberon then sent for Puck, his chief favourite and privy counsellor.
Puck (or as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and
knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes
getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form
into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the chum, in vain
the dairymaid would labour to change her cream into butter: nor had the village swains
any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale
was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbours were met to drink some comfortable
ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and
when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale
over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating
herself to tell her neighbours a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip her threelegged
stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old woman, and then the old gossips
would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour.
'Come hither, Puck,' said Oberon to this little merry wanderer of the night; 'fetch me
the flower which maids call Love in Idleness; the juice of that little purple flower laid on the
eyelids of those who sleep, will make them, when they awake, dote on the first thing they
see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my Titania when she is
asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes she will fall in love
with, even though it be a lion or a bear, a meddling monkey, or a busy ape; and before I
will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will
make her give me that boy to be my page.'
Puck, who loved mischief to his heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic
of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while Oberon was waiting the return of
Puck, he observed Demetrius and Helena enter the wood: he overheard Demetrius
reproaching Helena for following him, and after many unkind words on his part, and gentle
expostulations from Helena, reminding him of his former love and professions of true faith
to her, he left her (as he said) to the mercy of the wild beasts, and she ran after him as
swiftly as she could.
The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great compassion for
Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk by moonlight in this pleasant
wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in those happy times when she was beloved by
Demetrius. However, that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower,
26
Oberon said to his favourite: 'Take a part of this flower; there has been a sweet Athenian
lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the
love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he
sees when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the Athenian
garments which he wears.' Puck promised to manage this matter very dexterously: and
then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go
to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets,
under a canopy of wood-bine, musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania always slept
some part of the night; her coverlet the enamelled skin of a snake, which, though a small
mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ themselves
while she slept. 'Some of you,' said her majesty, 'must kill cankers in the muskrose buds,
and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats;
and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near
me: but first sing me to sleep.' Then they began to sing this song:
'You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms do no wrong,
Come not near our Fairy Queen.
Philomel, with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby,
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby;
Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So good night with lullaby.'
When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby, they left her
to perform the important services she had enjoined them. Oberon then softly drew near
his Titania, and dropped some of the lovejuice on her eyelids, saying:
'What thou seest when thou dost wake,
Do it for thy true-love take.'
27
But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father's house that night,
to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry Demetrius. When she entered
the wood, she found her dear Lysander waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt's house;
but before they had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that
Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, who had proved her affection for him
even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft
moss, and lying down himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast
asleep. Here they were found by Puck, who, seeing a handsome young man asleep, and
perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian fashion, and that a pretty lady was
sleeping near him, concluded that this must be the Athenian maid and her disdainful lover
whom Oberon had sent him to seek; and he naturally enough conjectured that, as they
were alone together, she must be the first thing he would see when he awoke; so, without
more ado, he proceeded to pour some of the juice of the little purple flower into his eyes.
But it so fell out, that Helena came that way, and, instead of Hermia, was the first object
Lysander beheld when he opened his eyes; and strange to relate, so powerful was the
love-charm, all his love for Hermia vanished away, and Lysander fell in love with Helena.
Had he first seen Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed would have
been of no consequence, for he could not love that faithful lady too well; but for poor
Lysander to be forced by a fairy love-charm to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after
another lady, and leave Hermia asleep quite alone in a wood at midnight, was a sad
chance indeed.
Thus this misfortune happened. Helena, as has been before related, endeavoured
to keep pace with Demetrius when he ran away so rudely from her; but she could not
continue this unequal race long, men being always better runners in a long race than
ladies. Helena soon lost sight of Demetrius; and as she was wandering about, dejected
and forlorn, she arrived at the place where Lysander was sleeping. 'Ah!' said she, 'this is
Lysander lying on the ground: is he dead or asleep?” Then, gently touching him, she said:
'Good sir, if you are alive, awake.' Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and (the lovecharm beginning to work) immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant love and
admiration; telling her she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven,
and that he would run through fire for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like
speeches. Helena, knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia's lover, and that he was
solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard herself
addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might) that Lysander was making a
28
jest of her. 'Oh!' said she, 'why was I born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it
not enough, is it not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind word
from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend in this disdainful manner to court me? I
thought, Lysander, you were a lord of more true gentleness.' Saying these words in great
anger, she ran away; and Lysander followed her, quite forgetful of his own Hermia, who
was still asleep.
When Hermia awoke, she was in a sad fright at finding herself alone. She
wandered about the wood, not knowing what was become of Lysander, or which way to
go to seek for him. In the meantime Demetrius, not being able to find Hermia and his rival
Lysander, and fatigued with his fruitless search, was observed by Oberon fast asleep.
Oberon had learnt by some questions he had asked of Puck, that he had applied the lovecharm to the wrong person's eyes; and now having found the person first intended, he
touched the eyelids of the sleeping Demetrius with the love-juice, and he instantly awoke;
and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to
address love-speeches to her; and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for
through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now become Hermia's turn to run after her lover)
made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made
love to Helena, they being each one under the influence of the same potent charm.
The astonished Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear
friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to make a jest of her.
Hermia was as much surprised as Helena; she knew not why Lysander and
Demetrius, who both before loved her, were now become the lovers of Helena; and to
Hermia the matter seemed to be no jest.
The ladies, who before had always been the dearest of friends, now fell to high
words together.
'Unkind Hermia,' said Helena, 'it is you have set Lysander on to vex me with mock
praises; and your other lover Demetrius, who used almost to spurn me with his foot, have
you not bid him call me Goddess, Nymph, rare, precious, and celestial? He would not
speak thus to me, whom he hates, if you did not set him on to make a jest of me. Unkind
Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot our school-day
friendship? How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one
29
song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought;
growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted! Hermia, it is
not friendly in you, it is not maidenly to join with men in scorning your poor friend.'
'I am amazed at your passionate words,' said Hermia: 'I scorn you not; it seems
you scorn me.' 'Ay, do,' returned Helena, 'persevere, counterfeit serious looks, and make
mouths at me when I turn my back; then wink at each other, and hold the sweet jest up. If
you had any pity, grace, or manners, you would not use me thus.'
While Helena and Hermia were speaking these angry words to each other,
Demetrius and Lysander left them, to fight together in the wood for the love of Helena.
When they found the gentlemen had left them, they departed, and once more
wandered weary in the wood in search of their lovers.
As soon as they were gone, the fairy king, who with little Puck had been listening
to their quarrels, said to him: 'This is your negligence, Puck; or did you do this wilfully?'
'Believe me, king of shadows,' answered Puck, 'it was a mistake; did not you tell me I
should know the man by his Athenian garments? However, I am not sorry this has
happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport.' 'You heard,' said Oberon, 'that
Demetrius and Lysander are gone to seek a convenient place to fight in. I command you
to overhang the night with a thick fog, and lead these quarrelsome lovers so astray in the
dark, that they shall not be able to find each other. Counterfeit each of their voices to the
other, and with bitter taunts provoke them to follow you, while they think it is their rival's
tongue they hear. See you do this, till they are so weary they can go no farther; and when
you find they are asleep, drop the juice of this other flower into Lysander's eyes, and when
he awakes he will forget his new love for Helena, and return to his old passion for Hermia;
and then the two fair ladies may each one be happy with the man she loves, and they will
think all that has passed a vexatious dream. About this quickly, Puck, and I will go and
see what sweet love my Titania has found.'
Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon seeing a clown near her, who had lost his
way in the wood, and was likewise asleep: 'This fellow,' said he, 'shall be my Titania's true
love'; and clapping an ass's head over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had
grown upon his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass's head on very gently, it
30
awakened him, and rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to him, he went
towards the bower where the fairy queen slept.
'Ah! what angel is that I see?' said Titania, opening her eyes, and the juice of the
little purple flower beginning to take effect: 'are you as wise as you are beautiful?'
'Why, mistress,' said the foolish clown, 'if I have wit enough to find the way out of
this wood, I have enough to serve my turn.'
'Out of the wood do not desire to go,' said the enamoured queen. 'I am a spirit of no
common rate. I love you. Go
with me, and I will give you
fairies to attend upon you.'
She then called four of
her fairies: their names were
Pease-blossom, Cobweb, Moth,
and Mustard-seed.
'Attend,' said the queen,
'upon this sweet gentleman; hop
in his walks, and gambol in his
sight; feed him with grapes and apricots, and steal for him the honeybags from the bees.
Come, sit with me,' said she to the clown, 'and let me play with your amiable hairy cheeks,
my beautiful ass! and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!'
'Where is Pease-blossom?' said the ass-headed clown, not much regarding the
fairy queen's courtship, but very proud of his new attendants.
'Here, sir,' said little Pease-blossom.
'Scratch my head,' said the clown. 'Where is Cobweb?'
'Here, sir,' said Cobweb.
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'Good Mr Cobweb,' said the foolish clown, 'kill me the red humble bee on the top of
that thistle yonder; and, good Mr Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself
too much in the action, Mr Cobweb, and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be
sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. Where is Mustard-seed?'
'Here, sir,' said Mustard-seed: 'what is your will?' 'Nothing,' said the clown, 'good
Mr Mustard-seed, but to help Mr Pease-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber's, Mr
Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face.'
'My sweet love,' said the queen, 'what will you have to eat? I have a venturous fairy
shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch you some new nuts.' 'I had rather have a handful
of dried pease,' said the clown, who with his ass's head had got an ass's appetite. 'But, I
pray, let none of your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep.'
'Sleep, then,' said the queen, 'and I will wind you in my arms. 0 how I love you!
how I dote upon you!' When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of his
queen, he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished her favours
upon an ass.
This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her arms, with his
ass's head crowned by her with flowers.
When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the changeling
boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord with her new favourite, did not
dare to refuse him.
Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for to be his
page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had
brought his Titania and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the
fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying
how she now loathed the sight of the strange monster.
Oberon likewise took the ass's head from off the clown, and left him to finish his
nap with his own fool's head upon his shoulders.
32
Oberon and his Titania being now perfectly reconciled, he related to her the history
of the lovers, and their midnight quarrels; and she agreed to go with him and see the end
of their adventures.
The fairy king and queen found the lovers and their fair ladies, at no great distance
from each other, sleeping on a grass-plot; for Puck, to make amends for his former
mistake, had contrived with the utmost diligence to bring them all to the same spot,
unknown to each other: and he had carefully removed the charm from off the eyes of
Lysander with the antidote the fairy king gave to him.
Hermia first awoke, and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking
at him and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes,
and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before
clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the
adventures of the night, doubting if these things had really happened, or if they had both
been dreaming the same bewildering dream.
Helena and Demetrius were by this time awake; and a sweet sleep having quieted
Helena's disturbed and angry spirits, she listened with delight to the professions of love
which Demetrius still made to her, and which, to her surprise as well as pleasure, she
began to perceive were sincere.
These fair night-wandering ladies, now no longer rivals, became once more true
friends; all the unkind words which had passed were forgiven, and they calmly consulted
together what was best to be done in their present situation. It was soon agreed that, as
Demetrius had given up his pretensions to Hermia, he should endeavour to prevail upon
her father to revoke the cruel sentence of death which had been passed against her.
Demetrius was preparing to return to Athens for this friendly purpose, when they were
surprised with the sight of Egeus, Hermia's father, who came to the wood in pursuit of his
runaway daughter.
When Egeus understood that Demetrius would not now marry his daughter, he no
longer opposed her marriage with Lysander, but gave his consent that they should be
wedded on the fourth day from that time, being the same day on which Hermia had been
condemned to lose her life; and on that same day Helena joyfully agreed to marry her
beloved and now faithful Demetrius.
33
The fairy king and queen, who were invisible spectators of this reconciliation, and
now saw the happy ending of the lovers' history, brought about through the good offices of
Oberon, received so much pleasure, that these kind spirits resolved to celebrate the
approaching nuptials with sports and revels throughout their fairy kingdom.
And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their pranks, as judging it
incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming,
and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none
of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty harmless
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Questions after reading the story
1. What is the purpose of the tales and to whom are they intended?
2. What is expected from boys in relation to their sisters?
3. What did Hermia’s father want her to do?
4. Who was in love with Demetrius?
5. Why did Oberon and Titania quarrel?
6. What did Oberon send Puck to get?
7. Where did Titania sleep?
8. What did Oberon do to Bottom (the clown)?
9. Who fell in love with Bottom?
10. Into whose eyes did Puck first pour the liquid?
11. What did the liquid do to both Lysander and Demetrius?
12. Why did Titania stop loving Bottom?
13. Who loved who when they woke up?
14. Which character do you like best? Why?
34
Unit 4. The Early Seventeenth Century.
1.“Metaphysical poets”: John Donne (1572-1631), George Herbert (15931633), Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), Andrew Marvell (16211-1678).
2.“Cavalier poets”: Ben Jonson (1572-1637), Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
3.John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623).
4.John Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost (1667).
4.1. Introduction to the poem
Paradise Lost is the major epic poem in English. Milton had thought about using
the English myth of King Arthur for his great epic poem, but finally decided to use
the more general myth of Creation, with he figures of God and Satan (the devil),
Adam and Eve, and the Fall of Mankind as his subject. His aim, he said, was:
To assert Eternal Providence1
And Justify2 the ways of God to Men.
This is a very ambitious aim, and the poem has always caused controversy as
many readers see Satan as the hero. The poem can be read as a religious text,
supporting Christian ideals, or it can be read as the last Renaissance text,
stressing the freedom of choice of Adam and Eve as the path of human knowledge
and leave the Garden of Eden, paradise. At the end of the poem, they follow the
path towards the unknown future of all humanity:
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence3 their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary4 way.
1
To stress that God always looks after mankind
Explain
3
God’s care
4
Lonely
2
35
Neither Adam nor Eve is blamed for the Fall, when Eve eats the Forbidden Fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge and Adam loses the state of innocence. Satan, God and
Man are equally responsible. Milton’s poem is full of memorable descriptions. Here
is a description of hell:
A dungeon5 horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace6 flame – yet from those flames
No light but rather darkness visible...
Read the following excerpt taken from Paradise Lost, Book 1
I.
THE ARGUMENT
This first Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject, Mans
disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac't: Then
touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent;
who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many Legions of Angels, was by
the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his Crew into the great Deep.
Which action past over, the Poem hasts into the midst of things, presenting Satan
with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ'd here, not in the Center (for Heaven
and Earth may be suppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a
place of utter darkness, fitliest call'd Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on
the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as
from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and Dignity lay by him; they confer
of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his Legions, who lay till then in the same
manner confounded; They rise, thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders
nam'd, according to the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries
adjoyning. To these Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of
regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new World and new kind of Creature to
be created, according to an ancient Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that Angels
5
6
Prison
Oven
36
were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers.
To find out the truth of this Prophesie, and what to determin thereon he refers to a
full Councel. What his Associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the Palace of
Satan rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in
Councel.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [ 10 ]
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues [ 15 ]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread [ 20 ]
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence, [ 25 ]
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
37
Questions after reading the text
1. Milton announces that he intends to follow classical precedents by
beginning his epic…
2. Which name does Milton coin for the assembly hall of devils?
3. The epic is about the Christian story of the Fall or the Rise of Man?
4. Who is this “one greater man” Milton is referring to?
5. Why is the poet invoking the muse? Do you think it is proper to invoke
a muse in a poem of a religious matter?
6. What purpose does Milton state for Paradise Lost?
7. Why do you think Paradise Lost is considered an epic poem? Name
other epic poems and substantiate your answer.
38
Unit 5. The Eighteenth Century.
1.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
2.
Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740-1)
3.
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy (1759-67)
4.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Gulliver’s Travels (1726).
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, books
about travel to unknown places were of great interest to
the reading public in Britain. Swift saw the importance of
that style. He didn’t want to make his readers believe
that the impossible lands in Gulliver’s Travels were true
or real. But he did want to make them think.
Gulliver’s
Travels
is
a
satire.
Readers
find
themselves looking at their own world, its beliefs and
customs, with new eyes. Lemuel Gulliver describes the
different places and heir inhabitants in a simple style. He gives us facts and
figures, not opinions about them. And so we don’t just laugh at hem: we put
ourselves in the place of the Lilliputians and others, and we see ourselves as they
would see us.
Swift is satirizing (among other things) the conventions of the travel narrative
— as well as the tendency of many readers to believe every word of the accounts
they were reading. The first three books of GT describe, in first person, the
adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon who gets shipwrecked frequently
on strange islands that are, in various ways, topsy-turvy reflections of England.
His first voyage is to Lilliput, a land of tiny people (relative to Gulliver) whose
petty, minutiae-obsessed ways poke fun at similar pettiness in English culture. We
learn that Gulliver is very good at recording details such as foreign customs,
measurements and vocabulary, but very poor at putting this information into any
useful perspective.
The 2nd voyage, to Brobdingnag, an island of giants, satirizes England’s
appetite for excess (in food, drink, and sex), as well as its over-inflated, grandiose
feelings of self-importance.
39
The 3rd voyage, to the floating island of Laputa, populated by mad scientists
and loony academics, satirizes the English craze for the latest technologies and
“scientific” discoveries – and also satirizes the belief that the best solution for any
problem is a technological one.
The satire in Book IV is darker and more savage: as an evaluation of the
human condition, it frightened the wits out of most of the most eminent Victorians,
and remains profoundly disturbing today. It suggests that the aspects of our lives
of which we are most proud are merely slightly more complex versions of the
activities which, when they are engaged in by Yahoos, we recognize as being foul,
brutal, and disgusting. In contrasting the Houhynhynms with the Yahoos, Swift
concerns himself, too, with the dichotomy, inherent in all human beings, between
reason and unreason; between sanity and madness. He implies that though Man
is neither a rational intellect nor, wholly, a passionate beast, neither a
Houhynhynm nor a Yahoo, he inclines to the bestial. In this final book Swift seems
to despair: for Gulliver, overwhelmed, as perhaps Swift himself was, by a black,
misanthropic, despairing vision of reality, the only middle ground left between the
dreamy utopia, the ironically "ideal" society of the Houhynhynms, and the abyss of
Yahooism seems to be a stable in England. We cannot identify with the
Houhynhynms, but we can identify only too well with the Yahoos: the closer we
look at them the more horrible, because more identifiably human, they become. Is
there a moral to Book IV?
Read the following excerpt taken from Gulliver’s Travels
PART IV.
A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS.
CHAPTER I.
The Author sets out as a Captain of a Ship. His Men conspire
against him, confine him a long time to his Cabbin, set him on shore
in an unknown Land. He Travels up in the Country. The Yahoos a
strange Sort of Animal described. The Author meets two
Houyhnhnms.
40
[…]
In this desolate Condition I advanced forward, and soon got upon Ground,
where I sate down on a Bank to rest my self, and consider what I had best do.
When I was a little refreshed I went up into the Country, resolving to deliver my
self to the first Savages I should meet, and purchase my Life from them by some
Bracelets, Glass-rings, and other Toys, which Sailors usually provide themselves
with in those Voyages, and whereof I had some about me: The Land was divided
by long Rows of Trees, not regularly planted, but naturally growing; there was
plenty of Grass, and several Fields of Oats. I walked very circumspectly for Fear of
being surprized, or suddenly shot with an Arrow from behind or on either side. I fell
into a beaten Road, where I saw many Tracks of human Feet, and some of Cows,
but most of Horses. At last I beheld several Animals in a Field, and one or two of
the same kind sitting in Trees. Their Shape was very singular and deformed, which
a little discomposed me, so that I lay down behind a Thicket to observe them
better. Some of them coming forward near the Place where I lay, gave me an
Opportunity of distinctly marking their Form. Their Heads and Breasts were
covered with a thick Hair, some frizzled and others lank; they had Beards like
Goats, and a long ridge of Hair down their Backs and the fore-parts of their Legs
and Feet, but the rest of their Bodies were bare, so that I might see their Skins,
which were of a brown buff Colour. They had no Tails, nor any Hair at all on their
Buttocks, except about the Anus; which, I presume, Nature had placed there to
defend them as they sate on the Ground; for this Posture they used, as well as
lying down, and often stood on their hind Feet. They climbed high Trees, as nimbly
as a Squirrel, for they had strong extended Claws before and behind, terminating
in sharp points, and hooked. They would often spring, and bound, and leap with
prodigious Agility. The Females were not so large as the Males, they had long lank
Hair on their Heads, but none on their Faces, nor any thing more than a sort of
Down on the rest of their Bodies, except about the Anus, and Pudenda. Their
Dugs hung between their Fore-feet, and often reached almost to the Ground as
they walked. The Hair of both Sexes was of several Colours, brown, red, black and
yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my Travels so disagreeable an
Animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an Antipathy. So
that thinking I had seen enough, full of Contempt and Aversion, I got up and
41
pursued the beaten Road, hoping it might direct me to the Cabbin of some Indian.
I had not got far when I met one of these Creatures full in my way, and coming up
directly to me. The ugly Monster, when he saw me, distorted several ways every
Feature of his Visage, and stared as at an Object he had never seen before; then
approaching nearer, lifted up his Fore-paw, whether out of Curiosity or Mischief, I
could not tell. But I drew my Hanger, and gave him a good Blow with the flat Side
of it, for I durst not strike him with the Edge, fearing the Inhabitants might be
provoked against me, if they should come to know, that I had killed or maimed any
of their Cattle. When the Beast felt the smart, he drew back, and roared so loud,
that a Herd of at least forty came flocking about me from the next Field, houling
and making odious Faces; but I ran to the Body of a Tree, and leaning my Back
against it, kept them off, by waving my Hanger. Several of this cursed Brood
getting hold of the Branches behind, leaped up in the Tree, from whence they
began to discharge their Excrements on my Head: However, I escaped pretty well,
by sticking close to the Stem of the Tree, but was almost stifled with the Filth,
which fell about me on every side.
