The Doll's House, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Dora Sarrión

The story began when Mrs Hay brought the Burnell children a doll’s house as a gift. The house smelled of new paint, which the adults disliked, but it was so marvellous for the three daughters of the Burnell’s family, Isabel, Lottie and Kezia, that they didn’t mind the smell. It was very well decorated with little furniture and dolls inside. Although everything was perfect in the house, Kezia, the youngest sister, paid attention to a small lamp, which she thought it was the best part of the house.
They were eager to go to school and tell their classmates about their new gift.
But Isabel told her sisters that, because she was the oldest, she was going to explain to their classmates about the doll’s house, and to decide which classmates were going to see the house in person.
The next morning, during the playtime at school, Isabel was surrounded by her classmates waiting for her explanation about the details of the house. But not every girl could approach her. Lil and Else Kelvey couldn’t.
The school was not as sophisticated as Burnell parents would like. Because they lived in a remote area, the school contained students from several demographic and economic backgrounds. The children of wealthy parents separate themselves from their socio-economically disadvantaged classmates on the playground. The Kelvey sisters were the poorest students at school. Their mother was the village washerwoman, and everyone in the city said that their father was in prison.
Like their classmates, Else and Lil were fascinated by the explanations about the doll’s house, but they couldn’t participate in the conversation, they could only overhear how Isabel was proudly describing it. When Isabel finished, Kezia reminded her to mention her lamp, even though no one else seemed to care about it.
Isabel chose the first two girls who were to come back with them that afternoon to see the house, and said that everyone was going to have a chance in the future to see it. Only the Kelveys knew they will never be chosen.
One day Kezia asked her mother if she could invite the Kelveys to see the doll’s house, but Mrs Burnell refused it, and at Kezia’s insistence, she answered “Run away, Kezia, you know quite well why not”. But she didn’t understand.
As the days passed, almost all the children were amazed at how wonderful the doll’s house was. But there was a moment when everyone had seen the house except the Kelveys, and, as it seemed that the subject was beginning to languish, the girls decided to make fun of the Kelveys sisters; but their reaction was only silence, so this new adventure of making fun of them did not seem to have much success.
Later that afternoon, when Kezia was at home swinging in the courtyard, she saw the Kelveys coming in the road towards her. She invited them in to see her doll’s house. But Lil shook her head quickly and reminded her that they weren’t supposed to talk to each other.  Kezia assured that it didn’t matter what her mother said, that they could come in and see her doll’s house because nobody was looking. Lil still didn’t want to go in, but Else, standing behind her, tugged at her dress and looked at her pleadingly.
Kezia leaded the girls inside the courtyard, but while she was showing the house, Aunt Beryl arrived and shouted furiously at her. She shooed the Kelveys out as if they were chickens, and she slammed the doll’s house to.
Lil and Else ran away scared by Aunt Beryl, and when they could no longer see the Burnell’s house, they stopped to take a break. They didn’t say anything to each other; in silence they looked at the landscape; Else approached her sister, caressed her, smiled, and said softly:
“I saw the little lamp.”

I think in this story there are several interesting topics to discuss, but in my opinion, the relationship that the writer establishes between Else and Kezia through a lamp is fascinating. Both characters are different from the rest of the members of their families: Else is quiet, but she is clear about what she wants to achieve, she is not afraid, and Kezia does not understand the reasons why she cannot talk to the Kelvey sisters, and she is breaking the rules.
And they are both united by a lamp, which, in my opinion, would be the symbol of hope for change.

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen?

-Is there any solution to avoid giving sexist toys to the children?

-What was your favourite toy when you were a child?

-In the story, there seems to be a bullying problem against the Kelveys. Did you feel this problem when you were at school?

-Are you in favour of mixing children of all condition in the same school? In your opinion, do the parents have to have the right of choosing the school for their children?

-“Even the teacher had a special voice for them [the Kelveys]”. When we talk about bullying, we usually think it is something between students. But what happens when the teacher is involved in the situation?

-Why do you think the narrator says “our Else” instead of only “Else”?

-According to your point of view, why Kezia decides to show the house to the Kelveys?

