Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

There’s no much information about Austen life, mostly because her sister Cassandra burnt or destroyed all her letters; she said Jane told so many personal things about their family and friends that it would be indecorous to know their content.

We do know she was born in the rural Hampshire (or Hants), a county in the south of England, that she was the sixth of seven children in a clergyman’s family with a big library, and that this library had a wide variety of books, even Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy, novels that in that period weren’t very appropriate for girls, and less for clergyman’s daughters.

She was educated mainly at home and only went to a boarding school for a year in Reading.

She started writing stories that she read for the family and plays that they perform at home.

When she was 26, they moved to Bath; then, five years later, they went to live in Southampton, and three years later to Chawton, also in the same county.

She never married, althought she had a relationship with a man who died young.

Her novels narrate “the rocky road to a young woman’s happy marriage”, and she said she needed only three or four families to develop their plot. So, what is there in her novels?

She published Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814) anonymously. In 1817, after her death, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published with the name of the author.

Jane Austen official web

Becoming Jane

Lost in Austen

 

MANSFIELD PARK

 

This is the story of Fanny Price, the eldest daughter of a very poor and crowded family. But she is nine years old when she is adopted by her rich uncle sir Thomas Bertram, of a well-to-do family, and her living prospects change radically.

The narrative starts telling us about the three sisters Ward. The eldest and more beautiful, although very apathetic, indolent and trivial, marries Sir Thomas Bertram and gets a comfortable position in the world.

The second sister marries a clergyman, reverend Norris, who has a benefit in Sir Thomas parish, the vicarage being very near the country house.

The youngest sister, Frances, fared worse, because she married for love to the poor navy lieutenant Mr Price, and so got estranged from her sisters; and, to make matters worse, he is been licensed because of an injury and spends most of his time at home or with his friends, but not working. The family Price, besides of being poor, is numerous. But when Mrs Price is about having her ninth child, she asks for help to her sisters. Mrs Norris, a busybody bossy childless woman, suggests that Sir Thomas could adopt a Prince’s child. So Fanny got to live with sir Thomas, her wife and their children, Tom, Edmund, Maria and Julia, all of them older than Fanny.

These children, although they have an excellent academic education, are spoiled because of the indulgence of their parents and their aunt Mrs Norris. Fanny, who is very shy and honest, feels a bit uncomfortable in this house, because Sir Thomas is so serious, Mrs Norris so bossy, Mrs Bertram and her daughters so indifferent; but in the end she gets used to the Bertram’s family ways. The only person who shows some sympathy to Fanny is Edmund, who wants to be a clergyman, and whom she would fall secretly in love with.

Some years pass without any novelty. Then, Mr Norris dies, and reverend Mr Grant and his wife comes to live in the vicarage.

Mr Bertram has to go to Antigua to manage his plantations because there have been some problems. While he’s away, a friend of Tom visits the Bertrams, full of enthusiasm about reforms in the countryside. He’s a very rich man, but not very clever. He falls in love with Maria.

More or less at the same time, there are two more visitors: Mary Crawford and Henry Crawford, Mrs Grant’s step-sister and brother. There are some flirtations between Henry and Julia, Henry and Maria (although they know she’s engaged to Mr Rushworth) and Edmund and Mary.

After some days, another guest arrives. It’s Mr Yates, with his head full of acting. He infects the group with the craving of acting and theatre. And after some debate, they decide to prepare a play to perform for all the family. But when they are rehearsing for the last time, Sir Thomas arrives from Antigua and all is cancelled.

Now the novel changes its tone. Until this moment, there has been a lot of action; now, it moves to a more psychological ground. Sir Thomas has changed: he understands and loves better Fanny, he sees he has indulged too much his daughters and his son Tom, and that he has given too much power to Mrs Norris over his family.

Maria marries Mr Rushworth, and the couple and Julia go to London.

Henry Crawford tries to break Fanny’s heart, but in the end it seems that he’s fallen in love with her. He approaches her, but she rejects all his advances, even when he helps her brother in a promotion.

Edmund is indecisive about proposing to Mary Crawford, because perhaps he thinks she wouldn’t be an ideal wife for a pastor: she is trivial and wouldn’t like to be married to a clergyman.

After her refusing Henry Crawford, Fanny is sent for a couple of months to visit her family, and Tom fells very ill, almost to the point of dying.

Henry Crawford, after visiting Fanny in Portsmouth with her family and showing one more time his love, goes to London to visit the married couple. 

But we’re not going to give away any spoiler.

So some questions can be:

Is Fanny going to stay with her family forever? Is she going to get married to Henry Crawford? Is she going to go back to Mansfield? Is Edmund going to get married to Mary Crawford? Is Tom going to recover from his illness?

