Katherine Mansfield

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 1

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 2

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 3

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 4

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 5

A Picture of KM. BBC. Episode 6

A Portrait of Katherine Mansfield

Short Stories Audio BBC

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF HER LIFE

Katherine Mansfield was born in 1888, in Kaori, near Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. There are two main islands in New Zealand, the North Island where the capital is and another important city, Auckland, and the South Island, with Christchurch as the most populated city there. But, at that moment, all the New Zealander cities were almost villages.
Her father, Harold Beauchamp, was an Australian who had made his living with business related to gold mines. Then he immigrated to New Zealand and, little by little, achieved a very important position in society and became a magnate of finances, and even he was made a knight for his services to the British Empire.

Katherine had two older sisters and a younger sister and a younger brother. Their parents give them some education and encouraged them to play the piano, to learn how to paint, to read, etc.

You have to remember that New Zealand was the first country in the world where women had the right to vote, in 1893.

At 14, Katherine Mansfield fell in love with a neighbour, Arnold Trowell, a cellist, and from that moment she decided she wanted to be a musician.

When she was 15, her father decided to send his three older girls to London to study at Queen’s College, a very liberal school in Bloomsbury, a neighbourhood in London. Bloomsbury was also the name of a group of intellectuals with a great influence in arts and science.

There she starts her long-life friendship with Ida Baker. It was a singular relationship because Ida (whom Katherine Mansfield called her “wife”) was (perhaps) her lover, her loyal friend but also her slave. Ida Baker wrote a book about Katherine Mansfield with the title Katherine Mansfield, The Memoirs of L.M., being L.M. Lesley Moore, a male name that Katherine Mansfield gave her.

She was at Queen’s College for 3 years; then she had to go back to New Zealand, but she couldn’t stand the provincial life of her native country and, in the end, she convinced her father to allow her to travel again to the UK and stay there with an annual allowance. She was 20.

She accommodated in a student hostel with a lot of freedom.

There she got in contact again with Arnold Trowell, but she fell in love with his brother Garnet, a violinist. She got pregnant, but we don’t know if he knew it. And then, all of a sudden, she got married to George Bowden, a singing teacher 10 years her senior. Nobody knows for sure the reasons of this marriage. The wedding was a surrealistic affair: she wore black, Ida was their only witness, and she left her husband the wedding night without consuming the marriage. George didn’t want to give her the divorce for six years.

She left the idea of being a musician and bet on being a writer.

Her mother knew about all the affair and travelled to London to take her daughter to a small spa in Bavaria. But they quarrelled, and she disinherited her forever, left her there and went back to New Zealand.

In this spa, Katherine Mansfield had a miscarriage. Her stay in Germany was the ground of her book In a German Pension.

She became briefly involved with a Polish translator, Floryan Sobieniowsky, who infected her with gonorrhoea; that was possibly the cause of her bad health during all her life, her rheumatism, her infertility, surely of her tuberculosis and her premature death. But, thanks to Floryan, she knew Chekhov. A story of hers, The-Child-Who-Was-Tired, a version of a Chekov’s short story (Sleep), almost a plagiarism, was published in 1910 in the magazine The New Age and marks the introduction of this Russian writer to the English critics and readers.

She went back to London, and since then, she moved house restlessly, mostly due to shortness of money.

She published In a German Pension, and she met John Murry, an undergraduate from Oxford, editor of Rhythm, who was going to be her partner, lover and husband in a very troublesome relationship. Their relationship began when she accommodated him in her flat and asked him to make her his mistress. Katherine then worked in his magazine writing book reviews.

Murry and Katherine met D. H. Lawrence and his lover Frieda, and went to live together in Cornwall in a kind of commune; but the society only lasted six months. The characters Gerald and Gudrun in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love are the portraits of Murry and Katherine.

In 1914 the Great War started, and in 1915 her brother Leslie, her favourite in her family, died in an army training.

She met people from the Bloomsbury Group. Leonard Bloom published her Prelude, and she had affairs with members of the group. Her relationship with Virginia Woolf was of admiration and jealousy.

At 29, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but she didn’t want to go to a sanatorium. She went to live in the South of France, where a lot of English people with the same illness tried to recover their health.

These last years of her life were her most productive in literature. She published Bliss in 1918 and The Garden Party and Other Stories in 1922.

From the South of France she went to Paris looking for a cure with a famous bacteriologist, and then to Fontainebleau, where a Russian exile (George Gurdjieff) ruled an alternative community that tried to live nearer the nature.