In the midst of this Distress, I observed them all to run away on a sudden as
fast as they could, at which I ventured to leave the Tree, and pursue the Road,
wondring what it was that could put them into this Fright. But looking on my Lefthand, I saw a Horse walking softly in the Field: which my Persecutors having
sooner discovered, was the Cause of their Flight. The Horse started a little when
he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my Face with
manifest Tokens of Wonder: He viewed my Hands and Feet, walking round me
several times. I would have pursued my Journey, but he placed himself directly in
the way, yet looking with a very mild Aspect, never offering the least Violence. We
stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the Boldness, to reach my
Hand towards his Neck, with a Design to stroak it using the common Style and
Whistle of Jockies when they are going to handle a strange Horse. But this Animal
seeming to receive my Civilities with Disdain, shook his Head, and bent his Brows,
softly raising up his right Fore-foot to remove my Hand. Then he neighed three or
four times, but in so different a Cadence, that I almost began to think he was
speaking to himself in some Language of his own.
42
While he and I were thus employed, another Horse came up; who applying
himself to the first in a very formal Manner, they gently struck each other's right
Hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the Sound, which
seemed to be almost articulate. They went some Paces off, as if it were to confer
together, walking Side by Side, backward and forward, like Persons deliberating
upon some Affair of Weight, but often turning their Eyes towards me, as it were to
watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such Actions and Behaviours
in brute Beasts, and concluded with myself, that if the Inhabitants of this Country
were endued with a proportionable Degree of Reason, they must need be the
wisest People upon Earth. This Thought gave me so much Comfort, that I resolved
to go forward until I could discover some House or Village, or meet with any of the
Natives, leaving the two Horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the
first, who was a Dapple-Gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so
expressive a Tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon
I turned back, and came near him, to expect his farther Commands. But
concealing my Fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some Pain, how this
Adventure might terminate; and the Reader will easily believe I did not much like
my present Situation.
The two Horses came up close to me, looking with great Earnestness upon my
Face and Hands. The gray Steed rubbed my Hat all round with his right Fore-hoof,
and discomposed it so much, that I was forced to adjust it better, by taking it off,
and settling it again; whereat both he and his Companion (who was a brown bay)
appeared to be much surprized, the latter felt the Lappet of my Coat, and finding it
to hang loose about me, they both looked with new Signs of Wonder. He stroked
my Right-hand, seeming to admire the Softness, and Colour; but he squeezed it
so hard between his Hoof and his Pastern, that I was forced to roar; after which
they both touched me with all possible Tenderness. They were under great
Perplexity about my Shoes and Stockings, which they felt very often, neighing to
each other, and using various Gestures, not unlike those of a Philosopher, when
he would attempt to solve some new and difficult Phænomenon.
Upon the whole, the Behaviour of these Animals was so orderly and rational,
so acute and judicious, that I at last concluded, they must needs be Magicians,
who had thus metamorphosed themselves upon some design, and seeing a
43
Stranger in the way, were resolved to divert themselves with him; or perhaps were
really amazed at the sight of a Man so very different in Habit, Feature, and
Complection from those who might probably live so remote a Climate. Upon the
Strength of this Reasoning, I ventured to address them in the following Manner:
Gentlemen, if you be Conjurers, as I have good Cause to believe, you can
understand any Language; therefore I make bold to let your Worships know that I
am a poor distressed English Man, driven by his Misfortunes upon your Coast, and
I entreat one of you, to let me ride upon his Back, as if he were a real Horse, to
some House or Village, where I can be relieved. In return of which Favour, I will
make you a Present of this Knife and Bracelet (taking them out of my Pocket). The
two Creatures stood silent while I spoke, seeming to listen with great Attention;
and when I had ended, they neighed frequently towards each other, as if they
were engaged in serious Conversation. I plainly observed, that their Language
expressed the Passions very well, and their Words might with little Pains be
resolved into an Alphabet more easily than the Chinese.
I could frequently distinguish the Word Yahoo, which was repeated by each of
them several times; and altho' it was impossible for me to conjecture what it
meant; yet while the two Horses were busy in Conversation, I endeavoured to
practice this Word upon my Tongue; and as soon as they were silent, I boldly
pronounced Yahoo in a loud Voice, imitating, at the same time, as near as I could,
the Neighing of a Horse; at which they were both visibly surprized, and the Gray
repeated the same Word twice, as if he meant to teach me the right Accent,
wherein I spoke after him as well as I could, and found myself perceivably to
improve every time, though very far from any Degree of Perfection. Then the Bay
tried me with a second Word, much harder to be pronounced; but reducing it to the
English Orthography, may be spelt thus, Houyhnhnm. I did not succeed in this so
well as the former, but after two or three farther Trials, I had better Fortune; and
they both appeared amazed at my Capacity.
After some further Discourse; which I then conjectured might relate to me, the
two Friends took their Leaves, with the same Compliment of striking each other's
Hoof; and the Gray made me Signs that I should walk before him, wherein I
thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a better Director. When I offered to
slacken my Pace, he would cry Hhuun, Hhuun; I guessed his Meaning, and gave
44
him to understand as well as I could, that I was weary, and not able to walk faster;
upon which he would stand a while to let me rest.
CHAPTER II
[…]
Here we enter'd, and I saw three of these detestable Creatures, whom I first
met after my Landing, feeding upon Roots, and the Flesh of some Animals, which I
afterwards found to be that of Asses and Dogs, and now and then a Cow dead by
Accident or Disease. They were all tyed by the Neck with strong Wyths fastened to
a Beam; they held their Food between the Claws of their Fore-feet, and tore it with
their Teeth.
The Master Horse ordered a Sorrel Nag, one of his Servants, to untie the
largest of these Animals, and take him into the Yard. The Beast and I were
brought close together; and our Countenances diligently compared, both by
Master and Servant, who thereupon repeated several times the Word Yahoo. My
Horror and Astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this
abominable Animal, a perfect human Figure; the Face of it indeed was flat and
broad, the Nose depressed, the Lips large, and the Mouth wide. But these
Differences are common to all Savage Nations, where the Lineaments of the
Countenance are distorted by the Natives suffering their Infants to lie groveling on
the Earth, or by carrying them on their Backs, nuzzling with their Face against the
Mother's Shoulders. The Fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my Hands in nothing
else, but the Length of the Nails, the Coarseness and Brownness of the Palms,
and the Hairiness on the Backs. There was the same Resemblance between our
Feet, with the same Differences, which I knew very well, tho' the Horses did not,
because of my Shoes and Stockings; the same in every Part of our Bodies, except
as to Hairiness and Colour, which I have already described.
45
Questions after reading the text
1. What is satire?
2. Characterize Gulliver's reaction to the beasts after landing.
3. Describe the real Yahoos. What do you think they represent?
4. What conclusion does he reach when he sees the horses? What do you
think they represent?
5. What irony happens in this excerpt and how does it occur?
46
6. The Romantic Period (1757-1827).
6.1. William Blake (1757-1827), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772-1834), Lord Byron (1788-1824), P.B. Shelley (1792-1822),
John Keats (1795-1821).
6.2. Jane Austen (1775-1817), Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and
Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey
(1818)
6.3. Mary Shelley (1797-1851), Frankenstein (1818, 1831).
Warming up. Read carefully the following letter. Who, do you
think, is the author?
LETTER I
To Mrs. Saville, England
ST. PETERSBURGH, _Dec. 11th, 17—.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an
enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday;
and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the
success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel
a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with
delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions
towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this
wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be
persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my
imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever
visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour.
Therefor with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there
snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land
surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable
globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the
heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be
47
expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which
attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only
this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my
ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a
land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are
sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this
laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his
holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these
conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on
all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those
countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the
secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such
as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I
feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing
contributes so much to tranquillise the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the
soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early
years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made
in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the
pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery
composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas's library. My education was neglected, yet
I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my
familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my
father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions
entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a
Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple
where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with
my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the
fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now,
remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced
byinuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to
the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked
harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my nights to the study of
mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a
naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired
myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I
must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel,
and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness; so valuable did he consider my
services.
And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My
life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement
that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the
affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate and my spirits
are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies
of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others,
but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.
48
This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly quickly over
the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable
than that of an English stage-coach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs –
a dress which I have already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the
deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from
actually freezing in your veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between
St. Petersburgh and Archangel.
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to
hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to
engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whalefishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear
sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years,
will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and
save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness. –
Your affectionate brother,
R. WALTON.
Introduction to the text.
People read Frankenstein as a story of fear and danger, but
Mary Shelley expressed in it beliefs that were important to her and
to many of her friends. She believed that human beings are
naturally good. They become evil only due to society’s influence.
In Mary Shelley’s book, Frankenstein tries to create the perfect
man.
When
life
is
given
to
this
perfect
man,
there
is
great
strength and a clever brain; but his creation is ugly, so ugly that
people fear and hate him. The result is that he actually becomes
evil. Mary Shelley wanted to show that the evil was not in the
monster at first; it grew because people were stupid, unfair and
cruel. Society produced the dangerous monster, instead of ”the
perfect man”.
1. Have you ever read Frankenstein or parts of it?
2. Have you watched any of the movie versions based on
the story?
3. What do you happen to know about the story written by
Mary Shelley?
49
4. If you have read the book and watched any of the
movies,
can
you
point
out
any
major/
minor
differences?
Second part:
READING COMPREHENSION (scanning)
Go through the text and find out:
1. Which type of text is it?
2. Who is writing the letter?
3. Who is the letter addressed to?
4. Find in the text the corresponding synonyms for the
following words:
Auguries,
water),
happiness
wonderful,
(success),
temptations,
confidence,
order
carried
(by
(command),
air
or
hardening,
goodbye.
Third Part
HOMEWORK
Read the text again (intensive reading) and comment on the
following aspects (yes/no single answers are not allowed. Using
your own words make it clear in which paragraphs of the text can
the information be found.):
1. Do you think (or do you know) to which part of
the book this letter belongs to?
2. Which is the main purpose of the letter?
3. Where is Walton now?
4. What is his goal?
5. Is it a difficult task?
6. What information about the importance of science
and discoveries during the age can be found in the
text?
7. Is Walton looking forward to this new enterprise?
8. Which data are given about Walton’s background?
50
9. How many years ago did he decide to start his
search?
10. Will anybody be helping him?
11. What is Walton’s real and most important hope?
12. Does he expect to survive?
Fourth Part:
HOMEWORK: FURTHER READING. Those willing to work hard can
either
read
the
whole
book
or
watch
Kenneth
Branagh’s
cinematographic version of the story (or both). Write a short essay
on Walton’s role in the development of Shelley’s story.
51
Read the following excerpt from Jane Austen´s Pride and Prejudice
(1813)
Chapter 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good
fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first
entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding
families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their
daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield
Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about
it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young
man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a
chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with
Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his
servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand
a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know
that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love
with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by
themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them,
Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party."
52
"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not
pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters,
she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."
"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."
"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the
neighbourhood."
"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."
"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one
of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in
general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible
for us to visit him if you do not."
"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you;
and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying
whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little
Lizzy."
“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am
sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you
are always giving her the preference."
"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are all silly and
ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."
"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight
in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old
friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at
least."
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and
caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his
wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman
of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was
discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her
daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
53
1. Introduction to the text
Though written in the last decade of the 18th century under the title of First
Impressions, it was not until 1813 when this novel was brought out. By then,
Austen had already given a different name to the book: Pride and Prejudice. It is by
far the most popular of all Jane Austen´s novels. Perhaps, one of the reasons by
which this book has drawn the attention of so many readers is its precision and
vivacity of style. Other aspects also remarkable from the very beginning of the
story are the speed and skill with which the author moves into the story as well as
the high degree of craftsmanship reflected on the structure.
The problem posed in the first part of the novel, which this excerpt belongs
to, is the marrying off of the elder Bennet sisters, Jane and Elizabeth. They are rich
and beautiful, but at the same time they do not have a considerable fortune. Their
mother, Mrs. Bennet, longs to see them married, as for girls with not so much
money must secure their man while they may, or else they will probably face a sad
and unfortunate spinsterhood. Thus, Austen tries to unveil a dark but real side of
the marriage-seeking business: economic security. When Elizabeth´s friend,
Charlotte Lucas, accepts Mr. Collins as husband, we are made fully aware of some
the ugly realities underlying the social system; instead of facing a fate deprived of
social and economic security, Charlotte, who lives in an age when few means of
earning and livelihood were open to girls like her, marries the grotesque Mr.
Collins. She weighs up the pros and cons of such a marriage, and she prefers
putting up with Mr. Collins´s unbearable character to taking the risk of losing
economic security and social position. Both Elizabeth and the reader are shocked
when they know of Charlotte´s decision. However, Austen takes some pains to let
us know how hopeless the choice was for youngsters like Charlotte, and how in
fact she has chosen the lesser of two evils. Elizabeth and her sister will be luckier,
since they will marry two men whom they really love.
As you have noticed, Austen deals with the topic of marriages of
convenience. By doing so, the author is drawing our attention to one of the central
themes in her fiction: society is kept thanks to its members´ compromise between
the individual impression and desire on the one hand and public tradition and
duty on the other.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Have you ever heard of Pride and Prejudice? If you have, explain
those aspects that you best remember or those that have been more
interesting for you.
Do you know if this novel has ever been taken to the cinema?
Do you know movies based on other books written by Jane
Austen?
In case you have read Pride and Prejudice and watched any of the
movies based on it, try to explain in a few lines the main
differences observed between them.
54
2. Second Part: Reading Comprehension
1. What point(s) of view can you identify? In other words, who is telling the
story in the opening passage?
2. Are there any concepts that seem to be particularly important? Look for
words that are repeated or have a similar meaning.
3. On the basis of these key words and your reading of this excerpt, try to
guess the concerns and themes emerging throughout the novel.
4. Can you say anything about the characters: who they are, what is their
social environment…?
3. Third Part: Homework
1. From your point of view, which are the main stylistic features of the
opening passage?
2. Discuss the implication of the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice.
4. Further reading
1. Write a short essay on how the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy
interact throughout the novel.
Unit 7. The Victorian Age (1830-1901)
7.1. Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), “The Lady of Shalott”.
7.2. Charlotte Brontë (1816-55), Jane Eyre (1847)
7.3. Emily Brontë (1818-48), Wuthering Heights (1847)
7.4.
Charles Dickens (1812-79), Great Expectations (1861)
7.5.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
7.6.
Bram Stoker (1847-1912), Dracula (1897).
7.7.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
7.8.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), The Sign of Four (1890)..., The
Lost World (1912)
55
A. Focus on Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Some useful information
™ Vampires
The Belief in vampires is a very ancient one, most of all in the Slavonic
countries such as Transylvania. Perhaps the stories came from further east,
like the Slavonic people themselves and their languages. In the stories, the
vampire was the ghost of a dead wrongdoer. The ghost returned from the
grave in the shape of a huge bat and fed on the blood of sleeping people.
These people usually became vampire themselves. So long as it could get
human blood in this way, the vampire would never die.
Transylvania
The name comes from Latin words meaning “Beyond the forests”, but it is a
real country, not an imaginary one. It is actually in Romania today, lying
between the west of Romania and the south of Hungary. The people are of
many origins, including the gipsies who play a part in the story.
Before reading the text. How many things do you know about
vampires? Make a list with those features that best define a vampire.
Bram Stoker, Dracula (an excerpt)
Chapter 2
Jonathan Harker's Journal (continued)
5 May.—
I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed
the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom the courtyard looked of
considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps
seemed bigger than it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight.
When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand to assist
me to alight. Again I could not but notice his prodigious strength. His hand actually
56
seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed mine if he had chosen. Then he took my
traps, and placed them on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and
studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. I could see
even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the carving had been
much worn by time and weather. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and
shook the reins. The horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one of the
dark openings.
I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do. Of bell or knocker
there was no sign. Through these frowning walls and dark window openings it was not
likely that my voice could penetrate. The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts
and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of
people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a
customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a
London estate to a foreigner? […] Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy
step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming
light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn
back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door
swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and
clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He
held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or
globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the
open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying
in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no
motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome
had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he
moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which
made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice,
more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the
happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had
57
noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not
the same person to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively:
"Count Dracula?" He bowed in a courtly was as he replied:
"I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the
night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." As he was speaking, he put the lamp
on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in before I
could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted:
"Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available. Let me see
to your comfort myself". He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a
great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang
heavily. At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a welllit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of
logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared […]
His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and
peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the
temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over
the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as
I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with
peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness
showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the
tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin.
The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the
firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I
could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say,
there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp
point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a
shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came
over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. The Count, evidently noticing it,
drew back. And with a grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his
protuberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both
silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of the
coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard
58
as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's eyes
gleamed, and he said:
"Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!" Seeing, I
suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added:
"Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter." Then
he rose and said:
"But you must be tired. Your bedroom is all ready, and tomorrow you shall sleep
as late as you will. I have to be away till the afternoon, so sleep well and dream well!"
With a courteous bow, he opened for me himself the door to the octagonal room, and I
entered my bedroom…
I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt. I fear. I think strange things, which I dare not
confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!
[…]
8 May.—
I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse. But now I am
glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place
and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy. I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had never
come. It may be that this strange night existence is telling on me, but would that that were
all! If there were any one to talk to I could bear it, but there is no one. I have only the
Count to speak with, and he-- I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place. Let
me be prosaic so far as facts can be. It will help me to bear up, and imagination must not
run riot with me. If it does I am lost. Let me say at once how I stand, or seem to.
I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could not sleep any
more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to
shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count's voice saying to me,
"Good morning." I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of
the glass covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did
not notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count's salutation, I turned to the glass
again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was
close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in
the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed, but there was no sign of a man in it,
except myself. This was startling, and coming on the top of so many strange things, was
beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count
59
is near. But at the instant I saw the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over
my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking
plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he
suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away and his hand touched the string of beads
which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly
that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.
"Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous that
you think in this country." Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on, "And this is the
wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with
it!" And opening the window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass,
which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then
he withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless
in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal.
When I went into the dining room, breakfast was prepared, but I could not find the
Count anywhere. So I breakfasted alone. It is strange that as yet I have not seen the Count
eat or drink. He must be a very peculiar man! After breakfast I did a little exploring in the
castle. I went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards the South. The view was
magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity of seeing it. The castle is
on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a
thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree
tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads
where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored
further. Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from
the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit.
The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
Questions after reading the text.
1.
Compare your description of a vampire with the one you have read.
How many guesses do you have?
2.
Do you think Dracula and the driver are the same person? Why? Why
not?
60
3.
Why has Jonathan Harker gone to Transylvania? What’s his job?
4.
Who are “the children of the night”?
5.
What happens when the Count sees Jonathan’s cut?
6.
Why is the Count so angry about mirrors?
7.
Why does Jonathan Harker feel like a prisoner?
™ Make up your own story: if you were a vampire, what would you do?
(about 50 words)
B. Focus on Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”
1. Getting in the mood: painting in the mind
™ Look carefully at the picture below and try to describe what
you see (use the following: in the middle, in the background,
in the foreground, on the left, on the right, at the bottom,
etc.).
61
™ What do you think has happened to this lady? Can you guess
why this has happened?
™ How do you think the lady feels in that moment?
™ What do you think is going to happen next?
™ Do you recognize the painting? Do you know the name of the
painter and when it was painted?
2. Listen to Loreena McKennitt singing “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred
Tennyson and fill in the blanks.
Part I
On either _________ the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet
the___;
And thro' the _________the road
run by
To many-towered Camelot;
And up and down the
_________go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an _________there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes disk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the _________
Flowing down to Camelot.
______grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of_________,
And the silent isle imbowers
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The Lady of Shalott
Only reapers, reaping early,
In among the beared barley
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot;
And by the _________the reaper
weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listing, whispers "'tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott."
Part 2
There she weaves by
____and______
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may
be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through a
_________clear
That hangs before her all the year,
_________ of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
And sometimes thro' the mirror
blue
The Knights come riding two and
two.
She hath no loyal Knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's
_________sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and with
lights
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were
waning,
The broad stream in his banks
complaining.
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;
Down she came and found a
_______
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And________, went to Camelot;
Or when the _________was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am, half sick of shadow," she said,
The Lady of Shalott.
Part 3
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode _________the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves,
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a _________in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse
trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode _______to Camelot.
And from the bank and from the ______
He flashed into the crystal_________,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the_______,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The ________crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
Part 4
And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance With a glassy countenance
She looked to Camelot.
At the closing of the ______
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted slowly,
63
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her _______were darkened
wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.
And out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and Burgher, Lord and Dame,
And round the prow they read her ___,
The Lady of Shalott.
For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her _________she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
________is this? And ________is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
They crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "she has a lovely_________;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the
________high,
Silent into Camelot.
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
The text refers to Elaine, "the lily maid of Astolat". She is known from the
Old-French Mort le roi Artu and from Malory's Morte d'Artur, where she dies
because of her unanswered love for Lancelot. With Tennyson's "The Lady of
Shalott" (1832) and "Lancelot and Elaine" (in The Idylls of the King, 1859) Elaine
became a symbol of the Victorian view on women: young, beautiful, innocent and
sacrificing herself for the male dominion. Often Elaine is portrayed in a tower
chamber where she withdrew herself with Lancelot's shield, while she observes the
outside world through a mirror and weaves it into a carpet ("web"). Elaine's trip - in
most cases the trip of her body - by boat to Camelot returns in many of the
pictures made about her. "The curse is come upon me," cried / The Lady of Shalott
3. Storyboard
The main events in the poem are written below but they are not in the
correct order.
1. Decide in which order the events happen.
2. Find a quotation to go with each statement and write it in the relevant
box.