-Why was Aunt Beryl so angry when Kezia showed the house to the Kelveys? Were her reasons the same as Kezia’s mother’s?

-Were the Kelveys happy in the end? What is a “rare smile”?

 

VOCABULARY

feed-room, slab, toffee, papered, traipsing, bossy, tarred, palings, roll (was called), Nudging, shunned, spry, freckles, quill, cropped (hair), made eyes, snapped, sell, titter, buggy, thieved out, buttercups, shooed ... out

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The Eggy Stone, by Tessa Hadley

 

SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

This is a story about two girls who are spending a week in a camp school. The first afternoon, boys and girls go to the beach looking for treasures, like old shells or curious stones. At a certain moment, one of them pick up an eggy stone, just at the same moment that another girl, Madeleine, does too. This fortuitous fact creates a special relationship with them. During the week, they invented different games and challengers to possess the stone, and they took turns to hold it at night in their sleeping bags (they slept in different tends), because whoever possessed the stone felt privileged and safe.

The narrator feels happy, because she thinks that she doesn’t deserve a friend like Madeleine, a girl who, the very first day, has been directed to sit on the table where the charming girls sat. In addition, Madeleine’s usual friends included her tolerantly in her circle.

When the week is over, the narrator wonders what they will do with the stone from that moment: keep the stone for a week each other, and dividing up the holidays, perhaps?  But before she could speak, Madeleine turned and threw the Eggy Stone hard and far. The sound of the stone falling among the pebbles made our protagonist feel that she will never be able to find a stone like that again.

PERSONAL OPINION

I think the author uses the stone as a symbol of the feelings that the protagonist has when, through it, she makes friends with Madeleine.
She is surely a girl who goes unnoticed, she is not in the popular group of girls, and that is why she admires Madeleine. «I’m smart but she’s blonde», she says at one point, feeling adoration for her.
She admires too how Madeleine dances, sings, and even how she cheats her, stealing the Eggy Stone from her pocket. Surely he also admires her courage when she goes out at night to the boys’ tents to kiss them, when she is incapable of doing such a thing. Being friends with Madeleine makes her feel special, deserving of being in the group of the lovely girls.
That is why, when he sees Madeleine throwing the Eggy Stone, his plans to keep their friendship go up in smoke. When she says she’ll never be able to find a stone like that, what she really means is that she’ll never feel again like the special girl that she has been for that one week.

TESSA HADLEY

She was born in 1956 in Bristol, on the East Coast of England.

Her father was a teacher and an amateur jazz trumpeter, and her mother, an amateur artist.

She studied to be a teacher and worked as a teacher until she decided to form a family. Then she had three children.

When she was 37 she decided to study for a Master of Arts at the Bath Spa University, where she dedicated her time specially to the works of Katherine Mansfield, Elisabeth Bowen and Jean Rhys. Then, at 41, she started to teach creative writing at the same university.

Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, written while she was bringing up a family, was published when she was 46.

As a part of her studies, he wrote a book about Henry James. So, James, together with the authoress mentioned above, are her principal influences.

From the issue of her first novel, she has gone on publishing novels and short stories collections. Her last novel is Free Love.

Her stories are usually realistic, situated away from London, and her characters belong to the middle classes. She tends to focus the plots on the family relationships and on women. It’s remarkable her psychological insight.

She has won several awards and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

QUESTIONS

What do you remember of your camps / holiday homes?

The boys began throwing pebbles in the sea; the girls looked for treasures. Is there something biological in our constitutions that make boys to do different things from girls? Or is it sociological?

They touched fingers: Is physical contact always a prelude of something?

Situations can change friendships: do you have a literary or personal example?

When you were at school, where did you use to sit down? Were the ranks in alphabetical order or the teacher gave you your places, or you could choose your desk?

When can an object be a special thing (souvenir, memory, idol, talisman…)?

Do you remember any curious / invented rhyme from your childhood?

What do you know about Gargantua and Pantagruel?

Why do you thing Madeline wouldn’t go on with the narrator’s friendship?

