A Cup of Tea, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma

The story was written in January 1922 in the space of just 4–5 hours, and was published in a popular magazine, the “Story-Teller”, in May of the same year.

Rosemary was a wealthy woman, who had been married for two years to a very rich man, Philip Fell, who adored his family. Though she was not very pretty, she made up for it as she lived in extreme style and fashion. She always enjoyed organizing parties for important people and artists. She liked shopping in a perfect florist’s in Regent Street and also loved collecting antiques.

One rainy winter afternoon, after leaving an antique shop, Rosemary felt a bit upset, because she had not been able to buy an exquisite little box.  Suddenly a poor young girl came up to her and asked for the price of a cup of tea. Rosemary thought of doing something generous, like in the novels of Dostoevsky, and invited her to her house. Rosemary wanted to show that those nice things that happened in novels and fairy tales, about generous rich people, happened in real life also. At the beginning, the girl didn’t believe Rosemary, even suspected that the lady might hand her over to the police, but at last Rosemary took her home.

When they arrived at Rosemary’s house, she took the girl up to her bedroom and made her sit near the fire on a comfortable chair. Rosemary even had to help her take off her coat and hat, because she was very weak, but threw them on the floor. The poor girl cried and complained that life was too hard and that she was so tired of living. Then Rosemary consoled her and asked her servant to bring some food and tea.

When she was going to begin asking the girl about her life, her husband Philip came in. He was astonished to see the girl in his wife’s room, and he asked her to go to the library, where he tried to tell her that she couldn’t have a stranger in the house. Facing a refusal, he used the old jealousy trick and he praised the girl’s beauty. So Rosemary went out of the library, took three pounds, gave them to the girl and sent her away.

Afterwards, Rosemary dressed up, put on some makeup and tried to attract the attention of her husband. At the end, Rosemary didn’t know if she was pretty enough for him, and she wasn’t sure if Philip loved her either.

 

Some Reflections

In this story we can find some topical themes that the writer repeats in many other stories: The prominence of women, the social classes, the oppression of the poor by the rich, the materialism of the main characters etc. But in “A Cup of Tea” we also find the appearance in contrast to reality. Rosemary on the surface seems kind by taking care of the girl. However, her intentions are something else. She wants to receive the admiration of her “friends”. The reality of her intentions is full of hypocrisy. She helps the girl for her own interest.
Rosemary is also a prototype of jealousy and insecurity. When Philips praises the girl’s beauty, she forgets her good intentions and sends the girl away.

QUESTIONS

-How can you explain the differences between beautiful and pretty? Can you give some examples?
-The protagonist says “I hate lilac”. And the attendant “put the lilac out of sight”. So strong of the power of money? Can you give some more curious examples?
-Remember the seller in the “antique shop”: can you give some tips as to how to be a very good shopkeeper?
-Why would / wouldn’t you buy second hand things?
-What do you think of philanthropy? Do you think it’s a way to help poor people, or you think it’s useless for the poor and hypocrisy for the donor?
-Are all the women sisters (in their fight for their rights)?
-Are rich people more natural than poor people? Do you think very rich people belong to another species? Is it easy to recognize them?
-“If people wanted helping, they must respond a little”. How true is this sentence? Must you always accept charity?
-Is being very formal a feature of rich people, like when Philip says “Oh, what’s happened? Previous engagement?”
 

VOCABULARY

duck, beamed, cherub, plied, vile, pick-up, bowled over

STORY WITH MARGIN NOTES

VIDEO ANALYSIS

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

The Stranger, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY

Mrs Hammond has been ten months away from home visiting her eldest daughter in Europe. Now the ship in which she has been travelling has stopped outside Auckland harbour for no apparent reason. A doctor has been sent for to go on board, and this situation lasts for a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Mr Hammond, who has come from Napier where he lives, has been waiting with a number of people for the ship docking. Mr Hammond has been very nervous and agitated: he has paced up and down the wharf, he has lifted and girl on a barrel and then forgotten her, he has felt his heart beating… He has wondered if his wife had been ill on board...

Finally, the ship has berthed and is moored. Mr Hammond runs to greet his wife Janey; he goes on board to help her with the luggage. He is very excited because he wants to be alone with her and have some intimacy. He has even left their children at home and has booked a room in a hotel to spend at least a night together before going back to Napier with the family.