64
The people pass the island on their way to the town of Camelot. They
never see the Lady; they only hear her singing.
Quotation:
The Lady is not allowed to look through the window. She sees the
outside world only through her mirror. Whatever she sees, she weaves
into her web (a tapestry).
Quotation:
The Lady is imprisoned in a tower on an island called Shalott.
Quotation:
The Lady floats down the river past Camelot in a boat with her name
written on the bows.
Quotation:
The handsome, dazzling figure of Sir Lancelot rides by in his shining
armour. The Lady sees him in the mirror and can no longer bear her
imprisonment.
Quotation:
She leaves the web she has been weaving and looks out of the window
to see Sir Lancelot more clearly. The mirror cracks from side to side and
the web flies out of the window.
Quotation:
4. Answer the following questions
Part1
1. What is Shalott?
2. Choose six words from part 1 which help to describe the setting.
1. Who is imprisoned on Shalott? How do we know this?
2. How do we know that nobody has ever seen the person in the tower?
3. Explain how the poet builds up a sense of mystery.
65
4. How do the people of Camelot refer to the person in the tower? How do
they know she is there?
Part 2
1. Describe, in as much detail as you can, the room inside the tower.
The following picture also by
Waterhouse can be of great help.
2. Why does the Lady never look out of the window? Find a quotation which
shows this.
3. What can she see in the mirror?
4. What does she spend her time doing?
5. How does the poet show that the Lady is not terribly happy at the end of
this section?
5. Can you see any pattern in the way the poem is written?
Part 3
1. Who is the man who rides by?
2. How do we know that he is not too far away?
3. What kind of words are used to describe him? What does this description
tell us about his character?
4. Find evidence in the poem that he is happy
5. What does the Lady do?
66
6. Explain what happen next and why.
Part 4
1. What does the lady do in the first verse of part 4?
2. Why is the last line of this verse in italics?
3. At what time of day does she reach Camelot?
4. What kind of song does she sing?
5. How does she die?
6. What does Sir Lancelot say at the end of the poem? How is his reaction
different to that of the other knights?
5. The Ingredients of a Ballad
A. As you should remember, ballads are often sung or told aloud, with a
definite pattern of rhyme and rhythm to help the narrator remember the
story. Stories within ballads are usually about feats of heroism or
endurance, and can be tragic, romantic or swash-buckling adventure tales.
™
What other ballads have we read so far?
67
™
Do you think they fit in the definition provided before? Do you
think they all have something in common? Yes/ No? Justify your
answer.
B. Now make an ingredient grid for “The Lady of Shalott” and for the other
ballads we have already analysed. Remember the following aspects:
Story: What happens in the ballad? Who are the main characters?
Moral: Is there a message in the ballad? What is the writer trying to
teach us?
Chorus: Are certain words, phrases or lines repeated? Pick out some
examples. Is there a pattern to these repetitions?
Rhythm: Try to describe the pace of the ballad. Does the pace change
at different points in the story? Why? What is the mood of
the ballad?
Rhyme: Is there a pattern to the rhyming words?
Shape: Is the poem written in one long piece or is it broken up into
verses?
Ballad 1
Ballad 2
Ballad 3
Story
Moral
Chorus
Rhythm
Rhyme
Shape
6. Rewrite the story using your own words.
Begin with: Once upon a time there was…
7. Discussion: gendered reading
1. Who is the narrator of the poem?
2. Who are the main characters?
3. Which characters are active and which are passive?
4. Does the poem represent the Lady (and through her, femininity) in
a particular way, as either active or passive?
68
5. Look again carefully at the pictures by Waterhouse and the one
below by William Holman Hunt.
™ In each image, is the depiction of the Lady active or passive?
What do these visual images add to our reading of the poem?
69
Unit 8. The Twentieth Century
8.1. Prose
Warming up. When do you think the following excerpt was written?
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. by Laurence Sterne
Chapter I (Volume I)
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally
bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how
much depended upon what they were then doing;--that not only the production of a rational Being
was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his
genius and the very cast of his mind;--and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of
his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then
uppermost;--Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,--I am
verily
persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is
likely to see me.--Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may
think it;--you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father
to son, &c. &c.--and a great deal to that purpose:--Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in
ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their
motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are
once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half- penny matter,--away they go cluttering like
hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it,
as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself
sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.
Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?-Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the
same time,--Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly
question? Pray, what was your father saying?--Nothing.
Chapter XL (Volume VI)
These were the four lines I moved in through my first, second, third, and
fourth volumes. ---- In the fifth volume I have been very good, ---- the precise
line I have described in it being this :
70
TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORS ON THE NOVEL
Some Quotes about the Novel
ƒ
For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts to deal
unaffectedly with the fret (= worries) and fever (=passions), derision (=scorns) and disaster,
that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a
mincing of words (=sin florituras), of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to
point the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not aware that there is anything in the handling to
which exception can be taken.
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Jude the Obscure, preface to the first edition (1895).
¾ Do you agree with Hardy that the novel is addressed “to men and women of full
age”? Why do you think he makes such a statement?
ƒ
What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take
upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude
of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), Polish-born-British novelist. A Personal Record, ch. 1 (1912).
ƒ
The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom
to portray and analyse the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.
Salman Rushdie (b. 1947), Indian–born-British author. lecture, Feb. 6, 1990, Herbert Memorial. “Is Nothing
Sacred?”
¾ What is the aim of the novel for Conrad and for Rushdie? Do you think they share
the same opinion?
ƒ
A definable difference between the novel of the past and what I may call the modern
novel. It lies in the fact that formerly there was a feeling of certitude about moral values and
standard of conduct that is altogether absent today.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946), “The Contemporary Novel” (1914)
ƒ
If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the
relationships consist in. If the novelist honours the relationship in itself, it will be a great
novel (…). The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our
living relationships. The novel can help us to live, as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture,
anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan.
D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885–1930), British author. “Morality and the Novel,” Phoenix: The
Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, p. 530-32, Viking Press (1936).
¾ Do Wells and Lawrence have the same opinion about the novel? Explain your
answer, whatever.
¾ Which ones, according to your own opinion, are the standards for a novel to be
considered “good”?
71
Henry James’s The Art of Fiction (1884).
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life. When it ceases
to compete as the canvas of the painter competes, it will have arrived at a very strange pass. It is not
expected of the picture that it will make itself humble in order to be forgiven; and the analogy
between the art of the painter and the art of the novelist is, so far as I am able to see, complete.
Their inspiration is the same, their process (allowing for the different quality of the vehicle) is the
same, their success is the same. They may learn from each other, they may explain and sustain each
other. Their cause is the same, and the honour of one is the honour of another. Peculiarities of
manner, of execution, that correspond on either side, exist in each of them and contribute to their
development (…). Literature should be either instructive or amusing, and there is in many minds an
impression that these artistic preoccupations, the search for form, contribute to neither end, interfere
indeed with both. They are too frivolous to be edifying, and too serious to be diverting; and they
are, moreover, priggish (= pedantes) and paradoxical and superfluous. That, I think, represents the
manner in which the latent thought of many people who read novels as an exercise in skipping
would explain itself if it were to become articulate. They would argue, of course, that a novel ought
to be 'good,' but they would interpret this term in a fashion of their own, which, indeed, would vary
considerably from one critic to another. One would say that being good means representing virtuous
and aspiring characters, placed in prominent positions; another would say that it depends for a
'happy ending' on a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions,
appended paragraphs and cheerful remarks. Another still would say that it means being full of
incident and movement, so that we shall wish to jump ahead, to see who was the mysterious
stranger, and if the stolen will was ever found, and shall not be distracted from this pleasure by any
tiresome analysis or 'description.' But they would all agree that the 'artistic' idea would spoil some
of their fun. One would hold it accountable for all the description, another would see it revealed in
the absence of sympathy. Its hostility to a happy ending would be evident, and it might even, in
some cases, render any ending at all impossible. The 'ending' of a novel is, for many persons, like
that of a good dinner, a course of dessert and ices, and the artist in fiction is regarded as a sort of
meddlesome doctor who forbids agreeable aftertastes.
¾
What does Henry James declare about the novel?
¾
As you should know, a work is made up of form and matter (the way a ploy is
conveyed and the basic plot itself). Is the form important for this author?
¾
Henry James considers himself as an “artist in fiction”, why do people tend to think
of the artist as one who is to spoilt the enjoyment of reading a novel?
72
T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" from The Sacred Wood (1920)
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him
alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of
æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is
not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens
simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal
order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of
art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist
after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and
so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is
conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of
European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the
present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be
aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.
In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards
of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better
than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a
comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the
new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of
art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test
of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of
us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it
appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the
other.
¾ What is the text about?
¾ It is always difficult to decide if a work of art is good or not, specially because time is
almost always the best of judges and we do not have the required aesthetic distance.
For T.S. Eliot, does the writer have to take into account the standards of the past? To
what extent?
Viginia Woolf (1882-1941), “Modern Fiction” (1925)
Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of
vagueness to have to make use of such a figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by
speaking, as critics are pone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which afflicts all criticism of
novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more
often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the
essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting
vestments as we provide. Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, consciously, constructing our two
and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to resemble the vision in our minds
(…). The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and
unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love,
interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to
come to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion
of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often
as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in
the customary way. Is life like this ? Must novels be like this?
73
Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this”. Examine for a moment an
ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions – trivial, fantastic,
evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel (…). Life is not a series of gig-lamps [carriage
lamps] symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us
from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this
varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may
display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for
courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom
would have us believe it.
¾
What does Virginia mean by “ life escapes”?
¾
Which kind of works does she refer to with the phrase “as the pages fill themselves
in the customary way”?
¾
Which is the task of the novelist for Virginia Woolf?
D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885–1930), “Why the Novel Matters” (1936).
The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on
the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble (…). I very much
like all these bits of me to be set trembling with life and the wisdom of life. But I do ask that the
whole of me shall tremble in its wholeness, some time or other.
And this, of course, must happen in me, living.
But as far as it can happen from communication, it can only happen when a whole novel
communicates itself to me. The Bible – but all the Bible – and Homer, and Shakespeare: these are
the supreme old novels. These are all things to all men. Which means that in their wholeness they
affect the whole man alive, which is the man himself, beyond any part of him. They set the whole
tree trembling with a new access of life, they do not just stimulate growth in one direction. I don’t
want to grow in any one direction any more (…). We should ask for no absoluteness, or absolute.
Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of any absolute (…). Let
us learn from the novel. In the novel, the characters can do nothing but live. If they keep on being
good, according to pattern, or bad, according to pattern, or even volatile, according to pattern, they
cease to live, and the novel falls dead. A character in a novel has got to live, or it is nothing. We,
likewise, in life have got to live, or we are nothing. (…).
What then? Turn truly, honourably, to the novel, and see wherein you are man alive, and
wherein you are dead man in life (…). To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is
the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be
dead man in life. So much of a man walks about dead and a carcasss in the street and house, today;
so much of women is merely dead. Like a pianoforte with half the notes mute.
¾ What is the purpose of the novel according to Lawrence?
¾ Do you think this writer share, more or less, the same opinion about the novel that
Virginia? Do they believe in custom and absoluteness?
¾ What does Lawrence mean with the last paragraph?
74
From 1900 to 1939
Henry James (1843-1916): The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), Washington Square (1881),
Portrait of a Lady (1881) as well as certain travel books. The Turn of the Screw (1898). He wrote
The Wings of a Dove (1902), now considered his finest work, at this time and followed its success
with The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). "I could come back to America. to die
- but never, never to live" (letter to Mrs William James, 1 April 1913)
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924): Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), Heart of Darkness (1902)*
E.M. Foster (1879-1970): Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924)*
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930): Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in love (1917), Lady Chatterley’s
Lover (1928)
James Joyce (1882-1941): A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916), Dubliners (1914)*,
Ulysses (1922)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931),
Orlando (1928), A Room of One’s Own (1929)
H.G. Wells (1866-1946): The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The invisible
Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898)
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963): Brave New World (1932)
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973): The Hobbit (1937)*, The Lord of the Rings (1954-5)
William Sommerset Maugham (1874-1965): Of Human Bondage (1915), The Trembling of a Leaf
(1921), The Summing Up (1938): "There are three basic rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately
nobody knows what they are". A Writer's Notebook (1949):"A novelist must preserve a child-like
belief in the importance of things that common sense considers of no consequence"
H.M. Munro – Saki (1870-1916): Reginald (1904), Reginald in Russia (1910), The Chronicles of
Clovis (1911) and Beasts and Super Beasts (1914); the other stories were published posthumously.
He enlisted in the ranks in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, although he was well over
the age-limit. By 1916 he was a Lance-Sergeant in the 22nd Royal Fusiliers. He was killed by a
sniper on the dark morning of 14th November 1916; his last words before being shot were, ‘Put that
bloody cigarette out.’
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923): The Garden Party and other Stories (1922)*
M.R. James (1862-1936): Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904)…., Collected Ghost Stories (1931)
Arthur Machen (1863-1947): The Great God Pan (1894), The Hill of Dreams (1907), The Three
Impostors (1923).
75
Introduction to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness (1902) has been considered for most of this century not only as a literary classic,
but as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried
out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time.
Conrad's narrator encounters at the end of the story a man named Kurtz, dying, insane, and guilty of
unspeakable atrocities. More recently, African critics like Chinua Achebe have pointed out that the
story can be read as a racist or colonialist parable in which Africans are depicted as innately
irrational and violent, and in which Africa itself is reduced to a metaphor for that which white
Europeans fear within themselves. The people of Africa and the land they live in remain inscrutably
alien, other. The title, they argue, implies that Africa is the "heart of darkness," where whites who
"go native" risk releasing the "savage" within themselves. Defenders of Conrad sometimes argue
that the narrator does not speak in Conrad's own voice, and that a layer of irony conceals his true
views.
Heart of Darkness, which follows closely the actual events of Conrad's Congo journey, tells
of the narrator's fascination by a mysterious white man, Kurtz, who, by his eloquence and hypnotic
personality, dominates the brutal tribesmen around him. Full of contempt for the greedy traders who
exploit the natives, the narrator cannot deny the power of this figure of evil who calls forth from
him something approaching reluctant loyalty. Apocalypse Now directed by Francis Ford Coppola is
loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness. Main character in the book is Marlow,
who tells about his experiences in Africa. There he led an expedition into to one of the darkest part
of jungle. The darkness he witnesses is however also moral. He meets a mysterious ivory dealing
agent Mr. Kurtz, who is the embodiment of evil.
Some main characters
Marlow: the protagonist and main narrator of the story, who stumbles into Africa looking to sail a
steamboat and finds much more. He possesses a strong sense of the past and a good work ethic:
working hard is a means of achieving sanity. In many respects, the world view of Marlow is that of
a typical European. Still, he is intended to be a versatile character, one of the few who does not
belong to a distinct class, and can thus relate to different kinds of people with more ease than his
peers in the story.
Kurtz: he is in charge of the most productive ivory station in the Congo. Hailed universally for his
genius and eloquence, Kurtz becomes the focus of Marlow's journey into Africa. He is the unique
victim of colonization; the wilderness captures him and he turns his back on all people and customs
that were a part of him.
Natives: they are a collective presence throughout the story. It is notable that the black people exist
both in subordination and in contrast to all the white men, and that they are never described in terms
beyond the level of animals.
Director: the captain in charge aboard the Thames river ship, from which Marlow tells the tale. He
is loved by all, and we are tempted to draw a comparison between him and the Manager. He is a
good sailor, but now works on land.
Lawyer: a passenger aboard the Thames ship. He is called a good, virtuous fellow.
76
Accountant: also a passenger aboard the Thames ship, who does nothing in our eyes except play
dominoes. Both together constitute a crew of gentility, which contrasts with the crew from
Marlow's Congo ship.
Narrator: an unnamed passenger aboard the Thames ship, he provides a structure for Marlow's
story, and is a stand-in for audience perspective and participation. He was once a sailor, and he
seems to be very affected by Kurtz's tale, due to a somewhat romantic nature.
Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
II.
Part I (excerpt)
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for
it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable
waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the
luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red
clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores
that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still
seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest,
town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his
back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked
half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was
difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the
brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding
our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of
each other's yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had, because of his
many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The
Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the
bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a
yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of
hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way
aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on
board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt
meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and
exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity
of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from
the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the
west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the
approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white
changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death
by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
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Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more
profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good
service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway
leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush
of a short day that comes and departs forever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And
indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence
and affection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The
tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it
had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of
whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and
untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels
flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure,
to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and
Terror, bound on other conquests-- and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men.
They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith-- the adventurers and the settlers;
kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the
Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of
fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the
might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the
ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of
commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The
Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships
moved in the fairway--a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper
reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom
in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of him
was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most
seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order,
and their home is always with them--the ship; and so is their country--the sea. One ship is very
much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the
foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of
mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it
be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest,
after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the
secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of
seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut.
But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of
an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as
a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible
by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence.
No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow--"I was thinking of very old
times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. . . . Light came
out of this river since--you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of
lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But
darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine--what d'ye call 'em?-trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a
hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries--a wonderful lot of handy men they must
have been, too--used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what
we read. Imagine him here--the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of
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smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina-- and going up this river with stores, or orders,
or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,--precious little to eat fit for a civilized
man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a
military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease,
exile, and death--death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like
flies here. Oh, yes--he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it
either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men
enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of
promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful
climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out
here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a
swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had
closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in
the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of
the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon
him. The fascination of the abomination--you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to
escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so
that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes
and without a lotus-flower--"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is
efficiency--the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no
colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were
conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since
your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could
get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a
great scale, and men going at it blind--as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The
conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different
complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too
much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an
idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer
a sacrifice to. . . ."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames,
pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other-- then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of
the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting
patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence,
when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water
sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of
Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing
in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their
audience would like best to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I
got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It
was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed
somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me-- and into my thoughts. It was sombre
enough, too--and pitiful-- not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either. No, not very clear.
And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific,
China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you
fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to
civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I began to look
79
for a ship--I should think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I
got tired of that game, too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South
America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there
were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map
(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, `When I grow up I will go there.' The
North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try
now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some of
them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that. But there was one yet--the biggest, the most blank, so
to speak-- that I had a hankering after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with
rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery-- a white patch
for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river
especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake
uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in
the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a
snake would a bird--a silly little bird.
‡Questions on the excerpt
1. Who is the narrator of the story?
2. How is Marlow described? In which terms?
3. Would you consider the opening of the narration to be a positive one or is it negatively
connoted? (Pay attention to the setting)
4. How is London described? And the Thames?
5. What kind of contrast is establishing the narrator? (It can be useful to you Marlow’s
phrase, “this has also been one of the dark places of the earth”)
6. According to Marlow, what is the difference between the conqueror of the past and the
colonialists of those days?
7. Do you know what a symbol is? Along the excerpt, there are two important symbols, which
ones?
8. After reading the introduction and the text, what do you think the title possibly means?
80
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster was born the first day of 1879 in London. His father, an architect
from a strict evangelical family, died of consumption soon after Forster was born, thus Forster was
raised by his mother and paternal great-aunt. Since his mother was from a more liberal and
somewhat irresponsible background, Forster was raised in a household that exposed him to great
domestic tension. Forster was raised at Rooksnest, the house that inspired Howards End. Forster
was educated as a dayboy at the Tonbridge School, Kent, an experience responsible for a good deal
of his later criticism of the English public school system. Forster attended college at King's College,
Cambridge, which greatly broaded his intellectual interests and gave him his first exposure to
Mediterranean culture, which counterbalanced the more rigid English culture in which he was
raised.
Forster became a writer shortly after graduating from King's College. His first novels were
products of that particular time, stories about the changing social conditions at the decline of
Victorianism. However, where these earlier works differed from Forster's contemporaries is their
more colloquial style. These novels established an early conviction of Forster that men and women
should keep in contact with the land to cultivate their imaginations. He developed this theme in his
first novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and The Longest Journey (1907). Forster followed
these with A Room With a View (1908), a comic novel concerning the experience of a young British
woman, Lucy Honeychurch, in Italy.
Forster's first major success, however, was Howards End (1910), a novel dealing with the
alliance between the liberal Schlegel sisters and Ruth Wilcox, the proprietor of the titular house,
against her husband, Henry Wilcox, an enterprising businessman. The ends with the marriage of
Henry Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel, who brings him back to Howards End, reestablishing this link
to the Wilcox land. During this time, Forster was part of the “Bloomsbury Group”, a set of
unconventional bohemian thinkers in England that included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes,
Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey.
Forster spent three wartime years in Alexandria doing civilian work and visited India twice.
After he returned to England, he wrote A Passage to India (1924), inspired by his experience in
India. The novel concerns the colonial occupation of India by the British, but cedes its position as a
political tract to explore the friendship between an Indian doctor and British schoolmaster during
the former's trial on a false charge. This novel was the last that Forster published during his lifetime,
but two other works remain. Forster did not complete another novel, Arctic Summer, while a second
novel written around 1914, Maurice, was published in 1971 only after Forster's death. Forster only
allowed it to be published after his death because of its overt homosexual theme.
Forster was awarded membership in the Order of Companions of Honor in 1953 and received
the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth in 1969. He died in June of 1970 after a series of strokes.
A Passage to India (1924) (short summary)
E.M. Forster's A Passage to India concerns the relations between the English and the native
population of India during the colonial period in which Britain ruled India. The novel takes place
81
primarily in Chandrapore, a city along the Ganges River notable only for the nearby Marabar caves.
The main character of the novel is Dr. Aziz, a Moslem doctor in Chandrapore and widower. After
he is summoned to the Civil Surgeon's home only to be promptly ignored, Aziz visits a local
Islamic temple where he meets Mrs. Moore, an elderly British woman visiting her son, Mr.