 

VOCABULARY

rim, seaweed, sealed, daintily, felts, plantains, by rote, skipping rhymes, yearned, filching, bond, trailing, tepid, foam, publicity, constipation, netball

The Fall of the Idol, by Richmal Crompton

 

Richmal Crompton at the Wikipedia

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RICHMAL CROMPTON, by Josep Guiteres

BIOGRAPHY

She was born in Bury, Lancashire in 1890, and died in 1969. She was an English writer, specialized in children’s books and horror stories.

She was the second child of Edward John Sewell, a protestant pastor and parochial school teacher, and his wife Clara; her older brother John Battersby was also a writer under the pseudonym John Lambourne.

Richmal Crompton attended St Elphin’s school and won a scholarship to classical studies at Royal Holloway College London, where she graduated Bachelor of Arts, and, in 1914, returned to teach classical authors at St. Elphin’s until 1917. Then, when she was 27 years old, went to Bromley High School in South London, teaching the same subject until 1923. Having contracted polio, she lost the use of her right leg. In 1923 and from then on, she spent her free time to write.

In 1924, she created her famous character William Brown, the protagonist of thirty-eight books of children’s stories in the naughty William saga that she wrote until her death.

She is also the author of a collection of stories about ghosts, the horror novel Dread Dwelling, in 1926, and Bruma, in 1928. As a writer of horror stories, she is eminent.

She never married and had no children; she was an aunt and a great-aunt.

 

THE FALL OF THE IDOL

The Fall of the Idol corresponds to chapter 4 of Just William with her famous eleven-years-old character William Brown.

In this chapter the writer tells us the adventures of William narrating his falling in love with his teacher, Miss Drew.

William, as a good student, sat in the back row. Being in love, he changed his seat to one in the front row. While the teacher explains the lesson, William has his fantasies with the teacher, but she constantly asks him questions about what she explains, and so he is forced to study.

Every day the teacher arrived at class, she used to find some small detail on the table of some admirer, but that morning the table and the chair were full of greenhouse flowers, evidently left by the lover. When William got home, he found his sister and two policemen who were looking for the flower thief.

The next day, Miss Drew was talking to another teacher. William, who was nearby, understood that Miss Drew liked lilacs; so, William got lilacs by stealing them from the window of a house with the subsequent uproar of the owner.

When Miss Drew entered the classroom, she said: “William, I hate lilacs”. Disappointed, his love vanished, and, as a good student, he sat again in the background.

My opinion: I liked this story because it is simple, short, entertaining and written with the fabulous typical English humour.

QUESTIONS 

Talk about your school days: were they happy or boring?

What is your opinion of this saying: “Teach anything at school and, funny it may be, at once it becomes boring”? (Remember the example of sexual education in the film by Monty Phyton “The Meaning of Life”.)

William caught a lizard and kept it in his pocket during the class. Do you have an anecdote to explain about your school days?

What happened to William’s lizard?

Who is the “malicious blind god”?

William starts giving presents to his teacher. What is your opinion about giving presents to your teacher… or to anybody?

What things you don’t do by halves? Do you always finish the book you are reading or the film you are watching?

Could William be married by the Pope? Why?

What do you think of helping your children with their homework?

“He hugged his chains”: what does it mean? Can you give more examples?

What do you imagine William wanted to do with the pipe in the garden?

Can you describe a “guelder rose” and a syringe”?

Explain the adventure of the syringe.

What is the meaning of “the idol has feet of clay”?

What do you think William felt like at the end: angry, happy, or disappointed?

 

VOCABULARY

figures, mug, 3 ½ d, mouth organ, putty, obliging, blood-curdling, outshine, hothouse, riot, soulfully, nonplussed, hubbub, conservatory, week’s mending, babbling, leading article, beaming, ole, ornery, rent, jarred, literal

Through the Tunnel, by Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing at the Wikipedia

Through the Tunnel at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Through the Tunnel, summary & analysis

BIOGRAPHY

Doris Lessing was born in Iran in 1919. At that moment, Iran was under the rule of Great Britain. Her father was a bank clerk and her mother a nurse. When she was 5, her family moved to Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe, but then also under the British Empire. There she lived until she was 30. Her family had a farm, but not much money, and she went to a catholic school. At 15, she started working as a nursemaid. At 19, she got married and had two children, but she left her husband and her children. Afterwards, she said, “There’s nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend an endless amount of time with small children.” But she got married again and had one more son, and she divorced again. She left also Rhodesia and went to live in the UK, fed up with the classicism and racism of the African country.