But before going away from the boat, Mrs Hammond wants to thank the captain and to say goodbye to her traveller mates, and Mr Hammond realizes her wife is very popular and he feels proud of her and likes her the more. But then, when she wants to say goodbye to the doctor, Mr Hammond is afraid again thinking that perhaps his wife has been ill during the passage, and what is more, he suspects that something singular (he doesn’t know what) has happened.

He longs to get some hours alone with his wife, but her responses to his desires are distant or cold. When they arrive to the hotel, he’s so in a hurry that he didn’t even greet his mates there: he wants to be immediately in their room. Alone with his wife, he doesn’t want to go down to the restaurant to have dinner. But he is a bit confused because of this lack of tenderness in his wife: she’s been ten months away!

In the end, she tells him why she’s in a so melancholic mood: a young passenger has died in her arms. He had felt sick and, according to the doctor, he has had a heart attack. Mr Hammond is more unsettled when he knows she was alone with the young man before and in the moment of his death. And he feels jealous, he feels he won’t be alone with his wife ever more. A dead man has beaten him to the punch, and he’ll never be able to get a rematch.

Jealousy, or envy, is in this case a contradictory feeling, because the object which spurs it doesn’t exist any more; so it’s like striking in the air, it’s a ghost and you’ll never be able to defeat it.

But is he really jealous, or he’s only disappointed because he couldn’t get satisfaction for his intimacy?

 

QUESTIONS

-At the beginning of the story it seems that the ship waiting near the harbour is in quarantine. What do you remember about the quarantine in the beginning of 2020? Where does the word “quarantine” come from (because sometimes means 15 days and in our case lasted 3 months)?

-What resources use the author to give us the impression that Mr Hammond is very anxious to meet his wife?

-When does he start to being jealous? Is jealousy a feature of a character, or it’s something you can feel all of a sudden? Is really a bad thing (morally) being jealous? Is it something you learn, or does it belong to the human nature?

-What can be the difference between “well-meaning envy” and “green envy”? Give examples.

-At the end of the story, we can see that a dead man has “replaced” or “overcame” the husband. James Joyce did something similar in his story The Dead. Why in the story is the bond with the dead man so strong? What do you think of the famous sentence in The Little Prince, by Saint Exupéry, “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed [or saved]”?

 

VOCABULARY

crinkled, galley, stern, snugly, glasses, roped, liner, dent, thrum, wheezed, raked, rot, bee-line, pikestaff, took it all, put off, butting in, chucked, thirsted, hover

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

SUMMARY

AUDIOBOOK

The Dead, by James Joyce

The Daughters of the Late Colonel, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY

The story deals with the memories, feelings and perspectives of a couple of spinsters a week after their father’s death. The action takes place in a brief lapse of time inside the house, and there’s a lot of dialogue, so it’s almost a play for the theatre. The sisters talk about the things they have to do following their father’s funeral. They speak about giving or not their father’s top hat to the porter, about the convenience or not of dying black her dressing gowns, about not paying the nurse for having been invited to stay with them a week after the decease, about sending their father’s watch to his son Benny, who lives in Ceylon, or to give it to his grandson Cyril who lives in London, about having or not the holy communion, about arranging and disposing of their father’s things, about dismissing or not the maid now they don’t need a cook to prepare colonel’s meals any more…

They discuss all these questions, and they have a lot of doubts as to take a decision for the most of them, for all their lives they had been under the authority of a tyrannical father, and now they are at a loss about how to deal with the things to do. We have to suppose their father was a soldier serving in India (not an easy post), who treated his children with military discipline to the point of annulling their wills. And this strict education was aggravated because their mother died when they were very young.

Now, Josephine, or Jug, and Constantia, or Con, cannot get rid of the feeling that, even now, they are under their father’s authority, and even, when they know he’s dead and buried, feel his presence: they imagine he’s watching them, that he’ll raise from the tomb and scold them for having buried him, they imagine that if now they shut him in a cupboard, he’ll fight to get out, dead as he is. For they remember the exact moment when he died, when he opened only one threatening eye to look at them angrily, just before passing away.

So these two girls had spent their lives taking care of their father, bore his angers, his quarrels with the family friends, and bore to be isolated from the society, and thus having the possibility of finding a husband who would carry them away from their home-barrack hindered. No suitor would approach them with a so unpleasant father, a father more bent to chase them away than to allure them. Jug and Con couldn’t even ask their brother Benny for help, because we can imagine that he followed his father’s calling, career and character, as he lives in a remote part of Ceylon.

