The Little Governess, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY 

This story deals with the naivety of a young woman and the lechery of a dirty old man who makes profit of her inexperience.

The protagonist, who has no name and so thus her innocence is highlighted, is a just graduated governess who travels from a British town to Munich to work as a tutor for a German family. She has never been abroad and, because of her ingenuousness, we can suppose she has neither been out nor away very often, and, as in the story there isn’t any mention of her family, we can think she has to be an orphan or an illegitimate daughter who has been raised in an institution and then sent to a boarding school, a case that wasn’t unusual in Great Britain in the 19^th century and at the beginning of the 20^th century.

The lady from the Governess Bureau who has found her a position in Augsburg, near Munich, gives her a lot of cautions to survive from all the dangers she is going to encounter during her trip. Perhaps this is the reason why the girl is afraid of everything and everybody. She is so afraid that she tends to behave clumsily to people she suspects they want to swindle or take advantage of her; but then, these people who have to serve her are even ruder.

On the ferry which crosses the English Channel, she accommodates in the cabin for women only and there she feels safe and happy. But when she arrives in France and has to take the train, the porter, or the station master, treats the poor girl very coarsely, and, when she doesn’t want to give him the tip, or pay the price he asks for, he takes his revenge leading a man to her carriage for Ladies Only and even stripping off the restrictive sign that would have protected her from male company.

However, the man in her carriage is old, extremely old, she believes; but he seems a very polite and respectable gentleman from Germany; we even know he has been a civil servant, and eventually our governess imagines that a man like him could have been her grandfather.

The little governess destination is a hotel in Munich where her employer, a wife’s doctor, is going to pick her up at six in the evening, and, as the train is arriving in the morning, the kind old man suggests her that would be interesting for her to pay a visit to the beautiful city, and he offers her to be her cicerone. The young woman has some doubts, but eventually accepts.

At the hotel, the girl again behaves clumsily, this time with the waiter, when she doesn’t want to tip him. Moreover, this waiter suspects there is an illicit relationship between her and the old man.

So the girl and the old man go round Munich to see the sights. The man is perhaps a little bit too attentive because he buys her some sausages, pays for her lunch, offers his umbrella and his arm when it’s raining…

When it’s time (and even late) to go back to the hotel to meet her employer, the old man insists her to show his little flat, telling her that she doesn’t have to worry because there is a housekeeper. But when she goes in, there’s nobody in his bachelor’s house; there he offers her some wine and asks her to give him a kiss; and, as she denies it, he assaults her and tries to steal a kiss in the mouth, and really he gets it. The girl defends herself, gets free and runs away from the flat. Now she has discovered the old man’s true nature.

In the street, she asks a policeman for a tram to the station, where her hotel is, but she doesn’t say anything about the assault. On the tram, although everybody can see she is in trouble, nobody offers to help her. In the end, she gets to the hotel and asks for the lady that had to come to pick her up. But the girl has arrived too late, and the lady, being tired of waiting, has gone away.

And now the waiter has had his revenge, because he has told the lady that the girl had gone with a suspicious man. Moreover, he doesn’t tell the girl if the woman is going to come back to pick her up the next day, so the governess is in a big trouble: she doesn’t know if the lady is going to keep the position for her. What is she going to do now?

 

As you can see, this story is very different from the others we have read by Katherine Mansfield: there is a continuum and a crescendo in the narrative, and we foresee that a disgrace is going to fall down upon the girl. We can see the famous cliché about appearances being deceptive. We can also find a kind of morality in the story: don’t trust anybody because they can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In fact, this story is a Mansfield version of the Red Riding Hood, the famous tale for children. However, the primitive tale ended badly, like Mansfield’s, very differently from the modern versions whose intention is entertaining children without frightening them. So, the question will be: what kind of truths must we tell our children: the real cruel ones or the sweet and perhaps false ones?

 

QUESTIONS

-Do you agree with people who don’t want to take their children to a public school? Do you think it’s better a public education than a private one?