Mansfield Park film, 2007

Mansfield Park film, 1999

 

Mansfield Park. Volume One. Chapter XVIII

SUMMARY

 

We are at the last chapter of the first volume, and Jane Austen is going to offer us a very dramatic ending after a very dramatic climax, so this way the readers will be anxious to follow reading the second volume.

We have a group of people wanting to do the rehearsal of three of the five acts of Lovers’s Vows has, so all of them are very excited, or very nervous.

Tom, the eldest of the Bertrams, who had given up his preference for a comedy and accepted playing a drama instead, would perform any character, doesn’t mind which, and is very impatient for the rehearsal.

Mr Rushworth, Maria’s fiancé, isn’t able to learn by heart any of his speeches, and all the time needs a prompter, and, moreover, he is very worried about his dress.

Maria is going to have a very equivocal scene with Henry Crawford, a scene that allows them to flirt even more: in the play, these two characters (mother and son) embrace each other. Mr Rushworth starts being jealous. Henry Crawford is the best actor: he can play all the characters, giving them the exact theatrical tone.

Julia, the youngest of the Bertrams, is not playing because Henry Crawford has showed his preference for Maria for her part, although he previously had been courting her. Another role has been offered to her, but she has rejected them all out of spite.

Mrs Grant, the vicar’s wife, also has a minor part.

Mr Yates, a friend of Tom, is the man who has come to the Bertram’s home with his head full of acting, and has persuaded the rest to pass the time preparing a play. He has the main character, Baron Wildenhaim.

Edmund didn’t approve the idea of acting while their father was absent faraway and perhaps in danger, but, as Tom threatened to look for actors and actresses out of the family circle, he decided to act himself. He is going to play the part of a clergyman (in the real life, he himself is going to be ordained).

Miss Crawford plays Amelia, the Baron’s daughter, a young woman who is in love with Anhalt, the clergyman her tutor. She is who declares her love to Anhalt and persuades him to marry her; and so there is another couple in a compromising situation.

Mrs Norris is very busy with the curtains and the players’ clothes.

Lady Bertram is a bit anxious to see something of the play talked about so much and which causes so much bustle.

Fanny is required by everybody: Mrs Norris needs her help with the equipment, and the players need her to prompt them, and as sparring to try their speeches. Even Mary Crawford and Edmund need her as an interlocutor, a prompter and a critic.

All is now ready for the dress rehearsal of the first three acts, and all are very impatient, but, at the last moment, Mr Grant feels ill, and Mrs Grant has to stay at the parsonage to take care of him, and so she won’t be able to act.

In the face of this problem, they entreat Fanny —the only person who has always objected to the whole acting because she thinks inappropriate being Sir Thomas away, being some very embarrassing scenes, and being, although she doesn’t want to admit, jealous of Mary Crawford— to take the part of Mrs Grant, or at least to read it. Fanny refuses because she feels it isn’t right, but then the rest label her egoist, and stubborn; even Edmund begs her.

In the end, she yields, but, just before they start, Julia makes an astonishing announcement.

QUESTIONS

Why theatre can be viewed as something immoral, or at least as something not very appropriate in some circumstances?
What qualities must you have to be a good actor?
Henry Crawford is a very good actor. Why can this talent can be a flaw in his character, according to Fanny’s point of view?
Mr Rushworth says that Henry Crawford can’t be a good actor because is too short. How do cinema and art impose us the shape of our appearances?
Sir Thomas and Mrs Norris were thinking about the possibility that Tom, or Edmund, fall in love with her cousin Fanny. Marriage between relatives used to want permission from the religious authorities, and, in most of cultures, is a taboo. Do you think this proscription it’s something biological, or cultural?
Edmund and Mary have very different points of view about religion. According to you: can a marriage between two people of so different opinions work?
In which ways do you think plays are better than films? And films better than plays?
Why is it important (or not) for an adopted child to know their biological parents?