But the two sisters were (and are still) not only afraid of their father, but of the maid, a woman who has adopted the colonel’s character and treats the sisters with a contempt and rudeness improper of a servant.

Their sense of abandonment, fear and indecision reaches its highpoint at the end of the story, when they wanted to say something to each other, and they cannot (or perhaps don’t want to) remember what was it.

The story is a sad and a hopeless: we can imagine how secluded, monotonous and even poor their life has been until now, and how it’ll be for them in the future: they cannot even cook! But this topic isn’t new in the literature of the 19^th and 20^th centuries; the novelty is the way Mansfield tells it. We find funny or surprising moments in her narrative, as when they laugh imagining their father’s hat on the porter, when they imagine dying their dressing gowns, when Con worries about the poor mice, when Jug is afraid her father will be angry when he discovers that they had buried him, when Jug wanted Con to be the first to go into their father’s dormitory because she is taller, when they feel his presence inside the chest of drawers and then locked the wardrobe, when they imagine so vividly Benny’s life that we believe we’re seeing him, although it’s only a sisters’ fantasy; we also get confused with Cyril’s visit, because at the beginning we don’t know if it takes place before his grandfather’s death or after; we don’t know either what to think when they don’t want the holy communion because of minor details like the difficulty of finding a place for the altar, when they remember they gave money to the barrel organ to stop the music, not as a tip for it, etc.

And then, as usually, Mansfield offers us some mysterious details that have to be symbols open to infinite interpretations: the top hat, the dressing gowns, the watch and the box they wanted to send it with, the shortened names, the boa, the snake, the barrel organ, the meringue, Con lying on the floor with her arms outstretched, the tunnel…
And finally one cannot help praising Mansfield’s ear for the dialogues; one cannot help thinking what a master of the spoken words she was: the characters talk so fluently, so naturally, that one can imagine really hearing their voices.

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about etiquette at funerals?
-What has to be your attitude in a funeral? You cannot laugh there, but how can you avoid a laughing fit?
-According to your experience, is mourning for public appearances or for a personal feeling?
-Beside the black clothes, what else you do to show you’re in mourning?

-Obituary and epitaph: do you have your own ones composed? What do you know about the Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters?

-What last words or last gestures of famous people (or not famous) do you know? E.g.: Please, believe me if I tell you that I would like my last sentence was: “I have no choice but to die; I apologize for any inconvenience.”

-In your view, what are the meaning of these symbols:

the top hat, the dressing gowns, the watch and the box they wanted to send it with, the shortened names, the boa, the snake, the barrel organ, the meringue, Con lying on the floor with her arms outstretched, the tunnel…

-What do you think is going to happen to the sisters in the future?

 

VOCABULARY

heaved, dyed, shrieked, scurry, crumbs, tabbies, marmalade, appallingly, gimcrack, bold, callous, told on, runners, rocker, blow-out, breezily, brooded, give Kate notice, bypath, made a face, mantelpiece, thieved

SUMMARY

MORE ANALYSIS

SUMMARY AND MORE

FILM (from minute 25:44)

AUDIOBOOK

Mr Reginald Peacock's Day, by Katherine Mansfield

 

SUMMARY, by Cristina Fernández

The tale is the story of one day in the life of an egocentric musician that has success in his career, but unable to manage with bills, creditors and everyday details.

He would like to be one of the aristocrat group of people for whom he works, and behaves like one of them, meanwhile his wife has to manage to please his extravagances with a low budget and be her maid.

The marriage doesn’t work, as he adores everything in other women and loathes everything about his wife. Also, he tries to teach his son to behave like an aristocrat, with the result that the child finds it absurd.

To summarize the day, he gives singing lessons at home to grateful women and at night he sings in a private house, and that night he went to dinner too with one of his students.

Today, all has been a success in his life, but not his marital relationship, as he treats his wife as a maid, and he would like she would be like one of his pupils.

 

QUESTIONS TO REFLECT

Why do we want to be the centre of everything?

Why is always the other the responsible for a failure?

QUESTIONS TO DEBATE

-What can you tell us about the hero’s name?
-What is the best way to wake up? Do you think that having to get up at a determined time is a kind of being a slave?
-Do you think marriage / living together changes the relationship between a couple?