-“It’s better to mistrust people at first sight than to trust them.” Is it your opinion too? Why?

-Do you have a point of view about these “ladies’ compartments”? Do you think they are necessary to protect women?

-The way she treated the porter (and the waiter at the hotel), was it a bit haughty?

-Are her fears for real, or only fancies of an inexpert woman?

-“Most old men were so horrid.” According to you, is this most young people’s opinion?

-When and why does she start to trust the old man?

-“She felt she had known him for years.” When do you say this about a new acquittance?

-“His hand shook, and the wine spilled over the tray.” What happened exactly to the old man in his flat?

-Why the tram was “full of old men with twitching knees”, according to what the little governess saw?

-Is this a moral story? What is its morality?

 

VOCABULARY

porter, rub up, tucked up, pink-sprigged, pounced, cinders, flicking, spick and span, doddery, tangerines, pouted, dimpled, attar, cupped, swooped 

AUDIOBOOK

REVIEW

ANALYSIS

Little Red Riding Hood, by Roald Dahl

Freeway (a cinema version of the tale)

Susanna and the Elders

Feuille d'Album, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Núria Lecina

The title is the same as Chopin’s musical composition that remembers love in spring, when new flowers and leaves begin to grown. This piece was dedicated to the countess Szeremtieff.
The text is narrated in the third person by an unknown narrator. In some moments, another narrator takes part with some question or comment. There are a lot of changes in the narration. The text it’s full of descriptions of the main character, other people and places or atmosphere.

Ian is the main character. He is a young painter who lives alone in Paris, in a typical French building in a top flat in front of Senna’s River. The description that Katherine writes shows us different aspects of the boy, sometimes contradictory.

We read that at first glance he seems an interesting man, elegant, clever and handsome. In spite of that, we read that he also is an impossible man, unbearably heavy and especially shy, very shy. He has difficulties to achieve a normal social relationship, and his relationships with women who are interested in him always end badly. Ian doesn’t answer to the kindnesses of these women. He hides inside his shell, like a tortoise. He closes and disappears.

He lives in his own world; he has an introvert life with his own routines. He is excessively tidy with home things. He thinks about his economy and the way to organize his savings. All in his life has to follow some pattern to be right. For instance, in front of his bed, there is a notice with this advice: GET UP AT ONCE.

One afternoon he was in the window having a snack when he saw a girl in the building across the way in front of him. The girl went out to the balcony with a flower’s pot. She was a bit odd in her clothes and maybe in the way she spoke to another person. He didn’t know who spoke to her. Perhaps somebody she lived with?

At this moment Ian understood that she was the only person he really wanted to meet. She appeared to be the same age as him. He fell in love with her just at that moment. He began to imagine things about her life and also how his life would be like with her. But the girl did not notice the presence of someone watching her. She carried on his routines.

From this day, he felt a change in his life: he had a challenge and this was to get as fast as he could a new pattern of behaviour to order his routines and actions: NOT TO LOOK AT HER AND NOT TO THINK ABOUT HER UNTIL THE PAINTING IS FINISHED.

Ian wanted to meet the girl, but he hadn’t any idea of what to do. He didn’t have experience in this matter. His shyness drowned him. Every day he observed the girl, every time he had more and more desire to meet her. One day he discovered that every Thursday she went out with a basket, probably shopping. One Thursday, when the girl left home, Ian decided to act. He went down to the street and followed her. He saw more and more clearly that they were soulmates.

She seemed lonely, serious. Then he saw the opportunity. She entered a shop and bought an egg, only one. The same that he would have chosen. When the girl came out, he went into the store and bought the same. Quickly he followed her, and when she arrived to her building and entered the lobby, he went in behind her and said:

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle, I think you dropped this”, and he showed her the egg.

And he handed her his own egg!!!