VOCABULARY

fret, trifling, rant, prompter, to her eye, tameness, was at little pains, deferred, catchword, forwarder, seams, trice, festoons, entreat, grate, obliged, in the aggregate, surmise, stand the brunt, had little credit with, yield

Chapter XVIII (Project Gutenberg)

Lovers' Vows

One of a Kind, by Julian Barnes

BIOGRAPHY and SUMMARY, by Maria Feijoo

Julian Barnes is an English writer, born in Leicester in 1946. He is now 78 years old and has been living in London since he was a child. His parents were both French teachers. He studied Modern Languages in Oxford and then worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, also as a reviewer and literary editor. After that, he began to write articles for several daily and weekly papers.
In 1979, he married Pat Kavanagh. She would be both his wife and his literary agent until she died in 2008.
In parallel to his work as a journalist, he wrote a first novel, Metroland, and a crime novel, Duffy, both published in 1980. 
Therefore, he entirely dedicated himself to literary creation and wrote numerous novels, short stories, and essays. He also continued publishing some crime novels that he signed as Dan Kavanagh. 
His first novel already won a prize, but his real breakthrough was his third novel, Flaubert’s parrot. This novel was widely acclaimed and translated, especially in France, where he received two important prizes. This public appreciation would be a constant in his career, accumulating countless awards and honours, not only in England and France, but worldwide.
His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with deep themes like history, reality, truth and love, but always with an original and often hilarious approach.
 
SUMMARY
This is a story about writers. Mostly three writers, two of them speaking about a third one.
The narrator, an English writer, has no name and could easily be seen as an alter ego of Julian Barnes.
The second one, Marian Tirac, is a Romanian dissident who left Romania in 1951 and lives in the exile. His view of the world is despaired, but with a huge sense of humour. Finally, there is a Romanian writer, called Nicolai Petrescu, who chose to remain in Romania and is probably still living there at the time of the story. But we cannot be sure, as he had no more contact with Tirac, although they were close friends before the dissident writer left the country. The story was published in 1982, and we can reasonably think that it takes place at this same time, therefore during the Ceaucescu dictatorship.
The story begins with a kind of theory by the English writer: in his opinion, Romania is only able to produce one important artist per artistic field (“One of a kind”). When he meets Marian Tiriac at a literary party, he explains to him his “Romanian theory”, and Tiriac seems to agree, but his adding examples in a sarcastic crescendo makes it doubtful. Nevertheless, the English writer insists in asking about great Romanian novelists, whose existence is denied by the Romanian dissident.
A year after, the narrator goes to Bucharest, invited to a conference of young writers. The last day, he has some free time and takes a walk through the city with an Italian colleague. They visit mainly churches and the Art Museum. Passing along shops in the main street, they see a bookshop with a whole window dedicated to a single writer, a novelist. As there is also a small picture, the narrator can confirm that surprisingly he was not invited with the other writers, although he seemed an important Romanian author.
When some months later, the narrator meets Marian Tiriac again, he tells him he discovered that there was a great Romanian novelist. With some reluctance, the exiled Romanian admits that Nicolai Petrescu was a good friend of his and that he knew his intention to become a big novelist. He explains what he knew about Petrescu’s wishes to remain in Romania, despite he neither agreed with the regime. His friend wanted to write a novel that would be called The Wedding Cake, a book that would seem to be in conformity with the Romanian communist ideology, but that, in reality, would be like a Trojan horse that he would take into the core of the regime. A kind of very private joke, that would allow him to avoid the exile and simultaneously make true his dream of becoming an author, but of a single novel. Tiriac could not maintain a correspondence with his friend because he would have put him in danger, but he was told by his old mother that Petrescu had successfully published his book, The Wedding Cake.
At that point, the English writer is very surprised because he does not remember any book with this title in the library window. In fact, he remembered that one had a woman’s name in his title and that there were “six or seven other titles by Petrescu.” After a big and uncomfortable silence, Tiriac admits that Petrescu is for sure “one of a kind,” but one great ironist, not one great novelist.
 
PERSONAL OPINION
I found this story very representative of the way Julian Barnes introduces a lot of deep themes in a funny way. Even if the story is about three writers, there is no idle chatter about literature. For example, the theory that give its tittle to this short story is enunciated by one of the writers and ridiculed by the other, but it is not a mere intellectual joke: this idle theory gives all its strength to the twist of the plot in the ending.
In this short story, we can find themes like friendship and loyalty to oneself. Also, an example of how literature is impacted by history, revolutions, power and politics. But all these themes are put together in a frame that is like silk, light but solid. And pleasantly coloured through the subtle irony that is characteristic of Julian Barnes’s style.

 

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about Romania? And about Ceaucescu?

-According to your opinion, why are nations / times with a lot of artists, and other ones without any, or only a few?

-Tell us something about Brancusi, Ionesco, Enuscu, Steinberg, Eminescu, Rebreanu, Sadoveanu

-What kind of books does Tiriac write?

-What are the “benefits” of a bit of repression in arts? Doesn’t it spur on creation?

-Can you do a description of Van Eyck painting in the Art Museum? How can a work of art, or any other object, become an icon or an idol? Do you have an idol or an icon? Why is it your idol or icon?

-What would you do if you had to live in a faraway country: would you adopt the new habits and culture, or would you rather keep the old ones?