She died from a massive haemorrhage in January 1923.
The Dove’s Nest, Something Childish but Very Natural, her letters and diaries were published posthumously by her husband John Murry.

Third Act. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

SUMMARY

John and Algernon are worried because their name isn’t Ernest, and Cecily and Gwendolen feel deceived and disappointed for the same. The boys’ only solution is getting re-baptized. While they are thinking about that, Lady Bracknell arrives in search of her run-away daughter. She forbids her to be engaged to John. Then Algernon informs her aunt that he’s engaged to Cecily, and in the end aunt Augusta gives her approbation; but, unfortunately, they can't get married until John, Cecily’s guardian, gives his consent, and that will be when Lady Bracknell gives hers to him. While they are debating this, Miss Prism appears; Lady Bracknell recognizes her, and, thanks to this meeting, John discovers who really is and what his real name is.
At the end there are some marriages and lots of happiness.

Oscar Wilde Documentary (video)

Great Lives: Oscar Wilde. BBC radio

ACTORS AND ACTRESSES on the radio play:

Terence Alexander
as Merryman

Samantha Bond
as Gwendolen

Miriam Margolyes
as Miss Prism

Michael Hordern
as Lane

Michael Sheen
as John Worthing

Martin Clunes
as Algernon Moncrieff

Judy Dench
as Lady Bracknell

John Moffat
as Cannon Chasuble

Amanda Root
as Cecily

Second Act: The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

The place where the second act is situated is in the Manor House, in the country.
As we already know, Algernon Moncrieff has surreptitiously got Cecily’s address and is determined to visit her, as he has fallen in love with her… without even having ever met her.

The first scene is in the garden. Cecily is studying with Miss Prism, but she doesn’t like the subjects her governess proposes her.

Unexpectedly for them, Algernon arrives under the name of Ernest Worthing, the wicked brother invented by Jack Worthing. Cecily is so happy to meet him, that she immediately falls in love with him.

They both go in the house and, while they are inside, Jack arrives and communicates the sad news of his brother death to Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble, the parson, without knowing that Algernon/Ernest is there. A moment later, Algernon/Ernest and Cecily come out to the garden and meet them. Jack has a big surprise and has to pretend that Ernest death has been a misunderstanding or a bad joke.

In the second scene, Gwendolen arrives to visit Jack/Ernest, and she meets Cecily. Then they are enormously puzzled because they both say they are engaged to Ernest. Fortunately for them, they discover that they’re two different young men, and that none of them (unfortunately for the boys) is called Ernest. Cecily and Gwendolen are very disappointed, but they end forgiving their lovers.

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Some films: 

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Frame of The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Wilde (1997)

The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)

Happy Prince, "La importancia de llamarse Oscar Wilde",  (2018)

The importance... a radio play: BBC audio

The Importance of Being Earnest was a very successful play in London at the end of the 19th century, but its performances stopped when Oscar Wilde became convicted for “gross indecency” and sent to prison.

There are some versions of the same play. Ours has three acts.

In the first act, Algernon Moncrieff gets some visitors at home. The first visitor is his friend Ernest Worthing; in his visit, we discover that his real name isn’t Ernest, but Jack (a form of John). Algernon also finds that Ernest is the tutor of a very beautiful young ward called Cecily Cardew, and immediately he falls in love with her.

Next visitors are his aunt Augusta (Lady Bracknell) and her daughter Gwendolen. While Aunt Augusta, with the help of Algernon, is selecting some music for a party she’s going to have that evening, Ernest/Jack proposes to Gwendolen, and she says yes. Aunt Augusta comes back suddenly, reproaches the couple’s behaviour and attitude and, obviously, cancels the engagement. However, she asks some questions to Ernest/Jack in order to discover if he is an eligible man for her daughter; when she knows that he has no parents and has been adopted, she discards him absolutely and forbids him to approach Gwendolen.

By chance (and listening attentively) Algernon gets to know Cecily’s address in the country, and decides to visit her.

 

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and died in Paris at the age of 46.

He was the son of an important poetess of the Irish Literary Renaissance.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin and then to Oxford. After that, he settled in London, where he got the reputation of a clever wit for his writings and lectures. His epigrams and paradoxes are famous. He also went to the USA to deliver lectures.