That scene seems taken from a basic manual to begin relationships. Maybe the object isn’t the most appropriate, but I hope everything will work very well with them.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

As in Chopin’s composition, Ian finds love, and it appears suddenly, like leaves (feuilles) and flowers in Spring. In this short story, Katherine Mansfield presents the awakening of the love in a young man. One man that, in spite of his difficulty with relationships, has the same emotions and feelings as the other people.

In my opinion, Ian suffers some dysfunction in social abilities. He constantly needs rules for his actions, he always needs order around him. It seems he is afraid in front of new situations; this is, from my point of view, the reason why he doesn’t answer people and hides like a tortoise. Maybe he suffers from some minor autistic disorder.

QUESTIONS

-Why does he say “you nearly screamed” when the boy was in your studio?

-Who was the person “who started to give him a mother’s tender care”?

-When do you know that someone is an artist?

-What kind of pictures do you imagine Ian French painted?

-How do you imagine the family’s girl and the girl’s character?

-Why did he give her an egg at the end of the story? What does the egg symbolize?

-What is the meaning of the title?

 

VOCABULARY

rousing, stony, rag-time, Broken Doll, fishy, ladling, booths, awning, still life, spangle, peppered, daffodils, draper's, dairy

 ANALYSIS

ANOTHER ANALYSIS

MEANING OF THE TITLE

Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK 

SUMMARY, by Paquita Gómez

When the cold arrives and the new Season starts, Miss Brill usually goes out every Sunday evening to listen to the band playing songs and to see the performance they usually make. This is her pleasure routine for every week at the same time.

But last Sunday, she decided to take her appreciated fur and put it around her neck.

It is a treasure for her, and she keeps it in a box when she doesn’t use it.

She has some feelings about it. For this reason, she takes it on her lap and strokes it.

When she is out, sitting and watching the band, she is also looking the people around her she notices the clothes they are wearing and, if they are talking, she pretends to listen to the music, but she normally wants to guess the conversation and the lives of the people.

Miss Brill always goes alone. However, she would like to talk to people who are next to her, but in this case, they don’t look forward to talk. She feels exciting contemplating people and imagining about them.

Some Sundays there is a surprise waiting for her when she comes back home, but today she isn’t going to have the usual treat.

She lives in a dark room like a cupboard.
As usual, she puts the fur into the box without looking inside. But suddenly, she thought she heard something crying.

QUESTIONS

What is exactly a fur? What do you think about using animal fur for clothes?

Do you like observing people passing by? Do you have a personal story about it?

What kind of people sat down there to listen to the band?

What do you think their “special seat” was?

Did you read aloud stories for your children? Can you tell us one? Have you ever read aloud for other people?

How does the narrator inform us about what was the time in the story?

On page 227, at the beginning, “A beautiful woman came along and dropped her bunch of flowers […] if they’d been poisoned”. Can you imagine and tell us the story behind these sentences?

At the end, why does the writer say “something was crying” instead of “she was crying”?

 

VOCABULARY

conductor, rooster, "flutey", staggerer, paired, stiff, flicked ... away, pattered, part, yacht, mug, whiting, treat, dashing, necklet

Wikipedia

The Canary, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK

ANOTHER AUDIOBOOK (with text)

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

In this very short story, a woman explains she has had a canary for some time, at home, a canary that sang in an incredibly beautiful way. She could not describe enough how lovely the bird’s songs were, she assumed that those bird’s sounds were like full songs.
Even the passers-by stopped at the gate to listen to that marvellous singing.

The woman describes what that small pet meant for her and the communication that existed between them. We readers don’t know much about the lady. We don’t know her name, or where she lives. We understand that she has no relatives or friends living with her, no husband.

She has a house with a garden, to which she dedicates some time every day.

It seems that three young men (maybe guests?) go every evening for supper, the lady prepares it for them. They perhaps spend a while reading in the dining-room, but never have a conversation with her. Moreover, she was called “the Scarecrow”, but she didn’t mind.

The lady believed that every person should love something in this live, it doesn’t matter a lot what it was. For instance, she cared about the flowers in her garden. Or she loved the evening star, shining to her in the back yard, after sunset.