Heaslop, who is the City Magistrate. Although Aziz reprimands her for not taking her shoes off in
the temple before realizing she has in fact observed this rule, the two soon find that they have much
in common and he escorts her back to the club.
Back at the club, Mrs. Moore meets her companion, Adela Quested, who will likely marry
her son. Adela complains that they have seen nothing of India, but rather English customs replicated
abroad. Although a few persons make racist statements about Indians, Mr. Turton, the Collector,
proposes having a Bridge Party (to bridge the gulf between east and west). When Mrs. Moore tells
her son, Ronny, about Aziz, he reprimands her for associating with an Indian. When Mr. Turton
issues the invitations to the Bridge Party, the invitees suspect that this is a political move, for the
Collector would not behave so cordially without a motive, but accept the invitations despite the
suspicion.
For Adela and Mrs. Moore, the Bridge Party is a failure, for only a select few of the English
guests behave well toward the Indians. Among these is Mr. Fielding, the schoolmaster at the
Government College, who suggests that Adela meet Aziz. Mrs. Moore scolds her son for being
impolite to the Indians, but Ronny Heaslop feels that he is not in India to be kind, for there are more
important things to do; this offends her sense of Christian charity.
Aziz accepts Fielding's invitation to tea with Adela, Mrs. Moore, and Professor Narayan
Godbole. During tea they discuss the Marabar Caves, while Fielding takes Mrs. Moore to see the
college. Ronny arrives to find Adela alone with Aziz and Godbole, and later chastises Fielding for
leaving an Englishwoman alone with two Indians. However, he reminds Ronny that Adela is
capable of making her own decisions. Aziz plans a picnic at the Marabar Caves for Miss Quested
and Mrs. Moore. Adela tells Ronny that she will not marry him, but he nevertheless suggests that
they take a car trip to see Chandrapore. The Nawab Bahadur, an important local figure, agrees to
take them. During the trip, the car swerves into a tree and Miss Derek, an Englishwoman passing by
at the time, agrees to take them back to town. However, she snubs the Nawab Bahadur and his
chauffeur. Adela speaks to Ronny, and tells him that she was foolish to say that they should not be
married.
Both Aziz and Godbole fall sick after the party at Mr. Fielding's home, so Fielding visits
Aziz and they discuss the state of politics in India. Aziz shows Fielding a picture of his wife, a
significant event considering his Islamic background and an important demonstration of their
friendship.
Aziz plans the expedition to the Marabar Caves, considering every minute detail because he
does not wish to offend the English ladies. During the day when they are to embark. Mohammed
Latif, a friend of Aziz, bribes Adela's servant, Antony, not to go on the expedition, for he serves as
a spy for Ronny Heaslop. Although Aziz, Adela and Mrs. Moore arrive to the train station on time,
Fielding and Godbole miss the train because of Godbole's morning prayers. Adela and Aziz discuss
her marriage, and she fears she will become a narrow-minded Anglo-Indian such as the other wives
of British officials. When they reach the caves, a distinct echo in one of them frightens Mrs. Moore,
who decides she must leave immediately. The echo terrifies her, for it gives her the sense that the
universe is chaotic and has no order.
Aziz and Adela continue to explore the caves, and Adela realizes that she does not love
Ronny. However, she does not think that this is reason enough to break off her engagement. Adela
leaves Aziz, who goes into a cave to smoke, but when he exits he finds their guide alone and asleep.
Aziz searches for Adela, but only finds her broken field glasses. Finally he finds Fielding, who
arrived at the cave in Miss Derek's care, but he does not know where Adela is. When the group
returns to Chandrapore, Aziz is arrested for assaulting Adela.
Fielding speaks to the Collector about the charge, and claims that Adela is mad and Aziz
must be innocent. The Collector feels that this is inevitable, for disaster always occurs when the
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English and Indians interact socially. Fielding requests that he see Adela, but McBryde, the police
superintendent, denies this request. Fielding acts as Aziz's advocate, explaining such things as why
Aziz would have the field glasses. Aziz hires as his lawyer Armitrao, a Hindu who is notoriously
anti-British. Godbole leaves Chandrapore to start a high school in Central India.
The Anglo-Indians rally to Miss Quested's defense and call a meeting to discuss the trial.
Fielding attends, and makes the mistake of actually referring to her by name. The Collector advises
all to behave cautiously. When Ronny enters, Fielding does not stand as a sign of respect. Mr.
Turton demands an apology, but Fielding merely resigns from the club and claims he will resign
from his post if Aziz is found guilty.
Adela remains in the McBryde's bungalow, where the men are too respectful and the women
too sympathetic. She wishes to see Mrs. Moore, who kept away. Ronny tells her that Fielding wrote
her a letter to her pleading Aziz's case. Adela admits to Ronny that she has made a mistake and that
Aziz is innocent. When Adela sees Mrs. Moore, she is morose and detached. She knows that Aziz is
innocent and tells Adela that directly. Mrs. Moore wishes to leave India, and Ronny agrees, for she
is doing no one any good by remaining. Lady Mellanby, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor,
secures Mrs. Moore quick passage out of India.
During the trial, the Indians in the crowd jeer Adela for her appearance, and Mahmoud Ali,
one of Aziz's lawyers, claims that Mrs. Moore was sent away because she would clear Aziz's name.
When McBryde asks Adela whether Aziz followed her, she admits that she made a mistake. Major
Callendar attempts to stop the proceedings on medical grounds, but Mr. Das, the judge, releases
Aziz. After the trial, Adela leaves the courtroom alone as a riot foments. Fielding finds her and
escorts her to the college where she will be safe. Disaster is averted only when Dr. Panna Lal, who
was to testify for the prosecution, publicly apologizes to Aziz and secures the release of Nureddin, a
prisoner rumored to have been tortured by the English.
At the college, Fielding asks Adela why she would make her charge, but she cannot give a
definite answer. He suggests that she was either assaulted by the guide or had a hallucination. Adela
seems to believe that she had a hallucination, for she thinks she had a hallucination of a marriage
proposal when there was none. Fielding warns her that Aziz is very bitter. Ronny arrives and tells
them that his mother died at sea.
After a victory banquet for Aziz, he and Fielding discuss his future plans. Fielding implores
Aziz not to sue Adela, for it will show him to be a gentleman, but Aziz claims that he is fully antiBritish now. Fielding reminds Aziz what a momentous sacrifice Adela made, for now she does not
have the support nor friendship of the other English officials. Fielding tells Aziz that Mrs. Moore is
dead, but he does not believe him. The death of Mrs. Moore leads to suspicion that Ronny had her
killed for trying to defend Aziz. Although there was no wrongdoing in the situation, Ronny
nevertheless feels guilty for treating his mother so poorly. Adela decides to leave India and not
marry Ronny. Fielding gains new respect for Adela for her humility and loyalty as he attempts to
persuade Aziz not to take action against Adela. Adela leaves India and vows to visit Mrs. Moore's
other children (and Ronny's step-siblings) Stella and Ralph. Aziz hears rumors and begins to
suspect that Fielding had an affair with Adela. He believes these rumors out of his cynicism
concerning human nature. Because of this suspicion, the friendship between Aziz and Fielding
begins to cool, even after Fielding denies the affair to Aziz. Fielding himself leaves Chandrapore to
travel, while Aziz remains convinced that Fielding will marry Adela Quested.
Forster resumes the novel some time later in the town of Mau, where Godbole now works.
Godbole currently takes part in a Hindu birthing ceremony with Aziz, who now works in this
region. Fielding visits Mau; he has married, and Aziz assumes that his bride is Miss Quested. Aziz
stopped corresponding with Fielding when he received a letter which stated that Fielding married
someone Aziz knows. However, he did not marry Adela, as Aziz assumes, but rather Mrs. Moore's
daughter, Stella. When Fielding meets with Aziz and clears up this misunderstanding, Aziz remains
angry, for he has assumed for such a long time that Fielding married his enemy.
Nevertheless, Aziz goes to the guest house where Fielding stays and finds Ralph Moore
there. His anger at Fielding cools when Ralph invokes the memory of Mrs. Moore, and Aziz even
83
takes Ralph boating on the river so that they can observe the local Hindu ceremonies. Their boat,
however, crashes into one carrying Fielding and Stella. After this comical event, the ill will between
Aziz and Fielding fully dissipates. However, they realize that because of their different cultures they
cannot remain friends and part from one another cordially.
Listening. Questions on the different scenes of the film by David Lean
Scene1
How far are the Malabar caves from Miss Quested at Chandrapore?
Scene 2
According to Ronny, is he a missionary or a sentimental socialist?
Scene 3
Mr Fielding: … May I see Aziz?
McBryde: Only on ___ _____________ _________
Scene 4
Miss Quested: I was brought up to tell the truth
McBryde: Of course
Miss Quested: ___ _____________ _________
84
James Joyce (1882-1941)
About Dubliners
In 1905, the young James Joyce, then only twenty-three years old, sent a manuscript of
twelve short stories to an English publisher. Delays in publishing gave Joyce ample time to add
three accomplished stories over the next two years: "Two Gallants," "A Little Cloud," and "The
Dead" were added later. Although the stories were powerful, revolutionary work, Dubliners was not
published until 1914. The delay was due to concern about the frank sexual content (which, by
today's standards, is quite mild) and some of the charged political and social issues addressed in the
collection.
Dubliners is the first-born of Joyce's central canon (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake). Though now considered a masterpiece, its delayed
publication altered its public reception. Though Joyce was astonishingly young (twenty-five years
of age at the time of the completion of "The Dead"), the collection never saw print until he was
thirty-three years old. By that time, Joyce was already publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man in serial form in The Egoist. The stream-of-consciousness experiments of Portrait and Ulysses
attracted for more attention than the more straightforward narrative style in Joyce's short stories. For
many years, the magnificent accomplishment in Dubliners was eclipsed by Joyce's experimental
novels.
Dubliners is a powerful work in its own right, containing some of the most finely wrought
short stories in the language. None of the tales show the marks of a sloppy young writer: tone is
distinctive and powerful, emotional distance is finely calibrated, and Joyce moves easily between
terse, bare-bones narrative and meticulous detail. There is no stream-of-consciousness; in fact,
protagonists (including first-person narrators) at times nearly withdraw from the narrative, leaving
the reader alone with only the basic facts of the story. Although some readers have complained that
the autobiographical Portrait tends toward self-indulgence, in Dubliners Joyce proves his ability to
enter the souls of people far removed from himself. His acute grasp of character is everywhere, and
is often displayed with a remarkable conciseness and precision.
The Dublin Joyce knew was a city in decline. At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Dublin had been the second city of the British Isles and one of the ten largest cities in Europe.
Charming architecture, an elegant layout, and a bustling port made for a dynamic and agreeable
urban life. But later in the century, Belfast had outstripped her as the great city of Ireland, and the
economy was in shambles. Formerly fashionable Georgian townhouses became horrible slums, with
inadequate sewage and cramped living conditions. Her ports were in decline, and chances for
advancement were slim for the lower and middle classes. Power rested in the hands of a Protestant
minority. Not surprisingly, Dubliners dwells heavily on the themes of poverty and stagnation. Joyce
sees paralysis in every detail of Dublin's environment, from the people's faces to the dilapidated
buildings, and many characters assume that the future will be worse than the present. Most of the
stories focus on members of the lower or middle classes.
This portrait of Dublin and its people is not always a flattering one. Joyce never
romanticizes poverty, and explores how need and social entrapment adversely affect character. He
sees his hometown as a city divided, often against itself, and the aura of defeat and decline pervades
every tale. He is often deeply critical of Irish provinciality, the Catholic Church, and the Irish
political climate of the time. But the collection is called Dubliners, not Dublin. Joyce does not
merely right about conditions. The real power of Dubliners is Joyce's depiction of the strong
characters who live and work in this distinctive and bleak city.
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The literary concept to bear in mind while reading the tale: Epiphany, a sudden revelation of
truth inspired by a seemingly trivial incident. The term was widely used by James Joyce in his
critical writings, and the stories in Joyce's Dubliners are commonly called "epiphanies."
“The Dead” by James Joyce
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman
into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the
wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It
was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and
had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there,
gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the
banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.
It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to
it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that
were grown up enough and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and
years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and Julia, after the
death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live
with them in the dark gaunt house on Usher's Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr
Fulham, the corn- factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane,
who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household for she had the organ in
Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the upper
room of the Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to better-class families on the Kingstown
and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still
the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to
beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for
them. Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone
sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so that she
got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand
was back answers.
Of course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o'clock
and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins
might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under
the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always
came late but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two
minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come.
—O, Mr Conroy, said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, Miss Kate and Miss Julia
thought you were never coming. Good-night, Mrs Conroy.
—I'll engage they did, said Gabriel, but they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to
dress herself.
He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led his wife to the foot of the
stairs and called out:
—Miss Kate, here's Mrs Conroy.
Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabriel's wife, said
she must be perished alive and asked was Gabriel with her.
—Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I'll follow, called out Gabriel from the dark.
He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs, laughing, to the
ladies' dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps
on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the
snow- stiffened frieze, a cold fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.
—Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy? asked Lily. She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off
with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She
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was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay- coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her
look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag
doll.
—Yes, Lily, he answered, and I think we're in for a night of it.
He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the
floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat
carefully at the end of a shelf.
—Tell me, Lily, he said in a friendly tone, do you still go to school?
—O no, sir, she answered. I'm done schooling this year and more.
—O, then, said Gabriel gaily, I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with
your young man, eh?
The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:
—The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.
Gabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his
goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes.
He was a stout tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead
where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated
restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless
eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it
curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.
When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on
his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket.
—O Lily, he said, thrusting it into her hands, it's Christmas-time, isn't it? Just . . . here's a little . . . .
He walked rapidly towards the door.
—O no, sir! cried the girl, following him. Really, sir, I wouldn't take it.
—Christmas-time! Christmas-time! said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to
her in deprecation.
The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:
—Well, thank you, sir.
He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that
swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It
had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. Then he
took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was
undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers.
Some quotation that they could recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The
indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture
differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not
understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he
had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from
first to last, an utter failure.
Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies' dressing-room. His aunts were two small
plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her
ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build
and stood erect her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where
she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister's, was all
puckers and creases, like a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned way, had not
lost its ripe nut colour.
They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the son of their dead elder sister,
Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of the Port and Docks.
—Gretta tells me you're not going to take a cab back to Monkstown to-night, Gabriel, said Aunt
Kate.
—No, said Gabriel, turning to his wife, we had quite enough of that last year, hadn't we? Don't you
remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind
blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a dreadful cold.
Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.
—Quite right, Gabriel, quite right, she said. You can't be too careful.
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—But as for Gretta there, said Gabriel, she'd walk home in the snow if she were let.
Mrs Conroy laughed.
—Don't mind him, Aunt Kate, she said. He's really an awful bother, what with green shades for
Tom's eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child!
And she simply hates the sight of it!…O, but you'll never guess what he makes me wear now!
She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes
had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel's
solicitude was a standing joke with them.
—Goloshes! said Mrs Conroy. That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must put on my
goloshes. Tonight even he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me will be a
diving suit.
Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so
heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were
directed towards her nephew's face. After a pause she asked:
—And what are goloshes, Gabriel?
—Goloshes, Julia! exclaimed her sister. Goodness me, don't you know what goloshes are? You wear
them over your . . . over your boots, Gretta, isn't it?
—Yes, said Mrs Conroy. Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears
them on the continent.
—O, on the continent, murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.
Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:
—It's nothing very wonderful but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her
of Christy Minstrels.
—But tell me, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. Of course, you've seen about the room. Gretta
was saying . . .
—O, the room is all right, replied Gabriel. I've taken one in the Gresham.
—To be sure, said Aunt Kate, by far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta, you're not anxious
about them?
—O, for one night, said Mrs Conroy. Besides, Bessie will look after them.
—To be sure, said Aunt Kate again. What a comfort it is to have a girl like that, one you can depend
on! There's that Lily, I'm sure I don't know what has come over her lately. She's not the girl she was at all.
Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point but she broke off suddenly to gaze
after her sister who had wandered down the stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.
—Now, I ask you, she said, almost testily, where is Julia going? Julia! Julia! Where are you going?
Julia, who had gone halfway down one flight, came back and announced blandly:
—Here's Freddy.
At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the pianist told that the waltz had
ended. The drawing- room door was opened from within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew
Gabriel aside hurriedly and whispered into his ear:
88
—Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he's all right, and don't let him up if he's screwed.
I'm sure he's screwed. I'm sure he is.
Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons talking in the
pantry. Then he recognised Freddy Malins' laugh. He went down the stairs noisily.
—it's such a relief, said Aunt Kate to Mrs Conroy, that Gabriel is here. I always feel easier in my
mind when he's here.… Julia, there's Miss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment. Thanks for your
beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time.
A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy skin, who was passing out with
his partner said:
—And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?
—Julia, said Aunt Kate summarily, and here's Mr Browne and Miss Furlong. Take them in, Julia,
with Miss Daly and Miss Power.
—I'm the man for the ladies, said Mr Browne, pursing his lips until his moustache bristled and
smiling in all his wrinkles. You know, Miss Morkan, the reason they are so fond of me is —
He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of earshot, at once led the three
young ladies into the back room. The middle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to
end, and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening and smoothing a large cloth. On the
sideboard were arrayed dishes and plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top of
the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one
corner two young men were standing, drinking hop-bitters.
Mr Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to some ladies' punch, hot, strong and
sweet. As they said they never took anything strong he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he
asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the decanter, filled out for himself a goodly
measure of whisky. The young men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.
—God help me, he said, smiling, it's the doctor's orders.
His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies laughed in musical echo to
his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said:
—O, now, Mr Browne, I'm sure the doctor never ordered anything of the kind.
Mr Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling mimicry:
—Well, you see, I'm like the famous Mrs Cassidy, who is reported to have said: Now, Mary Grimes,
if I don't take it, make me take it, for I feel I want it.
His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had assumed a very low Dublin
accent so that the young ladies, with one instinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one
of Mary Jane's pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty waltz she had played; and Mr
Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned promptly to the two young men who were more appreciative.
A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room, excitedly clapping her hands and
crying:
—Quadrilles! Quadrilles!
Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:
89
—Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!
—O, here's Mr Bergin and Mr Kerrigan, said Mary Jane. Mr Kerrigan, will you take Miss Power?
Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr Bergin. O, that'll just do now.
—Three ladies, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate.
The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the pleasure, and Mary Jane turned to
Miss Daly.
—O, Miss Daly, you're really awfully good, after playing for the last two dances, but really we're so
short of ladies to-night.
—I don't mind in the least, Miss Morkan.
—But I've a nice partner for you, Mr Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor. I'll get him to sing later on. All
Dublin is raving about him.
—Lovely voice, lovely voice! said Aunt Kate.
As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane led her recruits quickly from
the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt Julia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at
something.
—What is the matter, Julia? asked Aunt Kate anxiously. Who is it?
Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her sister and said, simply, as if the
question had surprised her:
—It's only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him.
In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a
young man of about forty, was of Gabriel's size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was fleshy
and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose.
He had coarse features, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His heavylidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key
at a story which he had been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his left
fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.
—Good-evening, Freddy, said Aunt Julia.
Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an offhand fashion by reason
of the habitual catch in his voice and then, seeing that Mr Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard,
crossed the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the story he had just told to
Gabriel.
—He's not so bad, is he? said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.
Gabriel's brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:
—O no, hardly noticeable.
—Now, isn't he a terrible fellow! she said. And his poor mother made him take the pledge on New
Year's Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the drawing-room.
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Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr Browne by frowning and shaking her
forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr Browne nodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy
Malins:
—Now, then, Teddy, I'm going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade just to buck you up.
Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer aside impatiently but Mr
Browne, having first called Freddy Malins' attention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a
full glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins' left hand accepted the glass mechanically, his right hand being
engaged in the mechanical readjustment of his dress. Mr Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling with
mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached
the climax of his story, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down his untasted and
overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye,
repeating words of his last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would allow him.
........
Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece, full of runs and difficult
passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him
and he doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged Mary Jane to play
something. Four young men, who had come from the refreshment- room to stand in the doorway at the sound
of the piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only persons who seemed to follow
the music were Mary Jane herself, her hands racing along the key-board or lifted from it at the pauses like
those of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing at her elbow to turn the page.
Gabriel's eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax under the heavy chandelier,
wandered to the wall above the piano. A picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and
beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue
and brown wools when she was a girl. Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had
been taught, for one year his mother had worked for him as a birthday present a waistcoat of purple tabinet,
with little foxes' heads upon it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was strange that
his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan
family. Both she and Julia had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister. Her
photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her knees and was pointing out something
in it to Constantine who, dressed in a man-o'-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the names
for her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now
senior curate in Balbriggan and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal University.
A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage. Some slighting
phrases she had used still rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country cute and
that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had nursed her during all her last long illness in their
house at Monkstown.
He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was playing again the opening
melody with runs of scales after every bar and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his
heart. The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep octave in the bass. Great applause
greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most
vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had gone away to the refreshmentroom at the beginning of the piece but had come back when the piano had stopped.
Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors. She was a frank-mannered
talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low- cut bodice and
the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish device.
When they had taken their places she said abruptly:
—I have a crow to pluck with you.
91
—With me? said Gabriel.
She nodded her head gravely.
—What is it? asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.
—Who is G. C.? answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.
Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly:
—O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for The Daily Express. Now, aren't you ashamed
of yourself?
—Why should I be ashamed of myself? asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile.
—Well, I'm ashamed of you, said Miss Ivors frankly. To say you'd write for a rag like that. I didn't
think you were a West Briton.