All her life was a committed person with leftist politics, and until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, she belonged to the Communist Party.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

When the critics talk about her writings, they usually distinguish three periods:

The Communist period, when she wrote mainly about social issues. Her African Stories, for example, belong to this phase.

The psychological period, when she wrote Children of Violence (a collection of five semi-autobiographical novels),  and The Golden Notebook, that is in fact a revision of these 5 novels.

The Sufi period, when she studied the Muslim mysticism called Sufi and when she wrote science-fiction novels, for example, the series Canopus in Argus.

Out of these periods we found The Good Terrorist, about the squatters in London.

Her work is sometimes wearisomely didactic and focused more about topics than about form.

She is considered a feminist writer, although she doesn’t like being labelled.

She died in 2013 in London, when she was 93.

If you'd like to know more about her life, you can read her autobiography Under my Skin, in two volumes of more of 400 pages each one.

Through the Tunnel This is a story about an eleven-year-old boy on holiday on the coast with his widow mother. Every year they go there, and sunbathe and swim on the same big beach, but now he feels boring spending the time with his mother on this beach, because he thinks he has grown up, and this big and safe beach is for small children and mothers. So he decides to explore a cove near the big beach. There he sees some boys doing feats of old boys or adults; for example, they dive to the sea from a high rock, or swim under a long rock. The boys ignore him, because when he sees that he cannot do the same as them, he behaves like a child. Then, when he’s alone, he studies the passage under the long rock that they have crossed, and tries to cross it too. But it’s very long and dark. He’s going to need some goggles and is going to have to practise his breathing… because he’s decided to go through the tunnel whatever happens. Is he going to get it at the end?

QUESTIONS

Why do you think the author talks about the “woman’s arm” instead of talking simply about the “woman”?

In the lines 20-21 we find the expression “impulse of contrition – a sort of chivalry”. How can you identify contrition with chivalry?

There are two beaches: the big one and the small cove or ravine. It seems that the big beach is for children and the ravine for adults. What characteristics does the author give to each one in order to identify the big one with children and the rocky ravine with adultness?

What kind of relationship is there between the mother and her son?

Jerry tries to talk to the group of boys that are having a swim; but they speak the local language and Jerry doesn’t. How difficult is to make friends with someone who speaks a different language? Do children and young people make friends more easily than mature people?

The gang of local boys have a leader. Do all the gangs have to have a leader? What are the qualities that a leader has to have (according to your opinion)?

There is a moment when Jerry acts out a foolish dog. Why do you think he reacts like this?

Jerry asks (in fact, demands) for some goggles and wants to have them immediately. What is the best way to behave in front of a demanding child?

Do you think that every child needs, in order to grow up, to get through a rite of passage?

The narrator says, “He would do it if it killed him”. Do you think this is a sign of maturity? Was his a sensible decision?

Why, when he could be a member of the gang, “he did not want them”?

It seems that the mother was unconscious of the dangers her child was in. Are we usually aware of the dangers our children are in?

What do you think is the meaning of the blood filling the goggles in relation to coming of age?

Why wasn’t Jerry’s mother impressed when he told her he could stay for more than two minutes under water?

VOCABULARY

blurted out, villa, worrying off, scoop, inlets, surf, craving, poised, bog, blank, feat, nagged, sequins, groped, frond, dizzy, overdo, weed, gout, scooped, glazed looking

The Rocking-Horse Winner, by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence at the Wikipedia

The Rocking-Horse Winner at the Wikipedia

A Summary and Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner

The Rocking-Horse Winner Study Guide

Audiobook

D. H. LAWRENCE, by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY

David Herbert Richards Lawrence, his birth name, was born in Eastwood,

England, the 11th of September 1885, and he died in Vence, France, on the 2nd of March 1930 (the cause of death was tuberculosis). He was married to Frida von Richthofen, a German literate.