Until one day, when a bird’s seller arrived to the house and showed her that canary in a tiny cage, the bird gave a faint tweet, and she clearly knew that one was her canary; she thought “there you are, my darling”.

After the canary arrived to share the lady’s life, she forgot flowers and the star. Every moment of the day, bird and woman established a routine of communication and understanding. It was lovely company what the bird signified, the small animal seemed to recognize his owner feelings, and comforted her in case of trouble. 

The lady knew that, for a person who never kept birds, all that was difficult to accept. It’s normally considered that cats and dogs can offer that sort of comprehension, not birds, but she could affirm those ideas were untrue.

We readers can imagine the sad end of the story; naturally the little bird died. And after the descriptions we have read, it is easy to imagine the lady’s sadness. She would never ever have another pet, something died in her, although she had a cheerful mode. A different, new sorrow, hid deep inside, stayed there, hurting at any moment.

Perhaps the same kind of deep sorrow was the reason for the canary singing? Has it had the same pain?

Are birds in a cage singing for their freedom?

QUESTIONS

-What can be the meaning of the three dots at the beginning of (almost) each paragraph?

-Do / did you have a bird pet? Tell us about it.

-Do you talk to your pets? How do you talk to them?

-What is the evening star? Can you identify stars and planets in the sky? Do you believe that planets and stars determine or influence our lives?

-A goldfinch is a kind of bird. What do you know about the novel The Goldfinch?

-And what about plants? Do you like tending them? Do you talk to them? Have you heard of “embracing trees”? Have you ever tried it? Do you think plants have feelings?

-Who do you think is the woman in the story? And the three men? What is the relation between them?

-Can you explain the last sentence: “But isn’t it extraordinary that under his sweet, joyful little singing it was just this -sadness?- Ah, what is it? -that I heard?”

 

VOCABULARY

verandah, goldfinches, gum tree, regular, chickweed, showing off

Lawrence of Arabia, by Graham Swift

Old Harry Rocks at Studland

SUMMARY, by Adriana Cruz 

This fragment makes us reflect on situations and moments in life that are marked and that we leave our marks. It starts with Hettie who is in the guest bedroom looking at the painting on the wall and thinking how graceful death can be. From then on, several reports of her wedding and honeymoon, then the gratitude for her sister-in-law having received her at Christmas and how they felt more like sisters and all the protection she gave her.

They say that no matter how much we prepare for death, we are never prepared. No one knows the date or the weather. 

Her husband Roy had died just before Christmas. She left the hospital, took a bus and didn’t understand why all this was going on, she didn’t want to accept it. She just wanted Roy to be with her. Then, inside the bus, she sees Peter O’Toole all over the newspapers. He, too, had died. She didn’t see the actor, but Lawrence of Arabia in his white robe, it was as if he had died again. 

What she demonstrates at the end, comparing the physical aspects between the two men (who didn’t have any resemblance) is the acceptance of him. Saying that it was just as his younger brother was before, just as Nelson Mandela was too, would change nothing because he is gone too.

QUESTIONS

What do you know about Peter O'Toole and Lawrence of Arabia? (Do some research, please.)

And about Nelson Mandela? (Do some research, please.)

Can you give us some information about Studland and the Scilly Isles?

We couldn’t choose a day to be born, and we won’t be able to choose a day to die. All our life is between two random dates: all our life, is it a product of the chance, or can we really conduct our lives?

What do you think about these couple that wanted to have a baby the 1^st of January 2000 / 2001, that is, the beginning of the 21^st Century?

What do you know about Harold Wilson? (Do some research, please.)

Would you feel better if you die in company of famous people? And in a big accident, with a lot of casualties? Or with someone you loved (suicide by love)?

“Peter O’Toole suddenly came along? And what girl wouldn’t? In her dreams.” Who were your favourite actors/actresses, your idols? Why?

How do you feel when a global event stifles your personal event?

Why do you think the story is in the second person?