-In your view, what is the meaning of this sentence: “You must not necessarily believe everything I say because I knew him very well”?

-For you, what is more important in an artist, talent or temperament? Why do you believe so?

-What do you imagine the “wedding cake architecture” is?

-Petrescu write more books after The Wedding Cake. So what is the morality of the story?

-What happened to The Wedding Cake? Why wasn't it in the window library??

 

 

VOCABULARY

sallow, swished, genially, sending me up, wheeled out, aim off, hard line, spit, foul, clodheads, rock the boat, jeopardy, vetted, chuckle, swig

Brutalism

Wedding cake architecture

Julian Barnes website

My Wife is a White Russian, by Rose Tremain

SOME WORDS ABOUT ROSE TREMAIN, by Elisa Sola

 

Rose Tremain was born on August 2nd, 1943. Nowadays, she is 81 years old. She was born as Rosemary Jane Thomson, but she married John Tremain in 1971, and they had a daughter. The marriage lasted about five years, and she remarried the theatre director Jonathan Dudley. This marriage lasted nine years. Since 1992 she is with Richard Holmes.

She was educated at Francis Holland School, Crofton Grange School, the Sorbonne (1961-1962) and the University of East Anglia (BA, English Literature), with which she has been very linked professionally, because she taught creative writing in this University from 1988 to 1995, and she became Chancellor in 2013. She has written three collections of short stories and nine novels, and she is best known as a historical novelist, who approaches her subjects “from unexpected angles, concentrating her attention on unglamorous outsiders”. When she was young, she experienced an epiphany: “I remember standing in the middle of a very beautiful hayfield with the sun going down and thinking that I didn’t want just to describe how beautiful I thought that place was, but I wanted to write down all my feelings about it, and then try to make some equation between that place and what I felt about it, and what hopes I had for my own life. I can remember the intensity of it…, and it seemed to me then that my life would be a life in which this process of describing and identifying feelings would play a part.” Although she knew that she was a writer very early, she didn’t publish any fictions until she was 33. In an interview about her work, she explains that she avoids the autobiographical fiction, because she is not interested in writing about herself, although there are aspects of her life in all of her novels. What she wants to show are the sensations, the emotions experienced by her protagonists. In this sense, she did many interviews with Polish workers in her neighbourhood, and not so much to steal the stories of their lives, but to understand what they have felt in the case of so many adversities. About the documentation for her historical novels, she says that she has to do it in such a way that it doesn’t seem like it, the data has to be digested and integrate into the novel naturally. Tremain has judged the Booker prize twice, in 1988 and 2000, and makes no secret of the fact that she would love to win it.

 

SOME LINKS:

An article:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/10/featuresreviews.guardianreview5

An interview to Rose Tremain:

https://youtu.be/oXSXVc0DcGA

SUMMARY

 

During a business lunch, a wealthy financier, elderly and disabled, explains the relationship he has with his wife and express some reflections about the meaning of his life and about his behaviour. The anecdote takes place in a luxurious French restaurant in London, in a sunny morning in May, and the protagonists are two couples of two businessmen and their wives. This framework is the pretext that allows the protagonist to tell the story of his intimate life, always from his unique point of view. The literary device used is the description of the present meal and the mixing of the memories of the past. The protagonist, named Hubert (the only character in the story whose name we know and the only one who narrates, because the story is written in the first person), tells us that he is a rich financier who has many investments in precious metals, and we know that his work gives him great satisfaction - even physical. We can deduce that business has been the centre of his life (“I hope you’re happy in your work” is the advice he gives to the young financier, as if it were a testament). 

Throughout the narration we realize that the protagonist had a stroke that left him paralysed and that he has many mobility and speech problems, which gives more strength and authenticity to his reflections, because he makes them from pain and from the truth of his life, as if passing an account review. 

The character that is best described is that of his wife, as the title of the story announces. He tells us right away that his wife doesn’t love him and has always been with him for money. He tells us that they met in Paris, and that she was a very poor white Russian, and she agreed to be with him for money (“I’ll fuck for money”). The white Russian is addicted to luxury, jewels, wine, opera and ballet, and she is described as a superficial, selfish and domineering person. 

We deduce that they have a toxic relationship of dependence on each other: he is emotionally and physically dependent on her (physically: “he married her because he began to need her body” / emotionally: “he, obediently, moved out to the child’s room”). On the other hand, she is financially dependent on him, but also dependent on his contempt for him. She seems to enjoy ignoring him (“without looking at me, she puts my glass down in front of me”, “I exist only in the corner of her eye”), not letting anyone help him “don’t help him!”... 