-Our society has to do exercise or go to the gym because most of the jobs don’t imply movement. Is this good or bad for our health in particular, or for the mankind in general?

-According to your opinion, what kind of formalisms are necessary in our daily routines? (saying “thank you”, e.g.) Aren’t these formulas worn out?

-What are your politics about keeping a servant?

-“Vanity, that bright bird”: what is the meaning of this expression? When vanity can be positive?

-How can governments promote culture for everybody, not only for rich people?

-“Nobody is a hero for their servant / husband /wife”. Why is that?

-“Ah, is we only were friends, how much I could tell her now!” Do you tell different things to a friend than to your spouse?

 

VOCABULARY

overall, stick and stone, shell, clip his wings, wedded, loofah, thrill, make it up, looked up, pansy, chords, waft, dairy

ANALYSIS

IDEAS MAP

The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

At the beginning of this story, Katherine Mansfield tells us how the Sheridan family is preparing a party in the garden of their mansion. The opulent family is made up of the parents and four siblings: one boy, Laurie, and three girls, Meg, Jose and the youngest one, Laura. The latter is the true protagonist, and the narrator will make us see the events through her eyes.

During the preparations, Laura receives news of the death of a neighbour, a carter named Scott, who lives in a neighbourhood next to the Sheridans’, but completely different, indeed. It is a poor, working-class neighbourhood, where people live overcrowded and in poor situation. In fact, Mrs Sheridan cannot explain herself how anyone can live in such terrible conditions, although that doesn’t really seem to worry her at all.

For Laura, it is evident that the party must be suspended; it seems indecent to her that the widow and her five small children, who have lost their father, have to hear the music and merriment of the party. But for both her mother and her brothers, especially for Jose (who enjoys giving orders to the servants, as it is said in the story, and who sings about the hardness of life only to delight herself in her own voice) it is a crazy idea. Just because the neighbours suffer (the death of a man), doesn’t mean that they have to suffer too (cancelling a party). For them, there was no difference between these situations.

Laura sees things differently, she does not believe in absurd class distinctions (she thought that), although the education she has received and her age make her manipulable and naive. At the beginning of the story, when she goes out to talk to those who are going to put up the marquee (this time the mother wants to be another guest, and Laura is delighted to be outside socializing with people of different class), she thinks that the fact of eating carelessly a piece of bread with butter in front of the workers will already convert her in one of them, and now, in the case at hand, just her vision in the mirror wearing a beautiful hat that flatters her a lot is enough to make her believe that her mother must be right. For her, in short, the working class is a blurry vision, something she only knows through newspapers.

This vision will change dramatically when Laura is forced by her mother to bring the Scotts a basket with sandwiches, cakes, and other food left over from the party (which has been a success).

When she enters the poor neighbourhood and sees what state these people really live in, she is ashamed of her luxurious dress, and especially her hat. She wants to leave quickly, but Mrs Scott’s sister politely invites her to go in, and even to look at Mr Scott’s corpse.

And it is this vision that will upset Laura the most. She sees a calm, relaxed man who no longer cares about parties or jobs. She feels deeply disturbed, and leaves there saying only “Forgive my hat.”

On her way home, she meets her brother Laurie, who has gone to look for her, and can’t find words to express what she feels and can only say “Isn’t life…”, to which her brother replies “Isn’t it, darling?”

 

PERSONAL OPINION

This is a story that tells us about the difference between classes, about the futility of a luxurious and easy life compared to a miserable and poor working life, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. The narrator uses Laura as a catalyst for those differences. She thinks with more freedom than the rest of her family, but she is too young and naive to fully understand the problem. But when she visits the poor neighbourhood, and especially when she sees the peace in the face of the carter’s corpse, she has a kind of revelation. Can her high class feel that peace with the meaningless life they lead? Can it be felt by someone who wonders how the poor can live this way without doing nothing to change it, someone who subtly blames them for their situation, as if they had chosen it voluntarily?

I think that when Laura asks for forgiveness for her hat, she is actually asking for forgiveness from her neighbours for belonging to a class that humiliates them and that gives them the leftovers of their food just to make them feel their superiority.