 

VOCABULARY

rallies, crows, crones, crumple-faced, tinsel, cracker, amenity, squinty, peek-a-boo

People Are Life, by Graham Swift

Crisis in Six Scenes, by Woody Allen

PEOPLE ARE LIFE, by Aurora Ledesma

 Vangeli, a Greek Cypriot barber, is cutting the hair of an elderly customer. It’s the last customer of the day for him, and he is quite tired when the working day is over.  The customer confesses that is mother has just died. He had lived with his parents all his life and feels a bit abandoned now.

The barber senses that the man’s reflection in the mirror reveals more than his speech. Vangeli tries to sympathise but wants to know what is the full message. He asks himself, What is he telling me? That he is all alone in the world?

The barber offers the consolation that is apparently expected of him with phrases like:

“Well it had to happen”, “Sooner or later”, “Eighty – Three’s not a bad age”, “But you have friends”, “If you have people to see and talk to, then you have friends”, “If you have people, you have life”.

The talkative barber narrator dispenses bits of wisdom like the story title to the customers who want a little philosophy with their hair-cut.

The protagonist is just as lonely and friendless as his customer. His mother and father died years ago in Cyprus. His English wife Irene died too, just three years ago. They’d been split up for years. He has two grown-up boys also who are both in computers and are embarrassed by their father who’s just been a barber all his life. Despite his loneliness and his problems, he says nothing to his customers. He knows how to listen to the sorrows of the others but he has no one to tell his own. At the end of the day, what he likes most is to get home and have a beer.

When he finishes serving his customers, he pats them on the shoulder and tells them.

-“ Thank you for the tip, and now go and live your life”.

  

Some reflections

The story makes us reflect on the true childhood friends with whom we shared everything, our homes, games, worries, sorrows and joys, friends with whom we spent all our time together and later in adulthood we wonder, where are the real friends now? Maybe, like the barbershop customer, we only have people with whom to share anecdotes in a café. Even the protagonist Vangeli, who, after a lifetime in England, doesn’t know the names of his customers and is surprised by some English reactions, doesn’t have real friends.

QUESTIONS

Can you make a summary of the narrator’s life?

“People are life” versus misanthropy / loneliness. What are the benefits and the shortcomings of one kind of attitude versus another?

“The last costumer is different”. Do you think people treat costumers differently according to the time of the day? For the barber, why the last one is different?

Different kinds of friendship: people to whom you say hello, people who you meet, mates at work, friends… How can you define true friendship? Is a real friend “someone you can talk to”?

Is a barber a kind of psychologist, philosopher, confessor (he didn’t know his costumers’ names)? And the hairdresser?

What do you think of this type of communication?: The barber looks at the man who is talking to through the mirror. Is it similar to the communications through mobiles or computers?

Do you think there is a relation between the way you wear your hair and your personality? And what about your hair’s shape, colour…?

“We are in each other’s lives: that’s having friends”: do you think is it a good definition? Why?

What do you know about Cyprus? History, politics…

Did the costumer really need a haircut? How do you know? Do you go to the hairdresser if you have to go to a funeral?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ jobs? Are there “low” jobs or only “low paid jobs”? Who usually does the “low paid jobs” nowadays?

“It’s how the English are.” What are English people like? Is it all clichés?

Do you think is it easy to become a barber?

What differences can you find between a barber and a women’s hairdresser?

 

VOCABULARY

snipped, hefty, tough, crinkly, clippers, split up, gabble away, regular, flick

Mrs Kaminski, by Graham Swift

Mrs Kaminski

This is a very short story about a woman who went dizzy in the street, fell over and was taken to a hospital. There’s a sad/funny dialogue between the woman and the doctor because the woman is very old, and also a bit confused, and the doctor very young.

 

 

QUESTIONS

Tell us the story of Mrs Kaminsky.

What can you say about Tooting?

And about Lodz?

What do you know about Polish pilots in the RAF?

What do you know about Polish people migrating to the UK? Have you seen the film Moonlighting, starring Jeremy Irons?