But he got his literary position thanks to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and to his play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He also wrote some short stories, e.g. The Happy Prince, and some poems, e.g. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

At the age of 30, he got married and had two children.

Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, his lover) for criminal libel and lost the trial. As a consequence of the information appeared in the trial relative to his sexual behaviour (“the love that dare not speak its name”), he was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labour. Once he got out of prison, he went to Paris, where he spent his three last years of life, impoverished and abandoned from everybody.

His tomb is in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Funny Little Snake, by Tessa Hadley

Funny Little Snake in The New Yorker

SUMMARY

Gil (or Gilbert) a 50-year-old history professor, divorced and remarried, feels his duty to invite her only child, a 9-year-old daughter with his first wife and whom he hasn’t seen for 5 years, to spend a few days with him and his new young wife, Valerie, in their house in the north of England, away from London, where his ex-wife lives.

Gil drives to pick up his daughter Robyn, but then, once he’s at home, leaves her to the absolute care of his wife, with the excuse of too much work. Valerie, who didn’t know anything about her nor about children in general, can see now that Robyn is a poor very underdeveloped shy child and is puzzled about how to deal with her. But she tries to do her best.

The day to take her back to her mother arrives, and Gil again, with the excuse of too much work, asks Valerie to do the errand and take the girl back to London by train, and that isn’t a short trip.

So to London they go. There Valerie discovers what kind of person is Marise, Robyn’s mother: a sophisticated ex-hippie who is living with a much younger musician, Jamie, and who doesn’t know her anything about the duties of a parent. Now Valerie understands why the girl is so immature in body and mind.

Valerie has to spend the night at her mother’s intending to go back home the next day, but the next day is snowing, and the trains aren’t working very well, so she has to wait in London. She doesn’t like being with her mother and doesn’t know what to do in the meanwhile. She goes for a walk, and her steps, or her tube, takes her unconsciously to Marise’s. Not knowing why and how, now she’s standing near the house. Robyn is looking out of the window and, after a while, sees Valerie and starts to wave frantically at her. Suddenly, Valerie is thinking about rescuing her.

But we aren’t going to be spoilers…
Is she really going to try and rescue her? What will Marise say and do? What about Jamie? And Gil, would he like Valerie’s idea?

QUESTIONS

How does the narrator show that Robyn is a defenceless child?

Is there any irony in the character’s names? Robyn, Valerie, Gil (Gilbert) Hope, Marise, Jamie…

What kind of relationship is there between Gil and Valerie? How do you know?

And with Marise? Why did they get married, and why did they separate? Why does Gil hate Marise so much now?

Do you think it’s possible to be leftist in politics and traditional or rightist in personal questions?

Gil married two uneducated wives: Why do you think he did so, being himself so educated?

What do you think about this: is a self-made man more or less tolerant with people who haven’t been able to go up in life?

What does Gil think about his mother? And Valerie about hers?

What kind of toys did Robyn have? What games did she play?

In your opinion, why does Gil talks about himself in the third person when he’s asking for a favour to Valerie?

According to Valerie, “important men had to be selfish in order to get ahead”. What is your point of view about this?

What are the differences between sitting room and drawing room? And about tea (in the afternoon / evening) and supper or dinner?

Why do you think Marise and Jamie are partners? Is there love between them?

Does Marise love her child? How do you know?

Do you think Valerie has different manners with Gil when she’s at home from when she’s at Marise’s?

What is the relation of the title with the story?

What is the symbolic meaning of the “stuffed birds and that horse” at Marise’s?

What is the meaning of “Gilbert sitting there steering along in the little cockpit”?

Does the snow and the end of the story work as a symbol? What symbol?

Why, according to your view, does Valerie go to rescue Robyn? And why does Jamie help her? Why does Robyn want to get away with Valerie?
In your opinion, what is going to happen when Valerie gets home with Robyn? How is Gil going to react?
The last sentence says: “Just for the moment, though, the child was inconsolable”? Why was she so?

Another summary

Dido's Lament, by Tessa Hadley

Dido's Lament, on The New Yorker (text, and audio, read by the author)

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

Lynette was 30 years old, she was tall, with brown freckly skin; she was original and eager, and she was wearing a wool coat that she had found in a charity shop.