Lawrence was an English writer, author of novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, travel books, paintings, translations, and literary criticism. His literature exposes an extensive reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. Lawrence views on all these matters caused him many personal problems. As a consequence, he had to spend most of his life in voluntary exile, which he himself called a “wild pilgrimage”. Among his most notable works there are Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He got distinctions like the James Tait Black Award.

In his childhood, he studied at Beauvale Board School, becoming the first local student to win a county council scholarship to Nottingham High School.

He also studied at the University of London, where served as a teacher and received a teaching diploma in 1908. In the autumn of the same year, Lawrence left the home of his youth for London, although he continued to work as a teacher for a few more years.

Lawrence had a very close relationship with his mother. 

He had an affair with a married woman six years older than him with three small children, and they flew to Freida’s parents’ home in Metz. Afterwards, they got married.

He spent the rest of his life travelling in the company of his wife around several countries. Finally, they arrived in the United States in September 1922, where they met Mabel Dodge Luhan, a public figure, and contemplated establishing a utopian community on what was then Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico.

They acquired the property, known today as the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

 

SUMMARY

The story tells of a middle-class family with three children (a boy and two girls), who live in a good house with a garden, with discreet servants. Although so that everyone could notice, they kept up appearances. The mother is haunted by a sense of failure, always thinking that she needs more than she has. Her husband did not earn as much as she wanted and the life he would like to have with her luxuries and extravagance. Her children feel this anxiety, even claiming they can hear the house whisper, “There must be more money.”
The boy Paul was playing with his wooden horse in search of luck and ordered his horse to take him where the luck is.
Basset, the gardener, told him about horse racing and the two became partners.
One day, the boy is questioned by his uncle on the subject, and he is surprised when he tells him the name of the winner. Uncle Oscar, intrigued, asks how he knows who will win, but Paul tells him that he only knows who wins and doesn’t tell him his secret. That’s how the guy finds out about his earnings and successes.
Uncle Oscar Cresswell becomes a partner with them. The boy and Bassett make huge bets on the horses Paul names.
When Paul decides to give the mother a gift of £1,000, on her every birthday, for five years, so that he can ease her commitments, but only makes her spend more.
Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be “lucky.” As the Derby draws near, Paul is determined to meet the winner.
The mother, returning from a party, discovers his secret; She has spent hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night, until he “arrives”, in a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner’s name.
Her uncle and the Gardener bet and won big on the investment of 14 to 1 of everything he had.
The mother now had a lot of money, but she did not have her son.

The boy told his mother, “Mom, I’ll ever leave you: I’m lucky”.

QUESTIONS

Talk about the main characters:

Paul
His mother
His father
His uncle
The gardener
Why do you think the mother couldn’t love her children?
Do you think money can make happiness?
And what about luck? Can it make you happy?
Being lucky is something that depends on the causality, or can you do something to be lucky? Remember the saying “Fortuna helps the brave”.
Are you pro or against lotteries? Why?
Paul’s mother became unlucky when she got married? Do you think marriage can change people so much?
Mantra is a commonly repeated word or phrase, especially in advocacy or for motivation. In the story we can find two or more mantras (“There must be more money”, “I want luck”). Do you think mantras can be useful or effective? (Perhaps you remember old people saying the rosary.)
Why do you think uncle Oscar is lucky?
Do you believe in intuitions or hunches?
The mother got some money for her birthday. Was she happy then? Why?
Does our childhood determine the way we are as adults?
Some interpretations of this story say that the boy has the Oedipal complex and that his rocking on the horse is like a kind of masturbation. What is your opinion about this interpretation?
What is the symbolic meaning of the story according to your point of view?

VOCABULARY

thrust, grinding, racked, champing, smirking, pram, brazening it out, peer, careered, steed, batman, blade, sport, honour bright, daffodil, romancer, fiver, spinning yarns, writs, writhed, drapers, sequins, overwrought, quaint, prance, uncanny, Master, as right as a trivet, tossing 

I Want to Know Why, by Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson at the Wikipedia

I Want to Know Why: Summary

I Want to Know Why: Analysis

I Want to Know Why: Review

I Want to Know Why: Audiobook

BIOGRAPHY

Sherwood Anderson was born in 1876 in Camden, Ohio.