The fact that Katherine Mansfield has once again chosen a woman as the protagonist of a story against the established norms of her time tells us once again about her revolutionary character and her recognized feminism. Laura (a woman) has had a revelation. Laurie (a man) seems to understand his sister when she can’t find words to describe her feelings, but is that true? Can he, who has not entered the house or seen the body, understand Laura’s confusion? We will never know.

QUESTIONS

-They say the girls’ names are after the protagonists’ names in Little Women. What do you know about Little Women? Can you consider it a feminist story?
-Working people and well-to-do people use different levels of language. Is it possible to break the barriers between these two kinds of people? How?
-According to you, who has righter feelings for the dead man’s family, Laura or the rest of the family? Are Laura’s condolences an intrusion in the family’s pain? Do every social class have to limit their sympathy to their own class?

 

VOCABULARY

mowing, marquee, staves, lanky, haggard, looped up, pressing, meringue-shells, castors, playing chase, print skirt, cream puffs, icing sugar, carry one back, yer, shied, relish, prowls, sympathetic, cooed, poky, fray, becoming, frock, palings, crutch

MOVIE

Film (from minute 27:45 on)

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

CLIFF NOTES

MORE ANALYSIS

Bliss, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteres

Bertha Young, a 30-year-old young woman, was married to Harry, whom she adored and loved, just like he adored her. They had a daughter, Bertha, whom she loved madly. Her husband had money and a good job, and they lived in a beautiful house with a garden. They also had friends of similar level to theirs.

Bertha felt completely happy, perhaps until the end of the night when they had invited the couple Norman Knight and wife, a theatre entrepreneur, Eddy Warren (a writer), and Pearl Fulton (a decorator) to dinner.

Bertha felt admiration and affection, or perhaps something more, for Pearl, unlike her husband Harry, who apparently detested her.

At the end of the dinner, when the guests left, Bertha realized that Pearl and her husband Harry were in a relationship. So Bertha asked herself the big question: and now what is going to happen?

 

PERSONAL REFLECTION

Because of the details that Katherine provides in her magnificent short story “Bliss”, and because of the analysis that Dr Oliver Tearle makes of the short story, I believe that if Katherine had continued writing after Bertha’s question, “what is going to happen now?”, she could have written a lot of different endings, but due to her short life she decided not to waste time on it, leaving this work to her readers.

QUESTIONS

-The story’s morality seems to be “ignorance is bliss”, or “out of sight, out of mind”. From your experience, what do you think it’s better: to always tell the truth, or to hide the things you imagine they can hurt?

-According to your view, why the baby is called “Little B”?

-Why is Bertha suddenly full of desire for her husband? Why was she generally cold?

-At the end, what do you think it will happen to their marriage? Is he going to break up with Miss Fulton? Is Bertha going to forgive him?

-What can be the meaning of The parable of the young women? (page 180, line 4/5)

-Along the story, we find some hints / signs that make us suspect that something happens between Miss Fulton and Harry. Can you tell us some of these hints?

-“Bertha guessed Miss Fulton’s mood so exactly…” This was Bertha’s first impression. Do you trust first impressions? Tell us an anecdote of yours where you had a first impression, and then, after knowing better the person, you had to change it.

-“In the drawing room, perhaps she [Miss Fulton] will ‘give a sign’ [to Bertha]”. Do you believe in love at first sight? How can you be aware that someone is in love with you?

-What is the meaning of these different symbols?

Fiddle

Tangerines, apples, strawberry, grapes

Pear tree (in bloom)

Cats (grey, and black -its shadow)

Lobster flesh

 

VOCABULARY

bowl a hoop, fiddle, M’m, tangerines, nursery, tugged, sound, make sb out, dullish, catching sb’s heels, couches, jonquils, stodgy, fluke, rose to a man, bored, fillet, snip, conservatory, teeming