It was winter at 5 pm, after work, when she went into John Lewis store to buy some things she needed. Leaving the stores and heading to the corridors and subway platforms, a man making his way through the crowd hit her, causing great pain in her ankle, so she decided to follow him to demand an apology, but, when she touched him, she realized that it was Toby, her ex-husband whom she had left 9 years ago, possibly because he wasn’t her type. Toby was glad to see her, and Lynette saw that Toby had changed: he has gone from being shy with the air of a country boy to seeing himself as a mundane and prosperous man. Currently, he had created a new production company that brought him a good income.

She had failed in the attempt to being a singer since her voice did not meet the conditions. Now, she had a temporary job at the BBC: in short, things were not going very well for her.

Toby told her that he had married Jaz, and they had two daughters and that he and his wife were very happy. Lynette lied when she said that she had a good boyfriend.

The bars were full of people, so Toby invited her to his house in Queen’s Park because his wife and his daughters had gone to her sister’s house. The house was located in a good area, the exterior appearance of the house was perfect and, inside, it was spacious with an old and modern decoration, and beautiful functional furniture. She realized that what the house contained was Toby’s liking.

Toby thought that he had done well to take Lynette home since in a bar he would have fallen into a flirtation under Lynette’s control, while, in his family’s house, everything was more transparent.

Before leaving, Lynette wrote her phone number on a blackboard. When Toby was left alone at home, he erased the phone number because he did not want to put everything together, family, work and home to maintain a relationship with Lynette. Lynette went to a bar near Toby’s house and saw that she had left the cheap clothes she had bought at John Lewis in Toby’s home.

She thought that Toby would call her, or maybe not. Lynette came to the conclusion that it was better to be free and, if she wasn’t, it was necessary.

QUESTIONS

-Bearing in mind Lynette’s physical appearance, what can you say about her personality?

-Do you think Toby didn’t notice he struck somebody going into the tube?

-The way you see it, what are Lynette’s reasons to follow obstinately the man who struck her?

-In your opinion, did he know somebody was following him?

-Can you always justify someone’s unconsciousness / abstraction?

-What do you think were the reasons for their divorce? Was one of them guiltier than the other?

-Did Toby prosper more than Lynette because of their divorce?

-Her having ancestors from Sierra Leone, does it have any relevance for her personality, for her divorce, for the story?

-She says she isn’t of the marrying kind nor the mothering kind. Don’t you think these situations come from chances rather from our will?

-Why did she lie about having a boyfriend and about meeting some friends of her?

-According to you, why did he invite her to his house, and why did she accept?

-To your mind, why didn’t she tell him about his clashing her in the tube?

-“She was afraid that his loving kindness might enclose her too entirely, like a sheath.” When can love and tenderness be scary?

-She was also afraid of his subordination. Why?

-“Men always run their women together into a continuum.” What does this sentence mean?

-Why does she think “Toby had opted for an easy, chummier life”?

-What is the author’s purpose when she mentions the car accident?

-Do you think that Lynette, when she wanted the divorce, resorted to the old cliché of not being free to give herself to work completely?

-What do you know about Dido’s Lament and about Dido and Aeneas?

-What do you imagine is the relation between the title and the story?

-Can you explain why she gave him her telephone number? And why did he erase it immediately?

-She forgot a bag in Toby’s house and Toby hid it to prevent his wife to see it. Did he still have any feelings for Lynette? What’s his relation with Jaz like?

-Do you think the story has an open ending, or it’s definitely finished?

 

VOCABULARY

John Lewis, fuming, funnelling, tartan, branded, hem, forging, trudging, tearing, Oyster card, escalator, filled out, wizened, dilapidated, smug, temp, temping, Sierra Leone, wincing, thrumming, children's teatime, devious, earnest, taking in, scuffed, rocking horse, goaded, barley sugar, simpering, chummier, juggernaut, ruddy, russet, guesting, accretions, Calpol, ranting, chalkboard

Dido's Lament, from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell

First on the Scene, by Graham Swift

 SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma

Frame from Jindabyne

This is Terry’s story. Terry is an old man suffering from Parkinson’s. He and his wife Lynne used to take the train almost every week and, after an hour’s journey, they would arrive at a quiet place, where they liked to walk and enjoy the beautiful views.

Because of his illness, he could not drive, and his wife didn’t know how to drive, so the train was ideal for them. In this way, they were able to discover wonderful landscapes that otherwise they would not have known.