He was the third of seven children. His mother died in 1895 and his father had started to disappear for weeks, and Sherwood took a number of jobs to support his family. Anderson's talent for selling was evident, he was very successful in this type of business.

In 1898, he signed up for the United States Army, and his company was sent to the war in Cuba. He met Cornelia Pratt, the daughter of a wealthy Ohio businessman, they were married and had three children, and he ran a number of businesses.

In November 1912, Anderson had a mental breakdown, he left his wife and their three children and decided to become a creative writer. He divorced Cornelia in 1916; later he got married to Mitchel, they divorced, and he got married again to Elizabeth; they divorced in 1932 he got married again to Eleanor Copenhaver.

In 1916, Anderson's first book, Windy Mc Pherson's Son, was released in 1916, and Anderson's most famous book, Winesburg, Ohio, was released in 1919. In 1923, Anderson published Many Marriages, where he explored the new sexual freedom. Dark Laughter appeared in 1925, and it was his only bestseller.

Anderson died in Panama in 1941 during a cruise to South America. He was buried in Marion, Virginia. The writing on his gravestone reads "Life, Not Death, is the Great Adventure".

ANALYSIS

In Beckersville, county of Kentucky, there lived a 15-year-old boy, who loved race horses. He sensed that a horse was going to win the race because, when he noticed it, it was difficult for him to swallow and his throat hurt. He was so excited about the horse racing environment, that every morning he would go to Ed Becker's stable to watch the horses training.

At the time of horse racing in Beckersville they only talked about horses, new foals, jockeys, races in Lexington, Louisville, Saratoga, etc...

This boy and three friends ran away from home to watch the great Mulford Handicap horse race in Saratoga.

In this race, the Sunstreak horse ran; it was one of those horses that caused a sore throat to the boy from Beckersville and was trained and ridden by Jerry Tillfort, a rider whom the boy admired for how well he treated the horse and how professional he was.

As expected, Sunstreak won the race. At night, the boy followed Jerry Tillford and his drunken friends to a farm where there were women with a bad reputation. There he saw his idol Tillford kissing one of them and saying that the race had been won by him and not by the horse.

So, the boy asks himself the question "I Want to Know Why" a man so good at horses could kiss a woman so bad.

I really liked the description

-first, of the hobby, enthusiasm and delusion for a certain event or job.

-second, of an important event that takes place in a certain location,

-and third, of the disappointment that a boy has when his idol lets him down.

 

QUESTIONS

Nigger is an offensive word. So, what do you call a person who is black? What do you call foreign people?
What are black people good at (according to the story)? What a black person (nigger in the story) would do and what wouldn’t he do?
Describe Bildad Johnson.
Do you know more clichés about black people or about different social groups?
“I wish I was a nigger”. Did you ever wish to be another person or to have another nationality or belong to another social group?
How far is Beckersville from Saratoga Springs? Explain their trip.
Talk about these characters:
--The protagonist
--The protagonist’s father
--Henry Rieback
--Henry Rieback’s father
Harry Hellinfinger’s jokes: can you explain them?
How does the narrator know when a horse is going to win? Do you have this kind of intuition for something, or do you know anybody who does?
Who’s Jerry Tillford?
What is the best smell in the world, according to the narrator? And for you?
Tell us about Sunstreak.
Describe the rummy looking farmhouse.
What happened when Jerry and his friends arrived at the rummy farmhouse? And when they were inside the house?
What do the protagonist and Jerry have in common?
What do you think or do when a person you hate (or you don’t like) love the same things as you? What are your feelings?

VOCABULARY

freight train, (race) track, nigger, scratch around, wheedle, colt, outfit, livery barn, lay low, cut out, be nabbed, squeal, give you away, gambler, sheet writer, faro, thoroughbred, gimlet, stunted, spunk, gobble, lit out, plow, gelding, Sam Hill, post, sire, itch, jawed, paddock, bugle, untrack, stallion, plunk, skin, rummy, fantods, homely, brag,