A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel's face. It was true that he wrote a literary column every
Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West
Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved
to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the
college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey's on
Bachelor's Walk, to Webb's or Massey's on Aston's Quay, or to O'Clohissey's in the by-street. He did not
know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics. But they were friends of
many years' standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers: he could
not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He contin- ued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured
lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books.
When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took
his hand in a warm grasp and said in a soft friendly tone:
—Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now.
When they were together again she spoke of the University question and Gabriel felt more at ease. A
friend of hers had shown her his review of Browning's poems. That was how she had found out the secret:
but she liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:
—O, Mr Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? We're going to stay
there a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr Clancy is coming, and
Mr Kilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if she'd come. She's from Connacht,
isn't she?
—Her people are, said Gabriel shortly.
—But you will come, won't you? said Miss Ivors, laying her warm hand eagerly on his arm.
—The fact is, said Gabriel, I have already arranged to go—
—Go where? asked Miss Ivors.
—Well, you know every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows and so—
—But where? asked Miss Ivors.
—Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany, said Gabriel awkwardly.
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—And why do you go to France and Belgium, said Miss Ivors, instead of visiting your own land?
—Well, said Gabriel, it's partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change.
—And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with—Irish? asked Miss Ivors.
—Well, said Gabriel, if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language.
Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross- examination. Gabriel glanced right and left
nervously and tried to keep his good humour under the ordeal which was making a blush invade his
forehead.
—And haven't you your own land to visit, continued Miss Ivors, that you know nothing of, your own
people, and your own country?
—O, to tell you the truth, retorted Gabriel suddenly, I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!
—Why? asked Miss Ivors.
Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.
—Why? repeated Miss Ivors.
They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss Ivors said warmly:
—Of course, you've no answer.
Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy. He avoided her eyes
for he had seen a sour expression on her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel
his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled.
Then, just as the chain was about to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:
—West Briton!
When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the room where Freddy Malins'
mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her
son's and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and that he was nearly all right.
Gabriel asked her whether she had had a good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and
came to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had had a beautiful crossing and that
the captain had been most attentive to her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in
Glasgow, and of all the nice friends they had there. While her tongue rambled on Gabriel tried to banish from
his mind all memory of the unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or whatever
she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like
that. But she had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make him
ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit's eyes.
He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing couples. When she reached him
she said into his ear:
—Gabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know won't you carve the goose as usual. Miss Daly will carve the
ham and I'll do the pudding.
—All right, said Gabriel.
—She's sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over so that we'll have the table to
ourselves.
93
—Were you dancing? asked Gabriel.
—Of course I was. Didn't you see me? What words had you with Molly Ivors?
—No words. Why? Did she say so?
—Something like that. I'm trying to get that Mr D'Arcy to sing. He's full of conceit, I think.
—There were no words, said Gabriel moodily, only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of
Ireland and I said I wouldn't.
His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.
—O, do go, Gabriel, she cried. I'd love to see Galway again.
—You can go if you like, said Gabriel coldly.
She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs Malins and said:
—There's a nice husband for you, Mrs Malins.
While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs Malins, without adverting to the
interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what beautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her
son-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go fishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid
fisher. One day he caught a fish, a beautiful big big fish, and the man in the hotel boiled it for their dinner.
Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he began to think again about
his speech and about the quotation. When he saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother
Gabriel left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the window. The room had already
cleared and from the back room came the clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the
drawing-room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in little groups. Gabriel's warm
trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would
be to walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The snow would be lying on the
branches of the trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more
pleasant it would be there than at the supper- table!
He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the
quotation from Browning. He repeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: One feels that one is
listening to a thought-tormented music. Miss Ivors had praised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really
any life of her own behind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling between them until
that night. It unnerved him to think that she would be at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke
with her critical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail in his speech. An idea came
into his mind and gave him courage. He would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: Ladies and
Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I
think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and
hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack. Very good: that was one for
Miss Ivors. What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women?
A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr Browne was advancing from the door, gallantly
escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm, smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of
applause escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated herself on the stool, and Aunt
Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so as to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel
recognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt Julia's—Arrayed for the Bridal. Her voice, strong
and clear in tone, attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though she sang very rapidly
she did not miss even the smallest of the grace notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer's
face, was to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel applauded loudly with all the
others at the close of the song and loud applause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so
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genuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia's face as she bent to replace in the music-stand the old
leather-bound song-book that had her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his head
perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when everyone else had ceased and talking
animatedly to his mother who nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he could
clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held
in both his hands, shaking it when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for him.
—I was just telling my mother, he said, I never heard you sing so well, never. No, I never heard your
voice so good as it is to- night. Now! Would you believe that now? That's the truth. Upon my word and
honour that's the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so . . . so clear and fresh, never.
Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as she released her hand
from his grasp. Mr Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the
manner of a showman introducing a prodigy to an audience:
—Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!
He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned to him and said:
—Well, Browne, if you're serious you might make a worse discovery. All I can say is I never heard
her sing half so well as long as I am coming here. And that's the honest truth.
—Neither did I, said Mr Browne. I think her voice has greatly improved.
Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:
—Thirty years ago I hadn't a bad voice as voices go.
—I often told Julia, said Aunt Kate emphatically, that she was simply thrown away in that choir. But
she never would be said by me.
She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a refractory child while Aunt Julia
gazed in front of her, a vague smile of reminiscence playing on her face.
—No, continued Aunt Kate, she wouldn't be said or led by anyone, slaving there in that choir night
and day, night and day. Six o'clock on Christmas morning! And all for what?
—Well, isn't it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate? asked Mary Jane, twisting round on the pianostool and smiling.
Aunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said:
—I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to
turn out the women out of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of
boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it's not just, Mary
Jane, and it's not right.
She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in defence of her sister for it was a
sore subject with her but Mary Jane, seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically:
—Now, Aunt Kate, you're giving scandal to Mr Browne who is of the other persuasion.
Aunt Kate turned to Mr Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his religion, and said hastily:
—O, I don't question the pope's being right. I'm only a stupid old woman and I wouldn't presume to
do such a thing. But there's such a thing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were in
Julia's place I'd tell that Father Healy straight up to his face . . .
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—And besides, Aunt Kate, said Mary Jane, we really are all hungry and when we are hungry we are
all very quarrelsome.
—And when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome, added Mr Browne.
—So that we had better go to supper, said Mary Jane, and finish the discussion afterwards.
On the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary Jane trying to persuade
Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors, who had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not
stay. She did not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her time.
—But only for ten minutes, Molly, said Mrs Conroy. That won't delay you.
—To take a pick itself, said Mary Jane, after all your dancing.
—I really couldn't, said Miss Ivors.
—I am afraid you didn't enjoy yourself at all, said Mary Jane hopelessly.
—Ever so much, I assure you, said Miss Ivors, but you really must let me run off now.
—But how can you get home? asked Mrs Conroy.
—O, it's only two steps up the quay.
Gabriel hesitated a moment and said:
—If you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I'll see you home if you really are obliged to go.
But Miss Ivors broke away from them.
—I won't hear of it, she cried. For goodness sake go in to your suppers and don't mind me. I'm quite
well able to take care of myself.
—Well, you're the comical girl, Molly, said Mrs Conroy frankly.
—Beannacht libh, cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down the staircase.
Mary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face, while Mrs Conroy leaned over
the banisters to listen for the hall-door. Gabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But
she did not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared blankly down the staircase.
At that moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost wringing her hands in
despair.
—Where is Gabriel? she cried. Where on earth is Gabriel? There's everyone waiting in there, stage to
let, and nobody to carve the goose!
—Here I am, Aunt Kate! cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, ready to carve a flock of geese, if
necessary.
A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn
with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat
paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef. Between these rival ends ran parallel
lines of side- dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange
and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple
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raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of
custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver
papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there stood, as
sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned
decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in
a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals,
drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third
and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.
Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver,
plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked
nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.
—Miss Furlong, what shall I send you? he asked. A wing or a slice of the breast?
—Just a small slice of the breast.
—Miss Higgins, what for you?
—O, anything at all, Mr Conroy.
While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham and spiced beef Lily went
from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane's idea
and she had also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said that plain roast goose without
apple sauce had always been good enough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane
waited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia opened and carried
across from the piano bottles of stout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies. There
was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders and counter-orders, of knives and
forks, of corks and glass- stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he had finished the
first round without serving himself. Everyone protested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long
draught of stout for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper but
Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table, walking on each other's heels, getting in each
other's way and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their
suppers and so did Gabriel but they said there was time enough so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and,
capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general laughter.
When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling: —Now, if anyone wants a little more of
what vulgar people call stuffing let him or her speak.
A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came forward with three potatoes
which she had reserved for him.
—Very well, said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory draught, kindly forget my
existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few minutes.
He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the table covered Lily's removal
of the plates. The subject of talk was the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr Bartell
D'Arcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart moustache, praised very highly the leading
contralto of the company but Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy
Malins said there was a negro chieftain singing in the second part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of
the finest tenor voices he had ever heard.
—Have you heard him? he asked Mr Bartell D'Arcy across the table.
—No, answered Mr Bartell D'Arcy carelessly.
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—Because, Freddy Malins explained, now I'd be curious to hear your opinion of him. I think he has a
grand voice.
—It takes Teddy to find out the really good things, said Mr Browne familiarly to the table.
—And why couldn't he have a voice too? asked Freddy Malins sharply. Is it because he's only a
black?
Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the legitimate opera. One of her
pupils had given her a pass for Mignon. Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor
Georgina Burns. Mr Browne could go back farther still, to the old Italian companies that used to come to
Dublin—Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka, Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were
the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top
gallery of the old Royal used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung five
encores to Let Me Like a Soldier Fall, introducing a high C every time, and of how the gallery boys would
sometimes in their enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her
themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked,
Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why.
—O, well, said Mr Bartell D'Arcy, I presume there are as good singers to-day as there were then.
—Where are they? asked Mr Browne defiantly.
—In London, Paris, Milan, said Mr Bartell D'Arcy warmly. I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite
as good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned.
—Maybe so, said Mr Browne. But I may tell you I doubt it strongly.
—O, I'd give anything to hear Caruso sing, said Mary Jane.
—For me, said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, there was only one tenor. To please me, I
mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard of him.
—Who was he, Miss Morkan? asked Mr Bartell D'Arcy politely.
—His name, said Aunt Kate, was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in his prime and I think he had
then the purest tenor voice that was ever put into a man's throat.
—Strange, said Mr Bartell D'Arcy. I never even heard of him.
—Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right, said Mr Browne. I remember hearing of old Parkinson but he's too
far back for me.
—A beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor, said Aunt Kate with enthusiasm.
Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table. The clatter of forks and
spoons began again. Gabriel's wife served out spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table.
Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry or orange jelly or with
blancmange and jam. The pudding was of Aunt Julia's making and she received praises for it from all
quarters. She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.
—Well, I hope, Miss Morkan, said Mr Browne, that I'm brown enough for you because, you know,
I'm all brown.
All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of compliment to Aunt Julia. As
Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it
with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for the blood and he was just then under
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doctor's care. Mrs Malins, who had been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to
Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray, how bracing the air was down
there, how hospitable the monks were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.
—And do you mean to say, asked Mr Browne incredulously, that a chap can go down there and put
up there as if it were a hotel and live on the fat of the land and then come away without paying a farthing?
—O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave, said Mary Jane.
—I wish we had an institution like that in our Church, said Mr Browne candidly.
He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their
coffins. He asked what they did it for.
—That's the rule of the order, said Aunt Kate firmly.
—Yes, but why? asked Mr Browne.
Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr Browne still seemed not to understand.
Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins
committed by all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very clear for Mr Browne grinned
and said:
—I like that idea very much but wouldn't a comfortable spring bed do them as well as a coffin?
—The coffin, said Mary Jane, is to remind them of their last end.
As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the table during which Mrs Malins
could be heard saying to her neighbour in an indistinct undertone:
—They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.
The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates and sweets were now passed
about the table and Aunt Julia invited all the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr Bartell D'Arcy
refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and whispered something to him upon which he
allowed his glass to be filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the conversation ceased. A pause
followed, broken only by the noise of the wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three,
looked down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few gentlemen patted the table
gently as a signal for silence. The silence came and Gabriel pushed back his chair and stood up.
The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten
trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he
raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping
against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at
the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park
where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that
flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.
He began:
—Ladies and Gentlemen.
—It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a very pleasing task but a task for
which I am afraid my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate.
—No, no! said Mr Browne.
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—But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will for the deed and to lend me
your attention for a few moments while I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this
occasion.
—Ladies and Gentlemen. It is not the first time that we have gathered together under this hospitable
roof, around this hospitable board. It is not the first time that we have been the recipients—or perhaps, I had
better say, the victims—of the hospitality of certain good ladies.
He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed or smiled at Aunt Kate and
Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:
—I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so
much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as
far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some
would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it
is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least,
I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid—and I wish from my heart it may do so
for many and many a long year to come—the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality,
which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is
still alive among us.
A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through Gabriel's mind that Miss Ivors was not
there and that she had gone away discourteously: and he said with confidence in himself:
—Ladies and Gentlemen.
—A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new
principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected,
is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thoughttormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack
those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living
in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone
beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and
affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will
not willingly let die.
—Hear, hear! said Mr Browne loudly.
—But yet, continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, there are always in gatherings
such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent
faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we
to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We
have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.
—Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here
to-night. Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine.
We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true
spirit of camaraderie, and as the guests of—what shall I call them?—the Three Graces of the Dublin musical
world.
The table burst into applause and laughter at this sally. Aunt Julia vainly asked each of her
neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel had said.
—He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia, said Mary Jane.
Aunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel, who continued in the same vein:
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—Ladies and Gentlemen.
—I will not attempt to play to-night the part that Paris played on another occasion. I will not attempt
to choose between them. The task would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I
view them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good heart, whose too good heart, has
become a byword with all who know her, or her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and
whose singing must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all to-night, or, last but not least, when I
consider our youngest hostess, talented, cheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and
Gentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the prize.
Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt Julia's face and the tears which
had risen to Aunt Kate's eyes, hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while every member
of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said loudly:
—Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health, wealth, long life, happiness and
prosperity and may they long continue to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their
profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in our hearts.
All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and, turning towards the three seated ladies, sang in unison,
with Mr Browne as leader:
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
Which nobody can deny.
Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia seemed moved. Freddy
Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious
conference, while they sang, with emphasis:
Unless he tells a lie,
Unless he tells a lie.
Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang:
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
For they are jolly gay fellows,
Which nobody can deny.
The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the
other guests and renewed time after time, Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.
.......
The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so that Aunt Kate said:
—Close the door, somebody. Mrs Malins will get her death of cold.
—Browne is out there, Aunt Kate, said Mary Jane.
—Browne is everywhere, said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice.
Mary Jane laughed at her tone.
—Really, she said archly, he is very attentive.
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—He has been laid on here like the gas, said Aunt Kate in the same tone, all during the Christmas.
She laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly:
—But tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to goodness he didn't hear me.
At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr Browne came in from the doorstep, laughing as if
his heart would break. He was dressed in a long green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and
wore on his head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from where the sound of shrill
prolonged whistling was borne in.
—Teddy will have all the cabs in Dublin out, he said. Gabriel advanced from the little pantry behind
the office, struggling into his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said:
—Gretta not down yet?
—She's getting on her things, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate.
—Who's playing up there? asked Gabriel.
—Nobody. They're all gone.
—O no, Aunt Kate, said Mary Jane. Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan aren't gone yet.
—Someone is strumming at the piano, anyhow, said Gabriel.
Mary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr Browne and said with a shiver:
—It makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like that. I wouldn't like to face
your journey home at this hour.
—I'd like nothing better this minute, said Mr Browne stoutly, than a rattling fine walk in the country
or a fast drive with a good spanking goer between the shafts.
—We used to have a very good horse and trap at home, said Aunt Julia sadly.
—The never-to-be-forgotten Johnny, said Mary Jane, laughing.
Aunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too.
—Why, what was wonderful about Johnny? asked Mr Browne.
—The late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is, explained Gabriel, commonly known in
his later years as the old gentleman, was a glue-boiler.
—O, now, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate, laughing, he had a starch mill.
—Well, glue or starch, said Gabriel, the old gentleman had a horse by the name of Johnny. And
Johnny used to work in the old gentleman's mill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill. That
was all very well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One fine day the old gentleman thought he'd
like to drive out with the quality to a military review in the park.
—The Lord have mercy on his soul, said Aunt Kate compassionately.
—Amen, said Gabriel. So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed Johnny and put on his very best tall
hat and his very best stock collar and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near
Back Lane, I think.
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Everyone laughed, even Mrs Malins, at Gabriel's manner and Aunt Kate said:
—O now, Gabriel, he didn't live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was there.
—Out from the mansion of his forefathers, continued Gabriel, he drove with Johnny. And everything
went on beautifully until Johnny came in sight of King Billy's statue: and whether he fell in love with the
horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the mill, anyhow he began to walk round
the statue.
Gabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the laughter of the others.
—Round and round he went, said Gabriel, and the old gentleman, who was a very pompous old
gentleman, was highly indignant. Go on, sir! What do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary
conduct! Can't understand the horse!
The peals of laughter which followed Gabriel's imitation of the incident were interrupted by a
resounding knock at the hall- door. Mary Jane ran to open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with
his hat well back on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was puffing and steaming after his
exertions.
—I could only get one cab, he said.
—O, we'll find another along the quay, said Gabriel.
—Yes, said Aunt Kate. Better not keep Mrs Malins standing in the draught.
Mrs Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr Browne and, after many manoeuvres,
hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins clambered in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat, Mr
Browne helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably and Freddy Malins invited Mr Browne
into the cab. There was a good deal of confused talk, and then Mr Browne got into the cab. The cabman
settled his rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The confusion grew greater and the cabman
was directed differently by Freddy Malins and Mr Browne, each of whom had his head out through a
window of the cab. The difficulty was to know where to drop Mr Browne along the route and Aunt Kate,
Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the discussion from the doorstep with cross-directions and contradictions
and abundance of laughter. As for Freddy Malins he was speechless with laughter. He popped his head in
and out of the window every moment, to the great danger of his hat, and told his mother how the discussion
was progressing till at last Mr Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman above the din of everybody's
laughter:
—Do you know Trinity College?
—Yes, sir, said the cabman.
—Well, drive bang up against Trinity College gates, said Mr Browne, and then we'll tell you where
to go. You understand now?
—Yes, sir, said the cabman.
—Make like a bird for Trinity College.
—Right, sir, cried the cabman.
The horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a chorus of laughter and
adieus.
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Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the
staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face
but he could see the terracotta and salmonpink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and
white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her
stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on
the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man's voice singing.
He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up
at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked
himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he
were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair
against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would
call the picture if he were a painter.
The hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came down the hall, still
laughing.
—Well, isn't Freddy terrible? said Mary Jane. He's really terrible.
Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife was standing. Now that the
hall-door was closed the voice and the piano could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them
to be silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words
and of his voice. The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singer's hoarseness, faintly illuminated the
cadence of the air with words expressing grief:
O, the rain falls on my heavy locks
And the dew wets my skin,
My babe lies cold . . .
—O, exclaimed Mary Jane. It's Bartell D'Arcy singing and he wouldn't sing all the night. O, I'll get
him to sing a song before he goes.
—O do, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate.
Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase but before she reached it the singing
stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.
—O, what a pity! she cried. Is he coming down, Gretta? Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw
her come down towards them. A few steps behind her were Mr Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan.
—O, Mr D'Arcy, cried Mary Jane, it's downright mean of you to break off like that when we were all
in raptures listening to you.
—I have been at him all the evening, said Miss O'Callaghan, and Mrs Conroy too and he told us he
had a dreadful cold and couldn't sing.
—O, Mr D'Arcy, said Aunt Kate, now that was a great fib to tell.
—Can't you see that I'm as hoarse as a crow? said Mr D'Arcy roughly.
He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others, taken aback by his rude speech,
could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr
D'Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.
—It's the weather, said Aunt Julia, after a pause.
—Yes, everybody has colds, said Aunt Kate readily, everybody.
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—They say, said Mary Jane, we haven't had snow like it for thirty years; and I read this morning in
the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland.
—I love the look of snow, said Aunt Julia sadly.
—So do I, said Miss O'Callaghan. I think Christmas is never really Christmas unless we have the
snow on the ground.
—But poor Mr D'Arcy doesn't like the snow, said Aunt Kate, smiling.
Mr D'Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a repentant tone told them the
history of his cold. Everyone gave him advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of
his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife who did not join in the conversation. She was standing
right under the dusty fanlight and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair which he had seen her
drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her.
At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her checks and that her eyes were
shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart.
—Mr D'Arcy, she said, what is the name of that song you were singing?
—It's called The Lass of Aughrim, said Mr D'Arcy, but I couldn't remember it properly. Why? Do
you know it?
—The Lass of Aughrim, she repeated. I couldn't think of the name.
—It's a very nice air, said Mary Jane. I'm sorry you were not in voice to-night.
—Now, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate, don't annoy Mr D'Arcy. I won't have him annoyed.
Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door where good-night was said:
—Well, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.
—Good-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!
—Good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Good- night, Aunt Julia.
—O, good-night, Gretta, I didn't see you.
—Good-night, Mr D'Arcy. Good-night, Miss O'Callaghan.
—Good-night, Miss Morkan.
—Good-night, again.
—Good-night, all. Safe home.
—Good-night. Good-night.
The morning was still dark. A dull yellow light brooded over the houses and the river; and the sky
seemed to be descending. It was slushy underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on
the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still burning redly in the murky air and,
across the river, the palace of the Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.