The story is built on oppositions, which are loaded with meaning and which help to emphasize the message: the young couple and the old couple, the white Russian (his wife) and the wife of the young financier, Toomin Valley before (fertile and rainy) and Toomin Valley now (immense desert), as a metaphor for his own life, the young woman’s freckles and his old man’s spots on his skin (“his blotched hand with oddly and repulsive stains”), the dark mouth of his wife (“why are your lips this terrible colour these days?”, “the colour of claret”) and the frank smile of the young woman (“freshly peeled teeth and a laugh”) ... 

There are also very powerful images that act as symbols of the sexual relationship: the oysters they eat (“she sucks an oyster into her dark mouth”), the scallops “saffron yellow and orange”, warm colours that lead us to female sex, and the author goes on into this metaphor explaining that the flesh of the scallop is firm and soft “like a woman’s thigh when it is young”. During the banquet, he’s reliving moments of his sexual relationship, having in front of him the voracity of his wife (“She is drinking quite fast”) and the tenderness of the young couple. Above all, the difference between the two women stands out: “She is drinking quite fast” (his wife) in front of the tenderness of the young Australian wife. The comparison highlights the difference between the two women.

The protagonist approaches the relationship with his wife as just another business. He marries her to decorate his life: “her body, the white and the gold of her (the importance of colours to define people!), I thought, will ornament my life”, but we see that he is completely hooked in this relationship, a relationship that he lives in silence; “I wanted to brush her gold hair and hold it against my face, but I didn’t ask her if I could do this because I was afraid she would say: ‘you can do it for money’”. And silence or lack of communication is the essential element at the end of the story. In the last paragraph, the narration takes an unexpected turn. From decrepitude, but with lucidity, he stops looking for reasons for his heartbreak outside, and does an exercise in self-criticism. The protagonist seems to realize that what would have given meaning to his life is love, symbolized by the pair of young Australians, “with their fingers touching...”, “into the private moments together is crammed all that we ask for life”. And he laments that she never loved him, asking the big question, “Why did she never love me?” And he finds the answer in his silence and in the hardness of his words, a twist of script that we might not have expected, but which is very instructive. How many times should we stop complaining about the behaviour of others to start looking inside ourselves? This mea culpa has surprised us.

We have missed the point of view of his wife, who looks for the meaning of life in art, in opera and classical ballet, and she does not find it. How would the story be told by his wife?

 

QUESTIONS

-The financier thinks: “If she loved me, she probably wouldn’t mind wiping my arse.” What is your opinion about this?

-Do you think theirs is a toxic relationship? Why?

-How do you react when some invalid / stammerer / … needs some help? What is it the best behaviour towards them?

-Have you seen the film Indecent Proposal? Do you think everybody has a price?

-Have you written your last orders? Do you think everyone has to do it?

-What can do a wife to stop being only a wife?

-How do you know when somebody is a snob? Is his wife a snob? How do you know?

-According to your mind, why does she like Don Giovanni so much?

-Do you think marriages between sex workers and their costumers are good matches?

-What does the last sentence (“the answer comes from deep underground: it’s the hardness of my words”) mean for you?

Why does the narrator use the adjective “white” to describe his Russian wife?

 

 

VOCABULARY

assets, dabbing, prancing, riff-raffy, bean pole, pavement, scallops, cooped up, scorching, gritty, escarpment, still-life, trundled

Review

Another review

Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie, by Beryl Bainbridge

BIOGRAPHY & SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932, and she was an English novelist known for her psychologic portrayals of the lower-middle-class English life.
At the age of 14, she was expelled from the Merchant Taylor’s Girls School, when she was caught with a “dirty rhyme” (as she later described it) written by someone else in her gymslip pocket. She then went on to study at Cone-Ripman School, a boarding school near London, where she found she was good at History, English, and Art. The summer she left school, she fell in love with a former German prisoner of war, Harry Arno Franz, who was waiting to be repatriated. For the next six years, the couple corresponded and tried to get permission for him to return to Britain so that they could marry, but permission was denied, and the relationship ended in 1953.
The following year, she married Austin Davies. She had two children, but the marriage was short, and Beryl soon found herself a single mother. In 1958, she tried to commit suicide by putting his head in the gas oven. In his own words, “When you are young, you have those ups and downs.” She had a third daughter with Alan Sharp in 1965. Sharp, a Scotsman, was at the start of his career as a novelist and screenwriter; Bainbridge would later let it be thought that he was her second husband; in truth, they never married, but the relationship encouraged her on her way to fiction. She began writing to help fill her time, mainly recounting incidents from her childhood. His first novels were very well received by critics and were successful among readers, although they did not bring her much money. Her first novel, Harriet Said... was written around this time. It would be the third that he would publish, since many editors rejected it, and one of them went so far as to claim that the protagonists were “almost incredibly repulsive”.
She was the author of eighteen novels, two travel books, two essays, two volumes of stories and five works for theatre and television. She was nominated five times for the Booker Prize, and in 2011, she was awarded the posthumous prize (she died in 2010) for her literary work. In 2008, The Times included her in the list of “The 50 most important writers since 1945”. The Guardian called her “a national treasure.”