When Lynne died, Terry continued going on these walks, taking the same train at the same times. He needed the countryside. On these walks, he did not feel lonely, on the contrary, he imagined that his wife was walking beside him. There was a semi-secret place, where he used to rest with Lynne and have a picnic. One day he thought he should stop there, but he was surprised to see that, this time, the place was occupied. He saw that there was a red patch of clothing. As he approached, he saw that it was a T-shirt worn by a woman in her 20s. She was alone, immobile and dead. She gave the impression that she had been there for some time. It was 10 o’clock of a warm Sunday morning. He stood still and looked at her for a while. There was nobody else there, he was the first on the scene. He was angry to be there alone. Everything had been violently interrupted, his walk, the conversation with his wife. It would be impossible to go this way without her again. His first thought was not to say anything to anyone. He would have to explain the situation and answer questions carefully, because he was there. He thought he could have taken another path, he could have taken another train, or perhaps someone else could have found the girl’s body.

Being the first on the scene could bring him complications, and he would be under suspicion. A young girl, a widower and trembling pensioner, everything seemed to blame him. He was tempted to turn back, return by another road and reach the main road. He even came close to shouting for Lynne, so that she would be his witness, but he knew he couldn’t do that. Then he realized what was his duty. He looked for the mobile phone, which he always carried in case of emergency or difficulty, and made a call. A voice was heard on the other side. He didn’t know how to begin to describe the situation, nor the exact place where he was. It was a terrible thing to be here and now.

 

SOME REFLEXIONS

The short narration is structured around the feelings and thoughts of a man who has just found the lifeless body of a woman. His thoughts make him feel fearful and question whether he should report the discovery or not. Finally, he does his duty and calls.

Reading the short story made me reflect on several themes. On the one hand, it is important to keep our daily routines, despite age and health problems. It is essential at this age to keep ourselves active and lead a healthy life to maintain our social relations and avoid isolation. On the other hand, I also believe that, in certain circumstances, the sense of responsibility is inescapable, and, like our protagonist, we must do our duty.

About the title “First on the scene”, I think he is not only the first one who discovered the girl’s body: being first on the scene gives him a sense of importance which he has never felt before.

QUESTIONS

Which do you prefer, drive or going by public transport? Why?

Do you have a driving licence? What is your opinion about the Spanish driving test?

What do you know about Parkinson’s disease?

Do you have a special place for walking? Why is this place important for you?

“This is as good as it gets”. What is its meaning? Can you tell us some situations in which you’d say this saying?

Have you seen Short Cuts or Jindabyne?

Is it good to talk out loud alone? Why do you think so? Do you do it sometimes?

Do you feel that sometimes something (a book, a place, a film, a piece of music, even a person) you always liked it’s been desecrated? Do you have a personal anecdote? What will you do then?

When do you know something, it’s impossible not to know it anymore. What can you do if you want to forget something?

What is the author’s narrative purpose when he makes an old man, a recent widower, to find a dead young woman?

What do you suppose had happened to the girl? Invent your own story: Was she murdered? By whom and why? Had she had an accident? Why was she there, walking alone? Did she commit suicide?

Are the police going to suspect him, or question him?

Do you have to feel guilty (or responsible) when some accident has happened next to you?

Do you think he’ll go by the same path again?

 

VOCABULARY

handy, miffed, go, tug, woodpecker, kestrel, primroses, moss, ferns, bramble, encroached, glaring, keenly, unmarked, incidental, peered, plights, stumbled, predicament, alibi, pinpoint

Was She the Only One?, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

The first sentence we read, “was she the only one?” is the repetition of the title, and it appears twice more in this initial paragraph. And with this humdrum question, the writer is introducing to us the memories of an elderly woman, Lily Hobbs, who remembers her complex relationship with her first husband, Albert Tanner, and, one year later, her different second marriage with Duncan Ross and their two daughters, Joyce and Margaret.

Every 25^th of June, Lily remembers her first love. She got married when she was eighteen years old. Her happiness was short-lived because Albert had to leave home to go to war. At that moment, she kept his new white shirt, the last one her husband had worn before leaving home, without washing it. She hung it in the wardrobe as an object of blind adoration. Lily caressed, smelled and put on this “sacred shirt” that reminded her of a magical memory of him with desperate romanticism. Now this shirt means love.

During the war, Albert wrote some letters to Rose, but, when months went by, he wrote her less. After a while, she knew that her husband had had his first leave, but it was cancelled. The shirt is still without washing. And now the shirt also means fidelity.