She was walking on before him with Mr Bartell D'Arcy, her shoes in a brown parcel tucked under
one arm and her hands holding her skirt up from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude but
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Gabriel's eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along his veins; and the thoughts
went rioting through his brain, proud, joyful, tender, valorous.
She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly,
catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail
that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life
together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he
was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was
shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and
he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing with her in the cold, looking in
through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in
the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly she called out to the man at the furnace:
—Is the fire hot, sir?
But the man could not hear her with the noise of the furnace. It was just as well. He might have
answered rudely.
A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his
arteries. Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know
of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the
years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had
not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their
souls' tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these
seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?
Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the
past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in
the hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:
—Gretta!
Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then something in his voice would
strike her. She would turn and look at him. . . .
At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its rattling noise as it saved him
from conversation. She was looking out of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words,
pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily under the murky morning sky,
dragging his old rattling box after his heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the
boat, galloping to their honeymoon.
As the cab drove across O'Connell Bridge Miss O'Callaghan said:
—They say you never cross O'Connell Bridge without seeing a white horse.
—I see a white man this time, said Gabriel.
Where? asked Mr Bartell D'Arcy.
Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he nodded familiarly to it and
waved his hand.
—Good-night, Dan, he said gaily.
When the cab drew up before the hotel Gabriel jumped out and, in spite of Mr Bartell D'Arcy's
protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:
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—A prosperous New Year to you, sir.
—The same to you, said Gabriel cordially.
She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while standing at the curbstone,
bidding the others good- night. She leaned lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a
few hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his, proud of her grace and wifely
carriage. But now, after the kindling again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and
strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm
closely to his side; and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives and
duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new
adventure.
An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a candle in the office and went
before them to the stairs. They followed him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly carpeted
stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the Porter, her head bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as
with a burden, her skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still
for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his
hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on the stairs to settle his guttering
candle. They halted too on the steps below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten
wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.
The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his unstable candle down on a
toilet-table and asked at what hour they were to be called in the morning.
—Eight, said Gabriel.
The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a muttered apology but Gabriel cut him
short.
—We don't want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I say, he added, pointing to
the candle, you might remove that handsome article, like a good man.
The porter took up his candle again, but slowly for he was surprised by such a novel idea. Then he
mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel shot the lock to.
A ghostly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one window to the door. Gabriel threw
his overcoat and hat on a couch and crossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in
order that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned against a chest of drawers with his back
to the light. She had taken off her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror, unhooking
her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her, and then said:
—Gretta!
She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of light towards him. Her face
looked so serious and weary that the words would not pass Gabriel's lips. No, it was not the moment yet.
—You looked tired, he said.
—I am a little, she answered.
—You don't feel ill or weak?
—No, tired: that's all.
She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited again and then, fearing that
diffidence was about to conquer him, he said abruptly:
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—By the way, Gretta!
—What is it?
—You know that poor fellow Malins? he said quickly.
—Yes. What about him?
—Well, poor fellow, he's a decent sort of chap after all, continued Gabriel in a false voice. He gave
me back that sovereign I lent him and I didn't expect it really. It's a pity he wouldn't keep away from that
Browne, because he's not a bad fellow at heart.
He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he
could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her
own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes first. He
longed to be master of her strange mood.
—When did you lend him the pound? she asked, after a pause.
Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal language about the sottish Malins and
his pound. He longed to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her. But he
said:
—O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas- card shop in Henry Street.
He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come from the window. She stood
before him for an instant, looking at him strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her
hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.
—You are a very generous person, Gabriel, she said.
Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the quaintness of her phrase, put his hands
on her hair and began smoothing it back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it fine
and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just when he was wishing for it she had come to
him of her own accord. Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt the impetuous
desire that was in him and then the yielding mood had come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so
easily he wondered why he had been so diffident.
He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm swiftly about her body and
drawing her towards him, he said softly:
—Gretta dear, what are you thinking about?
She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:
—Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I know?
She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:
—O, I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim.
She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms across the bed-rail, hid her face.
Gabriel stood stock-still for a moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way of the
cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose
expression always puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eyeglasses. He
halted a few paces from her and said:
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—What about the song? Why does that make you cry?
She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of her hand like a child. A kinder
note than he had intended went into his voice.
—Why, Gretta? he asked.
—I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.
—And who was the person long ago? asked Gabriel, smiling.
—It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my grandmother, she said.
The smile passed away from Gabriel's face. A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his
mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins.
—Someone you were in love with? he asked ironically.
—It was a young boy I used to know, she answered, named Michael Furey. He used to sing that
song, The Lass of Aughrim. He was very delicate.
Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested in this delicate boy.
—I can see him so plainly, she said after a moment. Such eyes as he had: big dark eyes! And such an
expression in them—an expression!
—O then, you were in love with him? said Gabriel.
—I used to go out walking with him, she said, when I was in Galway.
A thought flew across Gabriel's mind.
—Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl? he said coldly.
She looked at him and asked in surprise:
—What for?
Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:
—How do I know? To see him perhaps.
She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in silence.
—He is dead, she said at length. He died when he was only seventeen. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so
young as that?
—What was he? asked Gabriel, still ironically.
—He was in the gasworks, she said.
Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a
boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and
joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own
person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous wellmeaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous
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fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she
might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.
He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation but his voice when he spoke was humble and
indifferent.
—I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta, he said.
—I was great with him at that time, she said.
Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be to try to lead her whither he
had purposed, caressed one of her hands and said, also sadly:
—And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?
—I think he died for me, she answered.
A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some
impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.
But he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to caress her hand. He did not question
her again for he felt that she would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not respond to
his touch but he continued to caress it just as he had caressed her first letter to him that spring morning.
—It was in the winter, she said, about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my
grandmother's and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and
wouldn't be let out and his people in Oughterard were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something
like that. I never knew rightly.
She paused for a moment and sighed.
—Poor fellow, she said. He was very fond of me and he was such a gentle boy. We used to go out
together, walking, you know, Gabriel, like the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing
only for his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.
—Well; and then? asked Gabriel.
—And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was
much worse and I wouldn't be let see him so I wrote a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be
back in the summer and hoping he would be better then.
She paused for a moment to get her voice under control and then went on:
—Then the night before I left I was in my grandmother's house in Nuns' Island, packing up, and I
heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn't see so I ran downstairs as I
was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden,
shivering.
—And did you not tell him to go back? asked Gabriel.
—I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said
he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there
was a tree.
—And did he go home? asked Gabriel.
—Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in
Oughterard where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!
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She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downward on the bed,
sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on
her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.
She was fast asleep.
Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and halfopen mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for
her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life. He
watched her while she slept as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes
rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of
her first girlish beauty, a strange friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself
that her face was no longer beautiful but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had
braved death.
Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown
some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen
down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what
had it proceeded? From his aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the
merry-making when saying good- night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor
Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught
that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps,
he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would
be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how
Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and would find only
lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and
lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other
world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who
lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her
that he did not wish to live.
Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he
knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness
he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul
had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not
apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable
world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He
watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for
him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. it
was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen
and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every
part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked
crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he
heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon
all the living and the dead.
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Questions after reading “The Dead”
1. Why did Mary Jane and her aunts worry about Freddy Malin's tardiness?
2. What stops Gabriel's flirting with Lily? How does he pay penance for his improper
thoughts?
3. What does Gabriel think is wrong with his speech?
4. What causes the ladies to suddenly ignore Mr. Browne? What does this say about them?
5. What was the cause of Gabriel's quarrel with his mother? Who was proven right?
6. What are Gabriel's primary and secondary occupations? What does he enjoy most
about his second job?
7. Why does Miss Ivors call Gabriel "West Briton"? What does she mean by this?
8. How does Gabriel plan to put Miss Ivors in her place? What does his plan indicate
about his opinion of his aunts?
9. Why did Aunt Julia not pursue her solo singing? How was she rewarded for her years of
dedication?
10. As they are leaving his aunts' house, what does Gabriel long to tell his wife? Why does
he want to do this?
11. How does Gabriel feel when he finds that his wife has been thinking of a boy from her
past?
12. What does his wife's story cause Gabriel to realize about his marriage and his own
life?
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Modernism and Virginia Woolf
Modernism represents the elemental shift in artistic and cultural emotional responses evident
in the art and literature of the post-World War One era. The structured world of the Victorians could
not, in the words of T.S. Eliot, accord with "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is
contemporary history." Modernism therefore marks a distinctive break with Victorian morality,
discarding nineteenth- century hopefulness and instead presenting a deeply pessimistic vision of a
World in turmoil. The movement is connected with the work of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia
Woolf, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein,
Modernism is often attacked for discarding the social world in favour of its obsession with
language and the act of writing. Acknowledging language’s inability to ever say what it really wants
to say, the modernists generally relegated content in favour of a concentration upon form. The
fragmented, non- chronological, poetic forms utilized by Eliot and Pound revolutionized poetic
language. An understanding of Modernism’s goals and beliefs, and of the traditions against which it
was fighting, is central to an understanding of Woolf’s novels. Woolf once said: ‘about December,
1910, human character changed’. By this she not only meant that with the turn of the century and
the fading British Empire, people had begun to think differently. She is also implying that with the
coming of Sigmund Freud, Picasso and Fry, the very way we perceive ourselves and others had
radically altered. Freud’s work on the human mind had led to a vision of consciousness not as an
unalterable constant, but as a fluid and shifting collection of perceptions and feelings. Not since
Locke had there been such a profound change in the way we viewed the working of the human
mind. This revolution was taken up by artists such as Picasso and Fry who attempted to capture the
randomness and instability of perception.
The Bloomsbury Group –or "Bloomsberries" as they were also known– was such a group.
It was composed of family, friends, lovers, and colleagues of writing and painting who spent large
amounts of time together talking, helping each other with their work, and promoting each other.
They lived in and about Bloomsbury, England, hence the name. Four of the members had gone to
Cambridge in 1899 and they were immediately attracted to the intellectual air of the University as
opposed to the sterility and boredom of other schools they had attended. Every Bloomsberry who
attended Cambridge thrived there. These men wished to sustain the intellectual quality described by
E. M. Forster, "... a magic quality. Body and spirit, reason and emotion, work and play, architecture
and scenery, laughter and seriousness, life and art -- these pairs which are elsewhere contrasted
were there fused into one. People and books reinforced one another, intelligence joined hands with
affection, speculation became a passion, and discussion was made profound by love". After several
incarnations, the Bloomsbury Group came to be, officially between 1904 and 1905, after Virginia
Stephen (soon to be Virginia Woolf) and her sister Vanessa moved to London following the death
of their father. Virginia left behind the frustration, boredom, and convention of her life at Hyde Park
Gate for the intellectual pursuits of Bloomsbury. Other members of this informal group were Clive
Bell (Virginia's brother in law), Lytton Stachey, etc. A very tightly knit and exclusive group was
this, and it had developed quite a reputation, both positive and frankly sour-grapes. These people
often incorporated each other into their works.
Virginia Woolf was by far the most famous member. She is known for creating the streamof-consciousness style of writing, and later for her women's rights sensitivities as evident in A
Room Of One's Own and The Three Guineas. She was not educated formally, but nonetheless her
presence and works were valued by the group. Lytton Strachey, one of the original Cambridge four,
noted the rise and fall of the flow of her sentences in her unique style of writing, and praised her
creation. She had told that "a sight, an emotion creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes
words to fit it". This writing style is imbued in To The Lighthouse and has matured by the time she
had written The Waves. Orlando is not one of Virginia's introspective novels. It is pageantry on
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paper: vivid descriptions of clothing, social artifice, extravagance. The story itself revolves around
an aristocratic writer who first lives as a man and then as a woman.
In this fashion, the Bloomsbury Group has also been roundly denounced as being a hotbed
for snobbish clannishness whose meetings were viewed as nothing more than an attempt by its
upper class members to remove themselves from mainstream society in order to feed their egos.
One wonders if D. H. Lawrence was held privy to a reading such as the one described below.
According to one account, he was "...nearly driven mad and dreamt that black beetles were
attacking him" after spending a weekend with the Bloomsberries.
114
The Novel in the 40s
Francis Raymond Leavis (1895-1978): The Great Tradition (1948)
Evelyn Waugh (1903-66): Decline and Fall (1928): "I came to the conclusion many years ago that
almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression."
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
George Orwell (1903-1950): Nineteen Eighty Four (1944), Animal Farm (1945)*
Graham Greene (1904-1991): The Third Man*(1949), The Quiet American (1955), The Human
Factor (1979).
115
Graham Greene (1904-1991) on The Third Man:
My film story, The Third Man, was never written to be read but only to
be seen. The story, like many love affairs, started at a dinner table and
continued with headaches in many places: Vienna, Ravello, London, Santa
Monica.
…long before, on the flap of an envelope, I had written an opening
paragraph: "I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin
was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity
that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of
strangers in the Strand". I, like my hero, had not the least inkling of an explanation, so when
Alexander Korda over dinner asked me to write a film for Carol Reed — to follow our Fallen Idol
which I had adapted from my short story "The Basement Room" a year before—I had nothing more
to offer him except this paragraph, though what Korda really wanted was a film about the FourPower occupation of Vienna. On the continuity and the story-line Carol Reed and I worked closely
together when I came back with him to Vienna to write the screenplay, covering miles of carpet a
day, acting scenes at each other. (It's a curious fact that you cannot work out a continuity at a
desk—you have to move with your characters.)…To the novelist, of course, his novel is the best he
can do with a particular subject; he cannot help resenting many of the changes necessary for turning
it into a film play; but The Third Man was never intended to be more than the raw material for a
picture. The reader will notice many differences between the story and the film, and he should not
imagine these changes were forced on an unwilling author: as likely as not they were suggested by
the author. The film in fact is better than the story because it is in this case the finished state of the
story. One of the few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending and he
was proved triumphantly right. I held the view that an entertainment of this kind was too light an
affair to carry the weight of an unhappy ending. Reed on his side felt that my ending —
indeterminate as it was, with no words spoken, Holly joining the girl in silence and walking away
with her from the cemetery where her lover Harry was buried — would strike the audience who had
just seen Harry's death and burial as unpleasantly cynical. I was only half convinced: I was afraid
few people would wait in their seats during the girl's long walk from the graveside towards Holly,
and the others would leave the cinema under the impression that the ending was still going to be as
conventional as my suggested ending of boy joining girl. I had not given enough credit to the
mastery of Reed's direction, and at that stage, of course, we neither of us anticipated reed's
discovery of Anton Karas, the zither player. All I had indicated in my treatment was a kind of
signature tune connected with Lime.
"The Critic, as much as the film, is supposed to entertain ... "
116
The Funeral of Harry Lime
(falta texto y preguntas)
117
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a British political novelist and
essayist whose pointed criticisms of political oppression propelled him into prominence toward the
middle of the twentieth century. Born in 1903 to British colonists in Bengal, India, Orwell received
his education at a series of private schools, including Eton, an elite school in England. His painful
experiences with snobbishness and social elitism at Eton, as well as his intimate familiarity with the
reality of British imperialism in India, made him deeply suspicious of the entrenched class system
in English society. As a young man, Orwell became a socialist, speaking openly against the
excesses of governments east and west and fighting briefly for the socialist cause during the
Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939.
Unlike many British socialists in the 1930s and 1940s, Orwell was not enamored of the
Soviet Union and its policies, nor did he consider the Soviet Union a positive representation of the
possibilities of socialist society. He could not turn a blind eye to the cruelties and hypocrisies of
Soviet Communist Party, which had overturned the semifeudal system of the tsars only to replace it
with the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin. Orwell became a sharp critic of both capitalism and
communism, and is remembered chiefly as an advocate of freedom and a committed opponent of
communist oppression. His two greatest anti-totalitarian novels—Animal Farm and 1984—form the
basis of his reputation. Orwell died in 1950, only a year after completing 1984, which many
consider his masterpiece.
A dystopian novel, 1984 attacks the idea of totalitarian communism (a political system in
which one ruling party plans and controls the collective social action of a state) by painting a
terrifying picture of a world in which personal freedom is nonexistent. Animal Farm, written in
1945, deals with similar themes but in a shorter and somewhat simpler format. A "fairy story" in the
style of Aesop's fables, it uses animals on an English farm to tell the history of Soviet communism.
Certain animals are based directly on Communist Party leaders: the pigs Napoleon and Snowball,
for example, are figurations of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, respectively. Orwell uses the form
of the fable for a number of aesthetic and political reasons. To better understand these, it is helpful
to know at least the rudiments of Soviet history under Communist Party rule, beginning with the
October Revolution of 1917.
Through a coincidence of history, Animal Farm appeared in stores the same month that the
atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The irony of this publication date for one
of the most politicized novels of the 20th century did not escape its early readers, or its author.
Orwell made no secret of the fact that his writing, and Animal Farm in particular, was singlemindedly focused on the obliteration of totalitarian regimes. Animal Farm, while obviously
referring to the general scope of all forms of totalitarian governments, may be seen as a satire of the
Russian Revolution of 1917 in particular. Because of this controversial subject matter, British
publishing houses were loathe to take on Orwell's work, and he was rejected throughout his entire
first round of publishing attempts. Upon the novel's eventual publication in 1945, however, Orwell
was instantly famous. The reception of Animal Farm led to many different interpretations of its
meaning, which Orwell perhaps clarifies best himself, in his article called "Why I Write":
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly
or indirectly, against totalitarianism...Animal Farm was the first book in which I
tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and
artistic purpose into one whole."
118
Animal Farm
A Fairy Story by George Orwell
I
MR. JONES, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to
remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched
across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the
scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.
As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm
buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a
strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been agreed
that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he
was always called, though the name under which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty ) was so
highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep in order to hear what he
had to say.
At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already ensconced on his bed of
straw, under a lantern which hung from a beam. He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout,
but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his
tushes had never been cut. Before long the other animals began to arrive and make themselves comfortable
after their different fashions. First came the three dogs, Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher , and then the pigs, who
settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform. The hens perched themselves on the windowsills, the pigeons fluttered up to the rafters, the sheep and cows lay down behind the pigs and began to chew
the cud. The two cart-horses, Boxer and Clover, came in together, walking very slowly and setting down
their vast hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be some small animal concealed in the straw. Clover
was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth
foal. Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put
together. A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance, and in fact he was not of
first-rate intelligence, but he was universally respected for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers
of work. After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest
animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make
some cynical remark—for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that
he would sooner have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If
asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Nevertheless, without openly admitting it, he was
devoted to Boxer; the two of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the
orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.
The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which had lost their mother, filed into
the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side to find some place where they would not be
trodden on. Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great foreleg, and the ducklings nestled down
inside it and promptly fell asleep. At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white mare who drew Mr.
Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of sugar. She took a place near the front and began
flirting her white mane, hoping to draw attention to the red ribbons it was plaited with. Last of all came the
cat, who looked round, as usual, for the warmest place, and finally squeezed herself in between Boxer and
Clover; there she purred contentedly throughout Major's speech without listening to a word of what he was
saying.
All the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept on a perch behind the
back door. When Major saw that they had all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he
cleared his throat and began:
"Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last night. But I will come to
the dream later. I have something else to say first. I do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many
months longer, and before I die, I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired. I have
had a long life, I have had much time for thought as I lay alone in my stall, and I think I may say that I
understand the nature of life on this earth as well as any animal now living. It is about this that I wish to
speak to you.
119
"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable,
laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and
those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that
our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the
meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is
misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
"But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot
afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is
fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of
animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds
of sheep—and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why
then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is
stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a
single word—Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of
hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.
"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay
eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the
animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from
starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not
one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons
of milk have you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which should have been
breeding up sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our enemies. And you hens, how
many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest
have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you, Clover, where are those four
foals you bore, who should have been the support and pleasure of your old age? Each was sold at a year
old—you will never see one of them again. In return for your four confinements and all your labour in the
fields, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall?
"And even the miserable lives we lead are not allowed to reach their natural span. For myself I do not
grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones. I am twelve years old and have had over four hundred children.
Such is the natural life of a pig. But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end. You young porkers who are
sitting in front of me, every one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year. To that horror
we all must come—cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dog s have no better fate.
You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will sell you to the
knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds. As for the dogs, when they grow old
and toothless, Jones ties a brick round their necks and drowns them in the nearest pond.
"Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of
human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. A1most overnight we
could become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the
overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion! I do not know when that
Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw
beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout the
short remainder of your lives! And above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so
that future generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious.
"And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray.
Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the
one is the prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And
among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All
animals are comrades."
At this moment there was a tremendous uproar. While Major was speaking four large rats had crept
out of their holes and were sitting on their hindquarters, listening to him. The dogs had suddenly caught sight
of them, and it was only by a swift dash for their holes that the rats saved their lives. Major raised his trotter
for silence.
"Comrades," he said, "here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and
rabbits—are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting:
Are rats comrades?"
120
The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades.
There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted
on both sides. Major continued:
"I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and
all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a
friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you
have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear
clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are
evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we
are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
"And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. I cannot describe that dream to
you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man has vanished. But it reminded me of something that I
had long forgotten. Many years ago, when I was a little pig, my mother and the other sows used to sing an
old song of which they knew only the tune and the first three words. I had known that tune in my infancy,
but it had long since passed out of my mind. Last night, however, it came back to me in m y dream. And
what is more, the words of the song also came back—words, I am certain, which were sung by the animals of
long ago and have been lost to memory for generations. I will sing you that song now, comrades. I am old
and my voice is hoarse, but when I have taught you the tune, you can sing it better for yourselves. It is called
Beasts of England."
Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice was hoarse, but he sang
well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something between Clementine and La Cucaracha. The words ran:
Clover, beans, and mangel-wurzels
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Shall be ours upon that day.
Beasts of every land and clime,
Bright will shine the fields of England,
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Purer shall its waters be,
Of the golden future time.
Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes
Soon or late the day is coming,
On the day that sets us free.
Tyrant Man shall be o'erthrown,
For that day we all must labour,
And the fruitful fields of England
Though we die before it break;
Shall be trod by beasts alone.
Cows and horses, geese and turkeys,
Rings shall vanish from our noses,
All must toil for freedom's sake.
And the harness from our back,
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Bit and spur shall rust forever,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Cruel whips no more shall crack.
Hearken well and spread my tidings
Riches more than mind can picture,
Of
the
golden
future
time.
Wheat and barley, oats and hay,
The singing of this song threw the animals into the wildest excitement. Almost before Major had
reached the end, they had begun singing it for themselves. Even the stupidest of them had already picked up
the tune and a few of the words, and as for the clever ones, such as the pigs and dogs, they had the entire
song by heart within a few minutes. And then, after a few preliminary tries, the whole farm burst out into
Beasts of England in tremendous unison. The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the
horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it. They were so delighted with the song that they sang it right through
five times in succession, and might have continued singing it all night if they had not been interrupted.
Unfortunately, the uproar awoke Mr. Jones, who sprang out of bed, making sure that there was a fox
in the yard. He seized the gun which always stood in a corner of his bedroom, and let fly a charge of number
6 shot into the darkness. The pellets buried themselves in the wall of the barn and the meeting broke up
hurriedly. Everyone fled to his own sleeping-place. The birds jumped on to their perches, the animals settled
down in the straw, and the whole farm was asleep in a moment.
121
™ Quotes from the whole novel
1. "Four legs good, two legs bad." [Explanation]
2.
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,
Beasts of every land and clime,
Hearken to my joyful tiding
Of the golden future time.
[Explanation]
3. At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded
collars came bounding into the barn. They dashed straight for Snowball, who only sprang from his
place just in time to escape their snapping jaws. [Explanation]
4. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. [Explanation]
5. "If you have your lower animals to contend with," he said, "we have our lower classes!"
[Explanation]
™ Questions after reading the excerpt
1. How many animals attend the meeting?
2. Which sentence in the text could be Old Major’s speech motto?
3. According to the narrator, which animals are the cleverest?
4. What do you think George Orwell is criticising? Notice that the word “comrade” is often
used. What does that word remind you of?
™ Elements of the story. What can you tell about…
The plot?
The setting?
The tone?
The point of view?
The central conflict?
The protagonist?
The genre?
122
The Novel of the 50s and 60s
Jean Rhys (1894-1979): Wide Sargasso Sea (1916)
William Golding (1911-1993): Lord of the Flies (1954), The Inheritors (1955),
Pincher Martin
(1956), Free Fall (1959), The Spire (1964)
Roald Dahl (1916-1990): novels for children and adults, and collections of short stories*
Muriel Spark (1918-): The Comforters (1957), Memento Mori (1959) The Prime of Miss Jean
Brodie (1961)
Doris Lessing (1919-): The Golden Notebook (1962), The Four-Gated City (1969), The Fifth Child
(1988), Mara and Dann: An Adventure (1999).
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999): Under the Net (1954), The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), The
Nice and the Good (1968), A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970), The Black Prince (1973), The
Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), The Sea, the Sea (1978), The Philosophers Pupil (1983),
The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), The Green Knight
(1993).
123
Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff in 1916. His parents were Norwegian but
were living in Britain because his father was a shipbroker. He had one brother and four
sisters and when he was seven years old, he went to Llandaff Cathedral School. Two
years later he became a boarder at St Peter’s School in Weston-super-Mare - and then at
13 he moved to Repton School, in Derbyshire. Roald Dahl was not interested in going to
university. He wanted to travel and so joined the Shell Oil Company with the ambition of
becoming part of their foreign staff. In 1938 he got his wish to go abroad - the company
sent him to Mombasa, in Kenya, where he sold oil to the owners of diamond mines and
sisal plantations. In 1939, when World War II broke out, he joined the RAF in Nairobi and
learned to fly aircraft. He was sent to Cairo, then ordered to go into the Libyan desert,
ready for action. It was here that his plane crashed, leaving him with spinal injuries from
which he was to suffer all his life. After convalescence in an Alexandria hospital, he
rejoined his squadron and saw action in Greece, Crete, Palestine and the Lebanon. In
1942, after a short stay in England, he was posted to Washington as an assistant air
attaché at the British Embassy. There he met the author CS Forrester who was
instrumental in getting Dahl’s first short story, The Gremlins, published. The book attracted
the attention of Walt Disney, who soon invited him to Hollywood to write the script for the
film version.
In 1952, Dahl met actress Patricia Neal. They were married in the following year
and returned to England to live at Gipsy House in the village of Great Missenden,
Buckinghamshire. He lived there for the rest of his life. Dahl and his wife had five children Olivia, Tessa, Theo, Ophelia and Lucy. But between 1960-65 tragedy struck the Dahl
family. Baby Theo was brain-damaged in a traffic accident, Olivia died from a complication
of measles and then Patricia suffered a stroke. It was during these years that James and
the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) were published. In
the late 1970s Dahl met Quentin Blake, who was to illustrate his latest story, The
Enormous Crocodile. This collaboration marked the beginning of a flourishing partnership.
In 1983 he won the Children’s Book Award for The BFG and the Whitbread Award for The
Witches. He won the Children’s Book Award again in 1989 with Matilda. In 1983 Patricia
Neal and Dahl divorced. Later that year, Dahl married Felicity D’Abreu, with whom he was
to remain for the rest of his life. Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74.
124
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
Warming up. The Perfect Murder
What would be the ingredients of the “perfect murder”? Put the following ideas into order of
importance.
a) It should be easy to arrange.
b) It should leave no clues.
c) There should be no noise.
d) It should look like suicide.
e) It should take place in a lonely, isolated place.
f) It should be cheap.
g) No violence should be necessary.
h) It should look like an accident.
i) It should be quick.
j) The murderer should have a good alibi.
While reading the text. Vocabulary
Find the following words in the story and try to work out their meaning. Join them to the definitions
on the right. The first one has been done to get you started!
Word
anxiety
Answer
F
Definition
Letter
confused, not understanding
A
tranquil
a heavy stick with a knob at one
end, for hitting someone
B
punctually
extremely happy
C
blissful
a very strong feeling which guides
someone
D
amber
in the building
E
bewildered
feeling worried
F
instinct
comforting someone who is sad,
cheering them up
G
club
annoyed, irritated
H
peculiar
turned from liquid to solid
I
frantic
being kind to visitors
J
grief
on time, not late
K
congealed
mad, wild
L
on the
premises
calm, peaceful
M
exasperated
extreme sadness after someone
dies or goes away
N
consoling
strange, unusual
O
125
hospitality
an orange-yellow colour
P
Lamb to the Slaughter
The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-hers and the one by
the empty chair opposite. On the sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whiskey. Fresh
ice cubes in the Thermos bucket.
Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come him from work.
Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please
herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come.
There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did. The drop of a head as she
bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. Her skin -for this was her sixth month with child-had
acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid
look, seemed larger darker than before.
When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later,
punctually as always, she heard the tires on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the
footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and
went forward to kiss him as he came in.
“Hallo darling,” she said.
“Hallo darling,” he answered.
She took his coat and hung it in the closer. Then she walked over and made the drinks, a
strongish one for him, a weak one for herself; and soon she was back again in her chair with the
sewing, and he in the other, opposite, holding the tall glass with both hands, rocking it so the ice
cubes tinkled against the side.
For her, this was always a blissful time of day. She knew he didn’t want to speak much until
the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company
after the long hours alone in the house. She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to
feel-almost as a sunbather feels the sun-that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they
were alone together. She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a
door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved the intent, far look in his eyes
when they rested in her, the funny shape of the mouth, and especially the way he remained silent
about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whiskey had taken some of it away.
“Tired darling?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m tired,” And as he spoke, he did an unusual thing. He lifted his glass
and drained it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it left.. She wasn’t
really watching him, but she knew what he had done because she heard the ice cubes falling back
against the bottom of the empty glass when he lowered his arm. He paused a moment, leaning
forward in the chair, then he got up and went slowly over to fetch himself another.
“I’ll get it!” she cried, jumping up.
“Sit down,” he said.
When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was dark amber with the quantity of
whiskey in it.
“Darling, shall I get your slippers?”
“No.”
She watched him as he began to sip the dark yellow drink, and she could see little oily swirls
in the liquid because it was so strong.
“I think it’s a shame,” she said, “that when a policeman gets to be as senior as you, they
keep him walking about on his feet all day long.”
He didn’t answer, so she bent her head again and went on with her sewing; bet each time he
lifted the drink to his lips, she heard the ice cubes clinking against the side of the glass.
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“Darling,” she said. “Would you like me to get you some cheese? I haven’t made any
supper because it’s Thursday.”
“No,” he said.
“If you’re too tired to eat out,” she went on, “it’s still not too late. There’s plenty of meat
and stuff in the freezer, and you can have it right here and not even move out of the chair.”
Her eyes waited on him for an answer, a smile, a little nod, but he made no sign.
“Anyway,” she went on, “I’ll get you some cheese and crackers first.”
“I don’t want it,” he said.
She moved uneasily in her chair, the large eyes still watching his face. “But you must eat!
I’ll fix it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like.”
She stood up and placed her sewing on the table by the lamp.
“Sit down,” he said. “Just for a minute, sit down.”
It wasn’t till then that she began to get frightened.
“Go on,” he said. “Sit down.”
She lowered herself back slowly into the chair, watching him all the time with those large,
bewildered eyes. He had finished the second drink and was staring down into the glass, frowning.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“What is it, darling? What’s the matter?”
He had now become absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down so that the light from
the lamp beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow.
She noticed there was a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.
“This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid,” he said. “But I’ve thought about it a
good deal and I’ve decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won’t blame me
too much.”
And he told her. It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she say very still
through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from
her with each word.
“So there it is,” he added. “And I know it’s kind of a bad time to be telling you, bet there
simply wasn’t any other way. Of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after. But there
needn’t really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn’t be very good for my job.”
Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps
he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her
business and acted as though she hadn’t been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again,
she might find none of it had ever happened.
“I’ll get the supper,” she managed to whisper, and this time he didn’t stop her.
When she walked across the room she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn’t
feel anything at all- except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic nowdown the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold
of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off
the paper and looked at it again.
A leg of lamb.
All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin
bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing
over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.
“For God’s sake,” he said, hearing her, but not turning round. “Don’t make supper for me.
I’m going out.”
At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she
swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the
back of his head.
She might just as well have hit him with a steel club.
She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there
for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.
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The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of he
shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the
body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.
All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.
It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking
very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was
fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the
child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill then both-mother
and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?
Mary Maloney didn’t know. And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance.
She carried the meat into the kitchen, placed it in a pan, turned the oven on high, and shoved
t inside. Then she washed her hands and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She sat down before the
mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lops and face. She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar.
She tried again.
“Hallo, Sam,” she said brightly, aloud.
The voice sounded peculiar too.
“I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas.”
That was better. Both the smile and the voice were coming out better now. She rehearsed it
several times more. Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, went out the back door, down the
garden, into the street.
It wasn’t six o’clock yet and the lights were still on in the grocery shop.
“Hallo, Sam,” she said brightly, smiling at the man behind the counter.
“Why, good evening, Mrs. Maloney. How’re you?”
“I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas.”
The man turned and reached up behind him on the shelf for the peas.
“Patrick’s decided he’s tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight,” she told him. “We usually
go out Thursdays, you know, and now he’s caught me without any vegetables in the house.”
“Then how about meat, Mrs. Maloney?”
“No, I’ve got meat, thanks. I got a nice leg of lamb from the freezer.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know much like cooking it frozen, Sam, but I’m taking a chance on it this time.
You think it’ll be all right?”
“Personally,” the grocer said, “I don’t believe it makes any difference. You want these
Idaho potatoes?”
“Oh yes, that’ll be fine. Two of those.”
“Anything else?” The grocer cocked his head on one side, looking at her pleasantly. “How
about afterwards? What you going to give him for afterwards?”
“Well-what would you suggest, Sam?”
The man glanced around his shop. “How about a nice big slice of cheesecake? I know he
likes that.”
“Perfect,” she said. “He loves it.”
And when it was all wrapped and she had paid, she put on her brightest smile and said,
“Thank you, Sam. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Mrs. Maloney. And thank you.”
And now, she told herself as she hurried back, all she was doing now, she was returning
home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper; and she must cook it good, and make it as
tasty as possible because the poor man was tired; and if, when she entered the house, she happened
to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock and she’d become
frantic with grief and horror. Mind you, she wasn’t expecting to find anything. She was just going
home with the vegetables. Mrs. Patrick Maloney going home with the vegetables on Thursday
evening to cook supper for her husband.
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That’s the way, she told herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely
natural and there’ll be no need for any acting at all.
Therefore, when she entered the kitchen by the back door, she was humming a little tune to
herself and smiling.
“Patrick!” she called. “How are you, darling?”
She put the parcel down on the table and went through into the living room; and when she
saw him lying there on the floor with his legs doubled up and one arm twisted back underneath his
body, it really was rather a shock. All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her, and
she ran over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry her heart out. It was easy. No acting
was necessary.
A few minutes later she got up and went to the phone. She know the number of the police
station, and when the man at the other end answered, she cried to him, “Quick! Come quick!
Patrick’s dead!”
“Who’s speaking?”
“Mrs. Maloney. Mrs. Patrick Maloney.”
“You mean Patrick Maloney’s dead?”
“I think so,” she sobbed. “He’s lying on the floor and I think he’s dead.”
“Be right over,” the man said.
The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policeman walked in.
She know them both-she know nearly all the man at that precinct-and she fell right into a chair, then
went over to join the other one, who was called O’Malley, kneeling by the body.
“Is he dead?” she cried.
“I’m afraid he is. What happened?”
Briefly, she told her story about going out to the grocer and coming back to find him on the
floor. While she was talking, crying and talking, Noonan discovered a small patch of congealed
blood on the dead man’s head. He showed it to O’Malley who got up at once and hurried to the
phone.
Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of
whom she knew by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who
know about fingerprints. There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and
the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. But they always treated her kindly. She told her
story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and
he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the
oven-”it’s there now, cooking”- and how she’d slopped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come
back to find him lying on the floor.
“Which grocer?” one of the detectives asked.
She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who
immediately went outside into the street.
In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes, and there was more whispering, and
through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases-”...acted quite normal...very
cheerful...wanted to give him a good supper...peas...cheesecake...impossible that she...”
After a while, the photographer and the doctor departed and two other men came in and took
the corpse away on a stretcher. Then the fingerprint man went away. The two detectives remained,
and so did the two policemen. They were exceptionally nice to her, and Jack Noonan asked if she
wouldn’t rather go somewhere else, to her sister’s house perhaps, or to his own wife who would
take care of her and put her up for the night.
No, she said. She didn’t feel she could move even a yard at the moment. Would they mind
awfully of she stayed just where she was until she felt better. She didn’t feel too good at the
moment, she really didn’t.
Then hadn’t she better lie down on the bed? Jack Noonan asked.
No, she said. She’d like to stay right where she was, in this chair. A little later, perhaps,
when she felt better, she would move.
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So they left her there while they went about their business, searching the house.
Occasionally on of the detectives asked her another question. Sometimes Jack Noonan
spoke at her gently as he passed by. Her husband, he told her, had been killed by a blow on the
back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of
metal. They were looking for the weapon. The murderer may have taken it with him, but on the
other hand he may have thrown it away or hidden it somewhere on the premises.
“It’s the old story,” he said. “Get the weapon, and you’ve got the man.”
Later, one of the detectives came up and sat beside her. Did she know, he asked, of
anything in the house that could’ve been used as the weapon? Would she mind having a look
around to see if anything was missing-a very big spanner, for example, or
a heavy metal vase.
They didn’t have any heavy metal vases, she said.
“Or a big spanner?”
She didn’t think they had a big spanner. But there might be some things like that in the
garage.
The search went on. She knew that there were other policemen in the garden all around the
house. She could hear their footsteps on the gravel outside, and sometimes she saw a flash of a
torch through a chink in the curtains. It began to get late, nearly nine she noticed by the clock on
the mantle. The four men searching the rooms seemed to be growing weary, a trifle exasperated.
“Jack,” she said, the next tome Sergeant Noonan went by. “Would you mind giving me a
drink?”
“Sure I’ll give you a drink. You mean this whiskey?”
“Yes please. But just a small one. It might make me feel better.”
He handed her the glass.
“Why don’t you have one yourself,” she said. “You must be awfully tired. Please do.
You’ve been very good to me.”
“Well,” he answered. “It’s not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me
going.”
One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whiskey. They
stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying
to say consoling things to her. Sergeant Noonan wandered into the kitchen, come out quickly and
said, “Look, Mrs. Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside.”
“Oh dear me!” she cried. “So it is!”
“I better turn it off for you, hadn’t I?”
“Will you do that, Jack. Thank you so much.”
When the sergeant returned the second time, she looked at him with her large, dark tearful
eyes. “Jack Noonan,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Would you do me a small favour-you and these others?”
“We can try, Mrs. Maloney.”
“Well,” she said. “Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick’s too, and helping to
catch the man who killed him. You must be terrible hungry by now because it’s long past your
suppertime, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to
remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s
in the oven. It’ll be cooked just right by now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sergeant Noonan said.
“Please,” she begged. “Please eat it. Personally I couldn’t tough a thing, certainly not
what’s been in the house when he was here. But it’s all right for you. It’d be a favour to me if
you’d eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards.”
There was a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, but they were clearly
hungry, and in the end they were persuaded to go into the kitchen and help themselves. The woman
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stayed where she was, listening to them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy
because their mouths were full of meat.
“Have some more, Charlie?”
“No. Better not finish it.”
“She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favour.”
“Okay then. Give me some more.”
“That’s the hell of a big club the gut must’ve used to hit poor Patrick,” one of them was
saying. “The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledgehammer.”
“That’s why it ought to be easy to find.”
“Exactly what I say.”
“Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer
than they need.”
One of them belched.
“Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.”
“Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?”
And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.
‡Questions after reading the text
1. What is the unusual thing Patrick Maloney does and how does the reader know it is unusual?
2. Find evidence from the passage to show what sort of marriage Patrick and Mary have. You
might want to consider the following:
· What they do
· Hopeful
· What they say
· One-sided
· True love
· Caring
· Eager to please
· Trust
· Communication
· Equality
· Clinging on
3. Pick out three things that make Mary uneasy about her husband that
evening.
4. Suggest why Mary notices so many tiny details.
5. What sort of person is Patrick Maloney?
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6. What sort of person does Mary appear to be at the beginning of the
story?
7. How do you think she has changed by the end?
8. What feelings do you have about her at the end when ‘Mary Maloney
began to giggle’?
Jigsaw
The following excerpts all come from the short story. They are jumbled up. Try to
arrange them in the correct order.
•
"For God's sake," he said, hearing her, but not turning round, "don't make
supper for me. I'm going out."
•
"Tired, darling?"
"Yes," he said. "I'm tired."
•
"It's the old story," he said. "Get the weapon and you've got the man."
•
"This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I'm afraid," he said.
•
When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few
moments later, punctually as always, she heard the tyres on the gravel
outside...
•
"Personally, I think it's right here on the premises."
•
All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her, and she ran
over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry her heart out.
•
"Quick! Come quick! Patrick's dead!"
•
Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two
detectives, one of whom she knew by name
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The Novel from 1970
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day (1989)
David Lodge: Changing Places (1975)
Angela Carter: Wise Children (1991)
Nowadays: J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) *
8.2. Drama
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Pygmalion (1913)
Samuel Beckett (1907-1989), Waiting for Godot
Harold Pinter (1930 - ), The Birthday Party (1957)
8.3. Poetry
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), “Byzantium”
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), “The Waste Land”
Poetry of World War I:
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), “They”: “We’re none of us the same!”
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), “Dulce et Decorum est”
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), “The Soldier”
Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), “To His Love”, “The Silent One”
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), “Break of Day in Trenches”, “Dead Man´s Dump”
May Wedderburn Cannan (1893-1973), “Rouen”
Poetry of World War II:
C. Day Lewis (1904-72), “Where are the War Poets?”
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), “Still Falls the Rain”
Henry Reed (1914-1986), “Lessons of the War”
Keith Douglas (1920-1944), “Gallantry”, “Vergissmeinnicht”
Charles Causley (b. 1917), “At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux”, “Armistice
Day”
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Poetry of World War I
It has been frequently suggested that the First World War came as a
surprise to everybody including those who at the time were in office. The fact is
that when on 3th August the war broke out, it was a result of a crisis hidden
behind the apparent security of a political and social and cultural structure that
had been running in England since the Renaissance. England entered the war
and immediately sent its troops by sea and by land to fight against the Germans
and their allies. Some of the men that formed part of these troops were poets.
For some of them, and especially at the beginning of the conflict, the war
represented a way to break free from what they saw as a materialist and
undignified environment. This is clearly conveyed, for example, in “Peace”, a
sonnet written by Rupert Brooke:
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us1 with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release3 there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save4 this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
They felt an emotional and patriotic duty to defend old, loved England
and join forces against an enemy that, in this early stage of the war, was
regarded as brutal. The feeling, at this moment, that the cause for war was
justified and legitimate propitiated an idealisation, rooted in the tradition of the
heroes, of those who were willing to sacrifice their lives for a fair cause. This
can be seen in poets such as Rupert Brooke or Wilfred Owen, who in a stanza
drafted in 1914 to be part of a poem called “The Ballad of Peace and War”,
wrote:
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O meet it is and passing sweet
To live in peace with others,
But sweeter still and far more sweet,
To die in war for brothers.