SUMMARY

When Mrs Henderson arrived home, her husband asks her how much the woman she worked for as a maid had tipped her for Christmas. “Nothing at all”, answered she. “We have theatre tickets instead.” “Thank you very much”, Mr Henderson said ironically.  “The kiddies will like it”, she replied, “it’s a pantomime. We have never been in a pantomime.”  Their son Alec, who was still living with them, explained to them that it wasn’t a pantomime, but a play with fairy tale elements, which was about boys lost in Never-Never land. “It’s written on several levels”, he added.

“I’ve been a lost boy all my live”, muttered Charles Henderson when he heard his son. And he was right, in fact, he still is: His son doesn’t respect him - he calls him Charlie, knowing how much that bothers him - and his wife never seems to listen to him. He feels isolated. And as for other important things, he has lost almost everything: his house, his garden, his open spaces. They moved ten years ago, and now they have a house with a bathroom with hot water and good plumbing, but that’s not enough for him. At night, when Charles returns from work and enters that flat - which for him is like the cabin of an aeroplane, high and closed, not being able to take him anywhere - he looks out the window and can only see sky and clouds, and sometimes hundreds of stars. Then, he wonders: “Is life just about taking a good bath?” And besides, “Does a man need so many stars?” He had enough with the only one he could see from his outside toilet. “It’s quality that counted, no quantity”, he thought.

Finally, the day arrived, and everyone went to the theatre: Charles, his wife, his son Alec, and his daughter Moira with her children. One of them, Wayne, who was also characterized by his mischief, got into trouble as soon as they left the house, in the lift. The situation got worse because Alec drove madly. Furthermore, when they passed through the old Charles neighbourhood, he looked longingly at the open fields, and remembered the stream where they fished and the esplanade where people played football. Alec only saw a grimy suburb and laughs at it. “What fields? What stream? Never-Never land”, he mocked him. Charles started to feel sick, his stomach to hurt, but no one seemed to care about that.

During the first act, everything seemed strange, there was an actor playing a dog, and Charles didn’t really understand who or what Tinkerbell was. During the acts two and three, Charles dozed. All was confusing to him, he was dreaming he was fishing in the canal and there appeared a big crocodile with a clock ticking inside it. He had pain in his arm.

His confusion increased when Alec claimed that the fact that Wendy’s father and Captain Hook were played by the same actor was an allegory of the fact that every father wants to kill his children. However, according to Charles, the reason was the savings that this entailed. But who wants to argue with Alec? Indeed, he would like to strangle his son when he says those things.

During Act Fourth, Charles was getting worse and worse. He asked his wife for a peppermint, but she silenced him, everyone seemed engrossed in the play. Charles dozed, confusing things that happened on stage with memories from when his son was a child, like the fear he felt one day when Alec came home late. Suddenly, something dramatic was happening on stage: Tinkerbell was fainting and everyone looked devastated. Charles saw how his entire family, even his wild grandson, were moved to tears watching the flickering of the fairy’s light descend. What was happening? His heart was beating so hard that he though Alec was going to scold him for making noise.

Finally, while the entire audience applauded passionately at Peter Pan’s demand “If you believe, clap hands, clap hands, and Tinkerbell will be alive”, Charles died. His last words were “Help me”, to which his wife replied “Shut up”, while clapping frantically for Tinkerbell to come back to life.

PERSONAL OPINION

This short story is written on several levels, just like it happened in Peter Pan, according to Alec, or at least it touches on several aspects, such as:

- The class difference. The rich may find it degrading to give money to the poor, but for them, it is more than a necessity.

- The change in life and values after the II World War, when people went from living in the countryside to living in the city, and the capitalism is gaining more and more strength.

- The generational conflict, represented by Charles and his son Alec, who despises his father’s values, ridicules his way of thinking and treats him with open contempt.

- The loneliness you can feel even surrounded by the people you love, especially when communication has long since broken down.

- The irony of sometimes letting ourselves be carried away by what is happening in fiction, causing those feelings of drowning out what we should feel in real life.