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

ANALYSIS IN VIDEO

AUDIOBOOK

The Fly, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Maria A. Feijóo

This story takes place in a very brief time-lapse, at the end of a meeting between two friends. They both are old men, but very different from each other. Nevertheless, they have an important thing in common, as we will learn later in the narrative.
The first character introduced is Mr Woodifield. He is the youngest, although due to his poor health we could think he is the oldest: he has had a stroke, and his life and mental abilities have been affected. He is now retired, and we know that he is married and has at least two daughters, as we are told that they only allow him to go to the City alone on Tuesdays.
One of those Tuesdays, he goes to “the boss’s” office. This character has no other name in the story. We can suppose he really has been Mr Woodifield’s boss. He is five years older than him, but remains very vigorous and active. He also offers the perfect image of social success: he is proud of his house, of his money and of his position. He treats his employees in an authoritarian way, but he seems to have a real esteem for Mr Woodifield. Anyway, there is something that he does not want to talk about: a photography of a young officer that stands on his table.
At the end of their meeting, “the boss” offers Mr Woodifield a glass of an expensive whisky - he insists on that - in the awareness that he usually is not allowed to drink. Maybe due to the alcohol, Mr Woodifield brings out just the only thing “the boss” does not want to hear about. He explains that his daughters have been in Belgium, visiting the grave of their brother, Reggie, and that they also had a look at a nearby grave, the grave of “the boss’s” son, the young officer in the picture. This is what they have in common: both had lost their sons during the war.
After a few banalities, Mr Woodifield leaves his friend’s office. As he remains alone, “the boss” commands his clerk to be let alone for a half an hour. He is very affected and wants to weep. His unique son was the meaning of his whole life: he wanted him to inherit his business, his house, all what he built with so much effort.
But, surprisingly, he is not able to cry as he did at the beginning of his loss. He goes on thinking how great his son was, but six years have passed, and even looking at the photography he cannot really feel again the pain he was intended to feel.
Suddenly, his attention is drawn to his ink pot, where a fly is desperately trying to survive. In what seems a compassionate gesture, he saves the fly from dying by taking the poor animal out of the ink and dropping it on a blotting-paper. He observes the way the fly removes the ink from his body, and suddenly he takes more ink and drop it on the fly. Once more, the little insect removes the ink accurately, driven by its survival instinct. A second and a third time, the boss repeats the cruel gesture, and twice more the fly repeats his laborious task, each time with less energy. The boss continues observing and even talking to the fly, until it dies.
At that moment, the boss throws the exhausted body of the insect into the waste-paper basket. He has a very weird feeling that frightens him, but he calls his clerk and asks him to bring some blotting-paper. And when he tries to remember what was worrying him before, he could not remember. He could not remember anything at all.

 MY OPINION

This short story is very interesting because there are plenty of possible interpretations. The fly can be held as a powerful representation of the nonsense of the war, where young people lose their lives in an absurd way under the command of powerful people. It is also a vivid image of how difficult it sometimes becomes to struggle for life when we have been hurt by destiny. The two human characters are another image of the poor control we may have upon our lives. “The boss” is an especially rich character due to the contrast between his image of a powerful man, able to control his and the other’s life, and his very childish behaviour with the fly as well as his poor emotional ability to face and manage pain.

QUESTIONS

-How has your life changed since you are retired? Or how do you think it’ll be changed?

-Do retired people feel they are a nuisance for other people? In what sense?

-Let’s talk about cemeteries. Are they beautiful places to walk around? Do you know any curious cemetery? Do you go and visit your relatives’ graves?

-Do you think it’s correct to take away things from a hotel? (I mean: shampoo bottles, combs, toothbrushes…) Do you usually do it?

-When you travel, what do you remember best? (People usually tell anecdotes.)

-What kind of crier are you? Do you cry watching films? Are you ashamed of crying? (Kundera kitsch)

-According to your opinion, why do /don’t children go on with their parents’ trade?

-What do you think it’s the meaning of the fly in the story?

-Why did he torture the fly? Is it an instance of the banality of evil?

-Magic numbers; three times the man flooded the fly with ink, and at the third time it died. What do you think of ritual numbers? Do you have one? Why did you choose it?

-“But such a grinding feeling of wretchedness seized him that he felt positively frightened.” Why?

-At the end, he didn’t remember something, like the old man at the beginning. What does the writer tell us about this for?

 

VOCABULARY

snug, pram, City, at the helm, wistfully, muffler, treacle, on his last pins, tamper, rolling in his chaps, nutty, yer, saw ... out, cubby, spring chair, learning the ropes, man jack, tackle, look sharp 

Conversation about The Fly (listen to the audio)

Summary and analysis

Another summary

Notes

Study guide

More analysis

A Dill Pickle, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Elisa Sola Ramos

 A man and a woman meet after six years apart. The story is a conversation between them in a café, through which we know details of their relationship and their personality.