Is the woman senile? Can you tell some anecdotes about senile people?

Is it easy for a young person to understand a very old person? What do you think they are the points where it’s easy to have misunderstandings or difficulties in understanding between them?

 

VOCABULARY

(funny/nasty) turn

boilerman

dab

 

A Bit of Singing and Dancing, by Susan Hill

Susan Hill at the Wikipedia

Susan Hill at the British Council

Susan Hill's website

A Bit of Singing and Dancing, analysis

A Bit of Singing and Dancing, summary

The Woman in Black, film

BIOGRAPHY

She was born in 1942 in Scarborough, a tourist resort on the East coast in the North of England, where we have to suppose our story is situated. When she was sixteen, her family moved to Coventry, where her father worked in a car factory.

He got a degree of English at the King's College in London.

She got married; her husband died, and she got married again, and they went to live in Stratford-upon-Avon. She had two daughters. Later, she left him and went to live with a Barbara Machin.

She founded her own publishing company.

She wrote mainly ghost stories, as The Woman in Black, (adapted as a play and still on the stage in London) and crime novels, but also stories like the one we’re reading, or, for example, a novel set in the WWI, Strange Meeting, or Mrs de Winter (1999), a sequel to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. She explores the childhood cruelty in the short story The Badness Within Him, and in the novel The King of the Castle (it won the Somerset Maughan Award). She has edited several anthologies of short stories, including two volumes of The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories.

Hill's prose flirts at times with a romantic image of an aristocratic England and a sentimental vision of the country before (or during) the war and imperial decline.

SUMMARY

Esme is a 5o year old woman who, as an only daughter, has had to take care during eleven years of her bedridden mother. Now her mother is dead, and a free future, open to all sort of possibilities, lays open in front of her. Nevertheless, her mother’s voice recurrently goes on admonishing her inside her head. But one day, a curious stranger comes to her door looking for a room to rent, although she had not even though about it. Of a sudden, she decides to rent him her mother’s room. Are they going to get on well? Would he be a trustworthy guest?

QUESTIONS

Do a bit of research and tell us what kind of TV programmes were “Morecombe and Wise” and “Black and White minstrels”. And who was Doctor Crippen (10, 11)?

What TV programmes used to see the old generation. And the new? Do young people watch TV?

How long are people in mourning? What do people do to show they are mourning (e.g. clothes)?

“An argument sharpen the mind”. What does this saying imply? Who were the sophists?

Talking about the will: what is your opinion about the government’s taxes on properties given in a will?

We usually see British or American funerals in movies. What are the differences between these and the funerals we celebrate here?

“You will feel the real shock later.” What do you think is the reason for this?

Esme tends to do the same things her mother did, although she hated these things in  her mother. Did you find yourself in a similar situation, and if you did, what do you think it’s the cause?

Why “Park Close could be a “comfortable” address?

In the story, there is a blatant ellipsis: the moment before Mr Curry holds a pickle with his fork. Can you explain what happened in this ellipsis?

“To stay young, you have to be constantly surprised.” How can one be constantly surprised?

Where is Mr Curry from? How do you know?

What is the meaning of “sound of wind and limb”?

“I am the kind of person who needs to give service.” Is an altruist person better than an egoist one? Don’t they do what they do for their own pleasure? What do you think about this?

“One is never old to learn, Mr Curry” What can people learn when they are old?

The story has an ending, but I think it could go on. Can you imagine a new ending?

VOCABULARY

shingle, banked-up, pipes, gale, sleet, pinched, scones, indulge, news items, bedridden, gulls, outing, will, extravagance, giddy, twilight, crawling, crooners, jabbed, runner, hoard, ruthlessly, cuff links, spruce, darn, rash, untapped, bulky, trimmed, loft, thatch, sinewy, bereaved, seances, curtailed, gave... away, bring-and-busy sales, coffee morning, dearth, carnation, dapper, boater, charabancs, putting green, despise