For all these reasons, I liked the story and found it very interesting, especially because of the last question I pointed out. Do our own lives seem so uninteresting to us that we are more interested in what happens on stage, or on TV, or in the movies? Is it perhaps a way to escape from our feelings?

I’m sure we’ll talk about it in a while.

QUESTIONS

-Debate: What are your politics about giving / not giving tips?

-What about presents: do you prefer giving money, or presents? When you buy your presents, do you always ask for the “present receipt”?

-What can you tell us about the personality of the characters?

-“One star was all a man needed”. What do you think the real necessities of a person are?

-Driving is a singular experience for every person: in your opinion, what is the most important skill for a driver? What do you think of the French campaign “Drive as a woman”?

-What do you know about Peter Pan? In your view, is childhood so happy as the cliché says? Do you think everybody would rather be a child and not an adult?

-In your opinion, what is the relation between the title and the story?

-According to you, what is the meaning of Charles’s death and the end of the story? 

VOCABULARY

pantomime, head nor tail, smutty, putting up with, by heck, mouthing, outlandish, foregone, (give it) houseroom, bashed, exalted, sideboard, on a par, fiddling, rumpus, turn, belt up, slum, pandering, cosy, carry-on, coddled, yawning his head off, tantrums, tiddlers, moth balls, engrossed, cotton, heatedly, codswallop, throttle, fly off the handle, dangling

Analysis

British Council activities about the story

Interview with the writer

British Council again

Prezi presentation

Another interview with the writer

In the Hours of Darkness, by Edna O'Brien

EDNA O’BRIEN, by Glòria Torner

She is one of the most representative contemporary authors in Ireland as a novelist, playwright, children’s and youth literature, memoirist, scriptwriter, poet and short-story writer.

 

BIOGRAPHY

Josephine Edna O’Brien was born in 1930, in Tuamgraney, County Clare, a small rural village in the west of Ireland. The youngest of four children, she grew up in the atmosphere of Irish National Catholicism of the 1940s, marked by an alcoholic father, who was a farmer, and a strict mother in religious practice who considered writing “a path of perdition”.

After finishing primary school in her village, she was educated at the Convent of Sisters of Mercy, a boarding school in Galway.  In her 20s, she went to university in Dublin where she graduated in Pharmacy in 1950 and where she worked briefly as an apothecary. In 1952, against her parents’ wishes, she married the writer Ernest Gebler, with whom she had two children. They settled in London, where O’Brien turned to writing as a full-time occupation. Ten years later, in 1962, she escaped from a loveless marriage and moved to the desolate suburban London where, at least, she felt free to write.

Her life has been divided between England, where she has lived for more than 50 years and where she writes, and Ireland, where her writing comes from and where it endlessly returns, exploring her home country from a more detached perspective.

Edna O’Brien has publicly acknowledged that James Joyce’s works, especially A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, were her main inspiration and led her to devote to literature for the rest of her life.

Her first novel, The Country Girls, written when she was 30, was published in 1961.  It is the history of two girls who live in a backward and repressive country, especially in rural areas of Ireland. They grow up in their strict homes, attend a convent school from which they are expelled and travel to Dublin and London in search of imaginary opportunities, love and sex. This book was considered a scandal in her country and she was labelled an enemy of Ireland. Her family felt humiliated by this book. It was the first instalment of a trilogy, written in autobiographical style, completed with The Lonely Girl, later published as Girl with Green Eyes, and Girls in the Married Bliss. Now, these two books are set in London, and there the protagonists become disillusioned with marriage and men in general.

She has written more than twenty works of fiction where the main themes are Ireland and women. Some of them are: The High Road, Down by the River, In the Forest, The Light of Evening, The Little Red Chairs, and the last one, written in 2019, Girl, which was inspired by the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by members of Boko Haram.

Other notable works include a dramatic work about Virginia Woolf, two important biographies, of James Joyce and Lord Byron, and an autobiographical essay called Mother Ireland.

She also has published nine short story collections where their setting varies, although Ireland appears in several of them. One of them is From Mrs Reinhard and Other Stories, where In the Hours of Darkness is included.

 

 

SUMMARY

The story opens when the protagonist, Lena, a middle-aged divorced woman, is going on her way from London to Cambridge. She is accompanying her son, Iain, who is about to start his university studies. Along the way, she draws a parallelism between her memories of her loneliness feeling of a day in the rural land surrounding Sydney in Australia, where she had been before, and this present situation. She describes the English landscape with these words: “devoid of houses and tillage”, “depopulated land”.