A few months passed, and then Alfred returned home for fifteen days, but he wasn’t the same man. She was waiting for love, but he didn’t touch her. He was a cold and strange man who didn’t look like a soldier, but a salesman, or almost a criminal. She doubted whether he has injured or is still healthy. Then he explained to her that he was suffering from shell shock, and he has to report to a doctor to evaluate his illness.

This is the moment that Lily hesitates about washing the shirt, but she decides not to do it. At home, Albert, who is very angry seeing the shirt in a poor condition, orders her to wash it because he believes that his wife has had an affair. This climax of suspicion and disturb is increasing in a huge aggressivity. Lily thinks that, perhaps, he is preparing his desertion. Anyway, she washes it, and she thinks that, by doing so, he will calm down and will love her again. The shirt means crisis.

One day, Lily proposes him a plan to go on a boat to Marlow on Sunday. It would be a nice excursion because Lily wants to make love. Lily tells him she wants him to wear the shirt during the trip, and he does it. They were very happy, the weather is fine and they enjoyed being together. Now the shirt means sexual desire.

But suddenly he has a change of mood: he says he wants to go back because he must return to the war. This is the second time the shirt remains hanging in the wardrobe, but now it’s no longer a fetish object. It means sadness.

Later, Lily decides to throw it to the fire. Burning the shirt means heartbreak, poignancy, desperation and hate.

Two days later, Lily receives a telegram telling her that her husband, Albert Tanner, has died “of wounds”, on the 25^th of June, ending the short marriage between Lily and Albert, like an elegy about how the war wasted lives and blasted hopes.

Following the story, she also remembers her second life. Three months later, Lily is going to Reading because of a job as a maid. On the train, she met Duncan. It was a lucky meeting because in him, she finds her new husband, the man who gives her love and sex.

But now she goes on remembering and thinking about the relationship between her sad past, Albert, and her real present, Duncan, who satisfies her desires.

At the end of the story, the first interrogative sentence becomes an affirmative one: that closes the story with this maxim.

 

SOME QUESTIONS AND REMARKS

After reading this sad and melancholic story, there are some questions in my mind:

Is the first marriage a real one, or it is only loneliness? Has she had sexual pleasure only in the second marriage?

Is “Albert” his name before leaving home, and “Bert” after going to war? I don’t know.

The story doesn’t follow any linear order from the beginning to the end. The writer wants to mix memories, sometimes in direct dialogue in third person between, sentences in second person to her second husband, and also with narrative and descriptive writing; and with the adding of “voice-over”, it becomes a complex text.
Finally, the story, “was she the only one”, is a reflexion about how a war can change a man.

TOPICS TO DEBATE

-Is it a film cliché, smelling our beloved clothes in order to remember them? Do you believe pheromones really affect humans?

-What do you know about shell shock? Have you seen the film Benediction or Regeneration or Johnny Got his Gun or Colonel Redl??

-Bert was a little fastidious: do you think his character made him prone to shell shock? Do you think some illnesses are psychosomatic?

-What do you think about military service? Has it to be obligatory?

-What implications does the word “appetites” have when meaning a woman’s sexual desire? Can shell shock cancel sexual desire?

-Did she really wish Albert went back to the front? What was harder for her: her husband’s shell-shock or her husband being in the trenches?

-Do you approve of desertion or shirking?

-What can you tell us about the beginning of the WWI?

-Why do you think he had become a corporal so quickly?

-“Wear this shirt for me” meant for Lily “let’s make love”. Do you remember other expressions from literature meaning “let’s make love”?

-“Hello, Lily. Can I come in?” was a very formal greeting and Lily felt it immediately. Can we discover other people mood only for the words they have chosen? Do you know any example?

-What is now “the height of sexiness”? What does “sexiness” depend on?

-Do you think our sweat smell differently according to our feelings / mood? They say animals are scared when they are going to die and that this fear corrupts their flesh, so we are eating corrupted meat all the time. What do you think about it?

-“He wanted to go back and be really dead”: was it the true reason?

-Why did she think the “intelligence” was hers?

-For children, do you prefer having boys or girls? In some countries there’s a preference for girls, and in some other for boys? Do you know why?

 

VOCABULARY

stud, ripe, fussy, leave, shell shock, measles, MO, lent, fabric, sheer, skulking, bellowed, private, mangle, break down, tub, fumblingly, thwarted, coaxing, tit-for-tat, willow, swan, put-upon, jetty, oars, loll, reeking, flustered, intelligence, cope, swathe, morsel, decoy