During the conversation, it’s revealed that Vera split up by letter, and he was very touched. We also know that their personalities are very different, quite opposite: fantasy is dominating in Vera’s mind, and he seems to be very practical and even stingy. The reader is behind Vera’s mind: we know her feelings, her name (Vera), but we don’t know the inner feelings of the man, who doesn’t have a name. He’s a flat character or an archetype: a white upper-class man, good-looking (in Vera’s words: “far better good-looking than he had been [in the past]”), with a lot of money that allows him to travel... He appears as a self-confident character: “he had the air of a man who has found his place in life”.

On the contrary, Vera has not been able to travel because she is poor (she had to sell her piano), she’s completely alone, and she seems to be very unstable.

One thing that highlights the differences between them is that their memories about the same fact don’t match: he remembers one afternoon in a Chinese pagoda as a wonderful day, and she remembers the maniac behaviour of him “infuriated out of proportion about the wasps”. In another point of the story, when he recollects the night when he brought a little Christmas tree, he remembers how he could speak about his childhood, and she remembers how stingy he had been with a pot of caviare, which had cost seven and sixpence, and he compared eating caviare with eating money. Not to mention that he couldn’t remember his dog’s name, and she did.

In spite of all of that, she is willing to give up herself, to renounce her vision of the facts (“his [vision] was the truer”) in order to submit to a man, perhaps to be able to eat, perhaps for survival, perhaps for emotional submission (another kind of sexist violence), who knows!

There are many metaphors that help the author to create an atmosphere of sexual desire between the two former lovers or, at least, of Vera’s sexual desire for him.

The first one is the orange. The image of him peeling an orange with “his special way”, the smell and the colour, gives the image that Vera wants to be “eaten” by him.

The second symbol is the veil and the collar. In the beginning of the story, she “raised her veil and unbuttoned her high fur collar” as a sign of opening herself, emotionally or sexually, like a bride. The same image, but reversed, appears at the end of the story: when she decides to leave, “she had unbuttoned her collar again and drawn down her veil”. Thus, the author takes up the powerful image of the bride to close symbolically their relationship.

Another symbol is the glove. She explains that “she was that glove that he held in his fingers”.

The beast she has inside her is another image, a beast which was “hungry” and “pricked up its ears and began to purr...”. It’s like an inner force that contrasts with the self-possession of a woman of her class and time.

The last erotic symbol is the dill pickle, which is a trigger for Vera’s romantic imagination. She completes the explanation about the scene in the Volga with her own imagination: “She sucked in her cheeks; the dill pickle was terribly sour...” It’s a comic effect: juxtaposing the romantic scene in an exotic frame with this prosaic gift and her imagination.

Throughout the conversation, there are many details that describe a very asymmetrical relationship between the couple. She remembers how he used to interrupt her in the middle of what she was saying. (It has been studied that women are much more interrupted than men in large company meetings, and this trait is a sign of sexist behaviour.) Then, after silencing her, he says that he likes her voice -the sound-, but not the content of what she’s saying. It’s an irony. He’s playing with her. All the time, he flirts with her (he highlights the things that unit them) in order to hook her, because he knows her dreamy and romantic character. He’s getting his revenge.

The two characters are completely different. They live in different worlds. The man is Vera’s romantic opponent, and, in the end, we can have doubts as to his being a rich man because he doesn’t want to pay the small cream bill. He’s a liar, or he’s a stingy man.

On the other side, Vera doesn’t have either a very good position, because she is ready to give up herself in order to have a husband. Both characters aren’t very well treated by the author.

Some people say that A Dill Pickle is a feminist story by Katherine Mansfield, but I’m not sure about that. Despite the fact that the figure of the man is completely negative, ridiculous, maniac and cruel, the image of the woman is not better: shallow, unstable and unclear.

QUESTIONS

-What can be his special way to peel an orange? Do you know a singular case of doing something?

-To your view, what does the orange symbolize?

-Do you like being interrupted? What do you do when someone interrupts you?

-What do you know about Kew Gardens?

-What can you tell us about the Black Sea?

-Why did she know he had been mocking?

-What is the meaning of the dill pickle in the story?

-Why do you think the man has no name?

-According to you, why does she go away so suddenly?

 

VOCABULARY

daffodils, muff, meant to, loathe, sniggering, purr, ringers 

 

AUDIOBOOK

ANALYSIS

REVIEW

SYNOPSIS

SUMMARY