When they are already approaching Cambridge, Iain observes the university complex with optimism, but Lena, who is imagining the general atmosphere of study, is intrigued and frightened. She would like to be in her hotel bedroom reading the novels of Jane Austen, her favourite writer. She reflects on the future that awaits her: she will remain alone because Iain is the youngest child, the last one who lived with her. The pessimism and the loneliness for her future begins now, with these words, “bereft of her children”.

Arriving at the hotel in Cambridge, Lena observes things she didn’t expect: the hotel is near to a car park, ruined, with a lot of bars and a general confusion and noise, a “big ramshackle place”. When the porter, who takes Lena to her room, loses his way, she gets dismayed.  She also dislikes her single room because it isn’t a familiar looking room and the furnishing represents everything she hates. At that moment, she would like to be at home, and she pronounces the sentence “Bad place to die”.

Then, wanting a cup of tea, Lena goes to the lobby where there are other guests. Her new impression is more negative than the previous ones. There is a lot of confusion in the lobby, full of shopping bags that prevent a fluid passage. 

Later, in the College, she thinks she is watching a scene not of academic life, but of a commercial life, and the people there don’t look like scholars or academics, they look like salesmen or tradesmen. After a while, Lena, her son, a young professor, two first course students and their host meet to have dinner. Lena says the meat is “lovely”, even though it is not true, and all the dinner is not very successful. The conversation turns to a professor with peculiar and strange habits, or about the reasons why the students are expelled before the end of the course; but Lena, however, is not listening because she is concentrated on the beauty of the evening outside. Although the dinner has started early, their host is the first to leave. Then Lena goes to the host’s bedroom, where she has left her coat before. There he starts talking about the reasons why he has never married. She gets frightened when she looks at a violent image: a painting of a wolf with a man’s eyes hanging on the wall.  At that moment, she impulsively kisses the host.

After dinner, Lena and her son stay for a while outside, walking on the street. They part at her hotel, where Lena says good night to Iain. They decide to visit the town the following morning because they know the time to separate is approaching.

This first descriptive part of the story, the adventure of moving house, has become a desolate experience with a dark atmosphere. She has imagined a better introduction for her son, but now everything seems to work against her, and this second part will be like a nightmare.

Lena goes to her room, but instead of the quiet room she has booked, she begins to hear loud noises and discovers there is a party going on. She leaves her hotel to find a place to sleep in her son’s, but when she gets to the College, she sees a young man wearing a small motorcyclist’s leather jacket coming towards her; at first, she doesn’t recognize him, but then she realizes that he is Iain; he’s going “in search of adventure”. They talk and joke for a time, and they say good night again.

She goes back to her noisy hotel, and the manager asks her if she would like another hotel; she decides to move to another one, but this second new hotel is worse than the first one. She finds the porter with an aggressive Dalmatian dog; he leads her to a room where another woman is sleeping, and both are annoyed by the mistake. At last, she arrives to an empty room very similar to the one she has just left.  It’s impossible for Lena to relax and sleep, although she decides to take sleeping pills. Waiting till morning in this room, she spots a notice above the mirror with an amusing comment, and, after that, she sits in a chair and waits for a moment. Finally, she decides to spend the night in the armchair.

Curious and surrealist ending of the story!

 

Two remarks

The importance of the title: “Darkness” means in a literal level “at night”, but in a symbolic level it means “difficult period”. There are also some symbolic images like “the wolf with a man’s eyes”, “a drunken woman holding up a broken silver shoe”, or “the Dalmatian dog”.  

As the story is written in autobiographical style and the narrator uses the Lena’s point of view along all the story, the events and feelings of past, the feelings and facts of present and the thoughts of future of Lena are present all around the story.

 

QUESTIONS

-Why does the narrator think of Jane Austen?

-The narrator feels sad because she’s leaving her son at the University. Do you think

her son feels the same?

-When you travel, what do you prefer, renting an apartment or staying in a hotel? Tell us your reasons why.

-Did you ever have a full English breakfast? How did you like it?

-How would you like to be greeted in a new place, as for instance, job, school, club…?

-In your view, why did the narrator kiss the College host?

-Did you have a bad experience with pranks at school / work? In your opinion, do they have to be forbidden?

-What are the advantages of studying in a boarding school?

-What do you need to sleep comfortably? What do you do if you can’t sleep? Do you take any pills?

-What is the relation between the title and the story?

 

VOCABULARY

tillage, tawny, bleached, predicament, bereft, props, toddler, lobby, ramshackle, buxom, spatters, spurned, china, freshmen, sorted ... out, johns, touch and go, cockerel, seed, sherbet, grouse, tackle, game, demurred, sprouts, raspberry chantilly, frayed paisley, cruise, forborne, knit up the ravelled, laced, rusticated 

Writers talk about Edna O'Brien