Unlike other poets, like Brooke himself, Owen´s experience in the
trenches of the Western Front made his war poetry sharper and more
disenchanted. His experience in battle burst into his dreams and later into his
poems with powerful and obsessive images of blind eyes (“Dulce et decorum
est”) and of the mouth of hell (“Miners” and “Strange Meeting”). Since then, he
refused patriotic writings such as “The Soldier”, by Brooke; from Owen´s point
of view, the war was being fought by real men who bled and died, and not by
heroes who were more than human. Owen gets to give his poems a distinctive
music owing to his mastery in the use of alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhyme.
The figures of Siegfried Sassoon and Isaac Rosenberg are also remarkable
among those poets who took part in the World War I. The former introduced in
his poems a bitter criticism against those officers who had not inconvenient to
send thousands of young men to an unnecessary and more than likely death.
He also hated the patriotic satisfaction of those who felt confident about a
resounding victory and believed the heroic stories told by the government. As
for the latter, it is important to bear in mind that his life before and during the
war was different from that of the other poets who fought in the war; while
these came from the upper or middle classes, Rosenberg was raised in a
working-class family. This circumstance had an outstanding bearing on his
language, which, instead of looking back to the patterns and traditions from the
past, gives the feeling of having been forced into new forms of communication.
Except Sassoon, the poets mentioned above were all killed during the
war.
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“Dulce et decorum est”7, by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
2 Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
3 Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
4 And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
5 Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
6 But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
7 Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
8 Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
9 Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
10 Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
11 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
12 And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-13 Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
14 As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
15 In all my dreams before my helpless sight
16 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
17 If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
18 Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
19 And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
20 His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
21 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
22 Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
23 Bitter as the cud
24 Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-25 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
26 To children ardent for some desperate glory,
27 The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
28 Pro patria mori.
7
This Latin expression is taken from a verse in Horace´s Odes: “It is sweet and meet to die for one´s
country. Sweet! And decorum!”
136
Explain the poem by answering the following questions:
1. What exactly is being described in the poem?
2. What has happened to the soldier?
3. How is language used in the poem to create the particular effect it
provides?
4.What is this effect?
5.What is the poet´s intention in this poem?
6.What are the changes in meaning of the Latin phrase once it appears in
the last stanza?
7.On the whole, do you think that this is a “propaganda poem”? Why?
Poetry of World War II
There has been a long widespread impression that World War II, unlike
World War I, produced no notable poetry. Disappointment with the poet´s
failure to contribute to the war effort was voiced as early as December 1939,
when a leading article in The Times Literary Supplement urged them to do their
duty: “it is for the poets to sound the trumpet call…the monstrous threat to
belief and freedom which we are fighting should urge new psalmists to fresh
songs of deliverance”. However it took not a long time for writers such as
Stephen Spender to react against this groundless interpretation. We can take as
an example of this the words written by Spender in an essay in that time: “At
the beginning of the last war (World War I) Rupert Brooke and others were
‘trumpets singing to battle`. Why did not Rupert Brooke step forward `young
and goldhaired’ this time? No doubt, in part, precisely because one had done
do last time. There is another reason: the poetry of the war of democracy versus
fascism had already been written by English, French, Spanish, German, and
Italian émigré poets during the Spanish war”.
With few exceptions, the British poets of the 1930s had been born shortly
before the outbreak of World War I, and those who were to be the poets of
World War II were born during the earlier conflict. They grew up not, as Rupert
Brooke, in the sunlit peace of Georgian England, but amid the wars and
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rumours of wars. They lived through the Depression and the rise of fascism.
They were constantly reminded of the horrors of the last war by battle memoirs
like Grave´s Goodbye to All That (1929) or Sassoon´s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
(1930) among others. By then, another daunting myth, that of the next war, was
taking shape once the right-wing rebels rose up in arms against the
democratically elected Republican government in Spain. The war of Spain was
the first chapter of a long and harsh fight between Democracy and fascism,
whose result would not only determine the future of Spain, but also the future
of Europe.
The terrible nightmare finally came true. On September 1 1939 the war
broke out with the German invasion of Poland. Two days later England and
France declared war on Germany. In August 1940, once the British forces were
defeated by German troops in Dunkirk, the Lufltwaffe (the German Air Force)
attacked England. Over the months that followed the fighter pilots of the Royal
Air Force tried to defend the country from the enemy bombers´ blitz over
London and other major cities in what would be known as The Battle of Britain.
This outstanding episode of war did not go unnoticed by many English writers.
Thus, Virginia Woolf, at the end of Between the Acts (1941), imagines the coming
fury that would be a factor in her suicide: “A zoom severed it. Twelve
aeroplanes in perfect formation like a flight of wild ducks came overhead”. The
following year Edith Sitwell was to depict the blitz in “Still Falls the Rain”. The
Battle of Britain, however, was not the only battle nor the only topic which
drew the attention of the English writers.
Some of their works show the influence of their predecessors: Alun
Lewis acknowledges a debt to Edward Thomas and Keith Douglas´s poems
reflect Owen´s influence. However, the poetry produced by World War II
writers get to keep up a distinctive and genuine tone.
“Still Falls the Rain”, by Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
Still falls the Rain –
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss –
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.
Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the
hammer-beat
In the Potter’s Field, and the sound of the impious feet
On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain
In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human
brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
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Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us –
On Dives and on Lazarus:
Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.
Still falls the Rain –
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man’s wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds,– those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending
dark,
The wounds of the baited bear,–
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.
Still falls the Rain –
Then – O Ile leap up to my God: who pulles me doune –
See, see where Christ’s blood streames in the firmament:
It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
That holds the fires of the world,– dark-smirched with pain
As Caesar’s laurel crown.
Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
Was once a child who among beasts has lain –
‘Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.’
Once you have read the poem, try to answer the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is the main topic of the poem?
Do you think that the rain is a symbol? If so, try to guess its meaning.
What are the most frequent references? Could you explain soke of them?
Who is the principal character in the poem? Why does the author want to
focus on this character?
5. From your point of view, which tone do you think that the author adopts
throughout the poem?
9. Bibliography
Abrams, M. H. (ed.) (1993). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vols. 1
y 2. Ny.: Norton.
139
Carter, Ronald and John McRae (1996). The Penguin Guide to English
Literature. London: Penguin.
Cuddon, J. A. (ed.) (1998). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and
Literary Theory. London: Penguin.
Guerin, Wilfred L. et alii (eds.) (1999). A Handbook of Critical Approaches to
Literature. O.U.P.
Hopkins, Chris (2001). Thinking About Texts. Ny.: Palgrave.
Lazar, Gillian (1999). A Window on Literature. C.U.P.
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Appendix. Literary Concepts: a Critical Vocabulary
Abstract
Adj: existing in thought or theory rather than matter or practice; not concrete.
Abstract art achieves an ideological effect by form and colour rather than by
realism.
Abstraction
A quality based upon an idea or concept rather than a physically distinct
element. E.g. the following are abstractions: pity; nobility; sensitivity; goodwill;
happiness; elegance; fortitude; pride (general - as opposed to personal or
individual - states of being).
Aesthetic
N: philosophy of beauty. Adj: a formal term for beauty (it is aesthetically
pleasing) or for a person sensitive to beauty (he is very aesthetic).
Ascetic
Adj: severely abstinent, self-denying.
Affected
Adj: pretentious, artificial. N: affectation (an artificial manner). V: to affect (to
pretend or fake something).
Affection
N: goodwill, fond feeling.
Allegory
Basically an extended metaphor where characters, events and locations
represent or symbolise other things, often abstractions. In the best known
English allegory - Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress - life is presented as a hazardous
pilgrimage, Vanity and Despair are places, and Sin is a heavy pack on
Christian’s back.
Alliteration
The repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Allusive
Adj: a work of literature is allusive if it is full of passing or indirect references to
other works of literature.
Anapest
A type of poetic foot made up of three syllables: the first two are short / unstressed, the third is long / stressed.
Anthropomorphism
N: the attribution of human characteristics to a god, animal, or thing. Adj:
anthropomorphic.
Antithetical phrasing
Rhetorical phrasing which uses counteractive, contrasting elements to make its
point (often involving a proposal and a qualification or undermining of that
proposal’s premises). E.g: ‘It has been observed that they who most loudly
clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.’ (Dr.Johnson)
Assonance
The repetition of a vowel sound through a passage.
Baroque
Adj: highly ornate and extravagant in style. Originally a term of abuse applied to
the way 17 th and 18 th century Italian and German (influenced by Italy) art
muddled its styles: un-classical use of classical forms; interpenetration of
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architecture, sculpture, and painting to produce grandiose and clogging overemotional effects.
Bathos
The Greek word for ‘depth’. Now means an unintentional or ludicrous descent
from what is meant to be grand or noble sentiment into the trivial or mundane.
The satirist intentionally uses it. Anticlimax is often used as a synonym for
Bathos.
Blank verse
Un-rhyming iambic pentameter, used by Shakespeare and Milton.
Classical
Two meanings (often overlapping). Historical: 1666 (restoration of monarchy) –
1780 (French revolution). Critical: Work that is kept strictly within a formal
structure (usually of Greek / Roman origin); preferring objective generalisations
on human nature to personal confession.
Cliché
Commonly used phrase or opinion.
Conceit
An image or metaphor in which the dissimilarity between the things compared is
often more striking that their similarity. Eg Crashaw’s image of weeping eyes as
‘Two walking baths…’ In Donne’s A valediction forbidding mourning the souls of
himself and his lover are compared with the twin legs of a draughtsman’s
compasses.
Caesura
The main pause in a line of verse. Its position may be determined by the
demands of natural speech, or grammar, or by Cadence.
Cadence
A fall in the pitch of the voice, a tonal inflection.
Context
Parts that surround a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
Dactyl
A type of poetic foot made up of three syllables: the first one is long / stressed,
the second two are short / un-stressed (the opposite of the anapest).
Diction
Manner of enunciation: how the vocabulary and phrasing used convey the
mood or personality of the speaker. E.g: ‘The man, you know, has very ready
knees’ has a haughty diction.
Dramatic monologue
Like the soliloquy in drama, it involves the first person speaker articulating his
thoughts (unlike the interior monologue). Unlike the soliloquy, it is found in
narrative poems and primarily involves the telling of a story (as opposed to the
confession of inmost feelings). E.g: RobertBrowning.
Effect
N: result or consequence of an action. E.g: the impression produced on a
spectator or hearer:
‘The lights gave a pretty effect’ ‘He said it just for effect’.
V: to bring about change. E.g: to carry into effect (to accomplish); to give effect
to / take effect (to make operative); in effect (for practical purposes); to the
effect that (the gist being that); to that effect (having that result or implication);
with effect from (coming into operation from…)
Elegy
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A poem of lament or mourning. E.g. Milton’s Lycidas, Tennyson’s In Memoriam,
Auden’s In Memory Of W.B Yeats.
Elision
The omission of an unstressed syllable in order to conform to the metrical
scheme of the line. E.g. o’er (over) and e’en (even).
End-stop
When the end of a line coincides with a normal pause dictated by sense, logic
or punctuation.
E.g: ‘From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die’
Enjambment (Run-on).
Occurs when the end of a line does not coincide with a normal pause dictated
by sense, logic or punctuation. E.g: ‘My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love…’
Epigram
A pointed saying (e.g. Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones)
Even Accent
More than one syllable in a word is stressed. E.g. mankind, brainstorm.
Fancy
It signifies a mental activity inferior to imagination, in that it merely elaborates or
embroiders sensory experiences while the imagination (ideally) orders, unifies
and reassesses them. In this modern derogatory sense a Conceit is a product
of fancy.
Figurative
Non-literal language which represents something beyond itself. Allegory,
symbolism and metaphor are all types of figurative language.
First person
Refers to passages written from the point of view of ‘I’
Free indirect discourse
A technique first brought to fruition by Jane Austen. The narrator voices an
opinion which, although technically phrased as if it were the author’s own
opinion (being in the third person as opposed to the first), strongly mimics the
voice of one of the characters (or even a whole society of them) adding a hint of
sarcasm which partially undermines it. It is used for ironic effect, but is more
benevolent and less judgemental than parody. This means that the author can
remind the reader that the opinion is not universal, but relative, while also
retaining its power to provide a universal lesson. E.g: ‘It is a truth universally
acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in
want of a wife.’
Fricative
Sounded by friction of the breath in a narrow opening. F, TH and S are
fricatives.
Generalization
A broad over-arching truth or rule to which there are few exceptions.
Gothic
Gothic architecture was prevalent in Western Europe from the 12 th century to
the 16 th (chiefly characterised by its pointed arch). In England the term became
associated with ‘medieval’ and conjured up all sorts of spooky catholic ideas to
the puritans of the 18 th century: the supernatural, ruins, haunted castles,
frightening landscapes and magic. E.g: Anne Radcliff, M.G. Lewis, C.R.
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Maturin. The gothic novel and its readers are celebrated and satirized in Jane
Austen’s Northanger Abbey (a gothic parody).
Hyperbole
The Greek word for ‘overthrow’ or ‘overshoot’. In literature it means a deliberate
exaggeration or overstatement. A well-known Shakespearean hyperbole is
Macbeth’s cry that his bloodstained hand would dye the ocean red:
…this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Iamb
A type of poetic foot made up of two syllables: the first one is short / unstressed, the second is long / stressed.
Interior monologue
A passage written from the first person which is only going on inside the
speaker’s head; basically the novel’s version of drama’s soliloquy (the only
difference being that it’s unspoken).
Interlocutor
Formal term referring to someone who takes part in a conversation. E.g: The
main character is leading a conversation; his companion could be called the
interlocutor.
Irony
1. Expression of meaning, often humorous or sarcastic, using language of a
different or opposite tendency.
2. 2. Apparent perversity of an event or circumstance in reversing human
intentions.
E.g: ‘It’s like rain on your wedding day; It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid;
It’s the good advice, you just cant take. And isn’t it ironic…’ (Alanis Morrisette).
E.g: Waiting half an hour for a bus, giving up to get a taxi and, as the taxi pulls
away, seeing the bus arrive.
Lyric
Originally meant a poem that was to be sung with a lyre. Now it is applied to
fairly short, non-narrative poems which respond to some single thought, feeling,
or situation. The poet often speaks in the 1st person, sometimes as a persona.
This is the commonest form used in modernpoetry.
Metonymy
‘A substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing
meant’.(ox Dict) Eg At the start of Middlemarch G.E’s description of Dorothea’s
dress implys her class, religion, and standing in the community. Using the name
of one attribute of a thing instead of naming the thing itself. E.g. ‘crown’ for ‘king’
and ‘daily bread’ for ‘life’s sustenance -spiritual and physical’.
Metaphor
A mode of comparison which has two element. The tenor (the thing being
characterized – the subject) and the vehicle (means by which it is characterised
- the figure). Eg. in Hamlet the dawn is the tenor and the vehicle is an
approaching woman dressed in a reddish cloak:
But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o’er the dew on yon high eastern hill…
Meter
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Denotes the specified number of feet in a line of poetry. E.g: the meter of a
poem with five feet per line is ‘pentameter’; the meter of a poem with three feet
per line is ‘trimeter’; and with two feet per line is ‘dimeter’.
Meiosis
The opposite of hyperbole, meaning understatement. It can be used to intensify
feeling by conveying strong emotion in utterly simple language. A chilling use of
it in a satirical context is Swift’s : ‘Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will
hardly believe how much it altered her appearance for the worse’. In this
respect it resembles Litotes which understates a positive assertion by affirming
the negative: He was not altogether polite’, meaning ‘He was extremely rude’.
Both are ironic understatements.
Mimesis
Where the sound of the word reinforces the meaning (same as onomatopoeia
but not limited to sounds). E.g. Brittle, and many of Dickens’ characters’ names,
like Gradgrind. “Bubbles gargled delicately”, (The Death Of A Naturalist). The
sound of B is like a bursting bubble. The word delicately is spoken delicately
with clenched teeth, the tongue on the tip of the teeth and a thin ‘I’ sound.
Ode
Originally meant a poem that was intended or adapted to be sung. Now it
applies to a rhymed (rarely unrhymed) lyric, often in the form of an address,
generally dignified or exalted in subject, feeling and style, but sometimes (in
earlier use) simple and familiar. Usually no more that 150 lines in length. The
type of ode imitated by Keats and Shelley was the Horatian ode which consists
of a number of uniform stanzas with an elaborate metrical scheme.
Omniscient
All knowing or knowing much.
Omnipresent
Present everywhere.
Onomatopoeia.
The sound of the word resembles the sound of the thing or action it signifies. It
can only be used to describe words that are expressing sounds. E.g. Hiss,
cuckoo, buzz, and gargled, plop.
Oxymoron
A conjunction of two terms which are usually contradictory, E.g. ‘A wise fool’, ‘A
cheerful pessimist’, ‘Living death’. Because paradox and oxymoron involve a
discrepancy between language and meaning they may be considered aspects
of Irony.
Pastoral
Derived from the Latin word for shepherd, pastor. Developed by the classical
poets of Greece and Rome. Trappings: shepherds playing pipes, eternal
summer, conversations with visiting goddesses. Christian pastoralists (E.g.
Milton’s P.Lost) use the symbol of Christ as a shepherd and add a religious and
allegorical dimension to the conventional pastoral. Modern usage is more
general, applying to literature which has the theme of admiration or celebration
of the simple life and an implicit attack on sophisticated and dehumanising city
society.
Pathos
Deep feeling. Usually applied to poems or scenes intended to kindle feelings of
a sorrowful or pitying kind. Excessive pathos can turn to sentimentality.
Paradox
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A phrase, statement or idea which seems absurd or self-contradictory in a literal
sense but which might in fact express a new truth, with a meaning valid in some
way. E.g.
For as Philosophy teacheth us, that light things do always tend upwards and
heavy things decline downward; Experience teacheth us otherwise, that the
disposition of a light woman is to fall… (Donne).
Parenthetical phrase
Explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a sentence
and usually marked off by a pair of brackets, dashes, or commas.
Personify
V: to represent an abstraction or thing as having human characteristics (‘Death
walked in the door’). Adj: personified. N: personfication.
Plosive
Pronounced with a sudden release of breath. B’s and P’s are plosives. They
blow out the sound, animating the language if used a lot: “The slap and plop
were obscene threats / …Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting”
(Seamus Heaney, Death Of A Naturalist).
Picaresque
‘A novel in which the hero takes a journey whose course plunges him into all
sorts, conditions, and classes of men’.(Walter Allen, The Eng,Novel) Like
pilgrim’s progress.
Rhyme
Identical sound between words or their endings. E.g: time rhymes with rhyme.
Rhythm
A combination of the type and quantity of feet used. E.g: the rhythm of a
Shakespeare’s sonnet would be ‘iambic pentameter’; the rhythm of a poem with
three trochaic feet per line would be ‘trochaic trimeter’; the rhythm of a poem
with two anapest feet per line would be ‘anapest dimeter.’
Romantic
Two meanings (often overlapping). Historical: 1780 (French revolution) – 1850
(Death of Wordsworth). Critical: Work that is not completely rigid in its use of
form (usually newer forms like the short lyric and the ode); not shying away from
the personal and confessional. Often used as a negative criticism to mean
vague (abstract as opposed to applied) and narcissistic.
Satire
A rhetoric of abuse by exposure, usually targeting a vice. It employs many
techniques: irony; parody; and outright ridicule. An example of the latter would
be ‘reductio ad absurdam’: in the guise of sanctioning the vice, the satirist takes
it’s logical assumptions to ridiculous extremes. Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a
good example of satire, attacking the vice of purely economic thinking by using
many of the above techniques.
Semantic
Adjective: used in reference to the meaning of a given passage’s language.
Semantics: a branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of language.
Simile
Comparison of something with another, using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. E.g. ‘He
ate like a hungry hog’ ‘He was as brave as a lion’
Soliloquy
N: speaking without or regardless of hearers (usually in the context of a play).
V: to soliloquise. The speaker is known as the soliloquist.
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Solipsism
N: philosophical theory that the self is all that exists or can be known (from the
Latin ‘solo ipso’ - myself alone). A person who thinks like this is a solipsist.
Colloquially the term is applied to self-absorbed, self-sufficient characters. E.g:
Robert Frost.
Sonnet
Poem of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme. English sonnets are usually in
iambic pentameter.
Spondee
A type of poetic foot made up of one syllable (neither short nor long, stressed
nor un-stressed).
Stream of consciousness
An extended and extreme form of interior monologue. In place of objective
description or conventional dialogue the speaker’s thoughts, feelings,
impressions, or reminiscences are given (often repetitively and without logical
sequence or syntax); this lack of digestion’ is an attempt to mimic the mind as it
exists on the brink of articulation. E.g. Virginia Woolf, James Joyce.
Subdued metaphor
One metaphor implicitly underlies a sequence of images, as when in Macbeth
Duncan says to Banquo:
I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing…
The metaphor is of Banquo as a sapling or young plant which, when full grown,
will ‘yield a harvest’ of the qualities needed in a ruler.
Syllable
Unit of pronunciation that is made up of one vowel sound (usually surrounded
by consonants). E.g. The word ‘pound’ is a syllable long; the word ‘water’ is two
syllables long.
Synaesthesia
Where one sense is combined with another:
“He smelled the darkness” (The Rainbow).
“Her red sweater screamed across the room”.
Syntax
The grammatical rule-based organisation of words.
Third person
Refers to passages writing from the point of view of ‘he’ or ‘she’
Tone
See ‘Diction.’ Or, I. A. Richards’ alternative definition: tone denotes the
speaker’s attitude to his listener. E.g: ‘kind sir’ has a respectful tone; ‘the gentle
reader’ has a confiding tone.
Trochee
A type of poetic foot made up of two syllables: the first one is long / stressed,
the second is short / un-stressed (opposite of the Iamb).
This free resource is available at www.teachit.co.uk Copyright © 2000
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