Her First Ball, by Katherine Mansfield

 

AUDIOBOOK

SUMMARY, by Glòria Torner

This story that goes from innocence to maturity can be divided into four parts:

1. Before the ball. Is the cab her first partner of the ball?

Remembering her first experience, a young girl, named Leila, is about to attend her first ball escorted by their cousins Laura, Meg, Jose and Laurie. She is sitting into the cab, and she is so excited that she is looking everything as if it is waltzing because she feels like she is in the real ball thinking and imagining that her first real partner is the cab.

Leila is talking to their cousins because they are surprised that she is so nervous. She attends the ball with a feeling of great expectation because she is a country girl who has never been to a public ball. Their cousins, who know that Leila is naive and innocent, and they come from the city, and they already have some ball experiences, take care of her and protect her.

2. Before entering to the saloon

Leila and their cousins, the Sheridans, arrive at the drill hall. Laura is helping Leila to push to the noisy ladies’ room, where women are busy getting ready and making the last minutes adjustments.

From the door, Leila’s emotion and excitement is increasing with the beauty of the room with golden floors, red carpets, lights and the elegant atmosphere. How Leila’s perception of the ball is that of a dreamlike event! She begins to listen to the music, and the dance programs are passed out. And everything is ready.

3. During the ball

The men stand at the opposite side of the ballroom, and they appear in front of the ladies waiting for the dance to begin.  The music starts, and the men walk over to pick their respective partners.

The ball is on! When Meg cries “Ready Leila?”, Leila begins to dance. The feeling of joy during her first and second partner is clear. Leila enjoys very much dancing spontaneously, because she had learned to dance with girls at the boarding school, but with a male partner is fantastic!

But with the third partner, the fat man, the story changes, the climax starts. This is the part where the tension is the highest because this older man paints a bitter picture of Leila’s future. He is an experienced man who believes he recognizes Leila from another ball, but this is impossible. He begins to dance with an inexperienced Leila. This man manages to ruin her night with just one dance. At that moment, Leila doesn’t want to dance anymore because this old and fat man discourages her.

3. The end. The last dance.

Now we are reaching the outcome. The fourth and last partner, a young man, bows before her and she decides to dance with him. Now she begins to feel again the fantastic emotions she has felt before. With every turn and every glide, she forgets the bad sentences the old man has said to her before. Suddenly the ball seems beautiful again.

Some remarks.

I don’t know if the antagonist, “the fat man,” was trying to ruin the Leila’s night, or he wants simply to warn her.

I imagine this story is set in the early 1900s, in New Zealand.

From the folk stories as The Cinderella or The Red Shoes to some modern films as Billie Elliot I think this theme is a topic in literature, dance or movies.

Don’t you think we always remember our first ball?

QUESTIONS

-Do you remember your first ball? Or the first time you did something that only older people did?

-What keepsakes do you have?

-Do you think dancing has to be a social skill for everybody? I mean: do you think children have to learn it at school? Can everyone dance, or must everyone have the knack? Do you think black people have the art of dancing in their blood?

-Do you think they are things that they ever won’t be “feminist”, like dancing or weddings?

-Have you ever acted as a chaperone?

-What is the best way to not disappoint your desires?

-According to your opinion, why is the old man so cruel with the girl?

-With young people (or with people in general) is better to be optimist or to be pessimist?

-Do you think the main feature of young people is the ability to recover soon from blows? Do you have any examples?

 

VOCABULARY

bolster, bowled, keepsake, drill hall, dash, wraps, cotton, tassels, strung, gilt, under my wing, freckled, yore, calico, clutched, French chalk, Twinkletoes

Psychology, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Cristina Fernández

An ex-lover goes to visit a woman, and both of them are pleased with it, just the sensation of being together and feeling the attraction. When he looked at her, she moved quickly away to prepare tea, interrupting their courtship.

Both of them wanted to speak about what she had said the last time they met, but she needed time for herself, to grow calm, to feel free. Friendship was a good option.

He was so comfortable with her that wanted to go on from where they left off last time, but she tried to stop it from happening again.

The attraction was in the air, they spoke nervously, lovingly, they wanted to succumb, but then their friendship would be in danger and she would suffer.

He wanted to stay but decided to go, she wanted him to stay but didn’t say, she cried, felt rage. The bell rang and she hoped it was him; instead it was an old friend: she hugged her and said goodbye.

Then she went to the writing table and wrote a letter for him, inviting him to come again like a friend.

QUESTIONS

-What do you think about the cliché “[women] long for tea as strong men long for wine”?

-What kind of traveller are you? What is the difference between a tourist and a traveller? How can a tourist be respectful with the environment and the native country?

-Do you think that spoiling things is something in our nature (tread virgin snow, breaking silence, breaking the smooth surface of the water)?

-What do you think of that kind of friendship called “friends with a benefit”? “Sexual love destroys friendship”: According to your point of view, is it a cliché?

-To your mind, is psychoanalysis effective or is it only quackery?

-What kind of novels do you like: psychological, historical, detective / crime novels…? Can you tell us about one you’ve read recently?

-Tell us some examples of the contradiction between clock time and psychological time. Do you have any anecdote?

-What do you do when you have a badly timed visitor?

 

VOCABULARY

lingeringly, shade, sharp, offspring, shooed away, utterly, wads, Roll (one's eyes), entreat, to the bone, be off, outlook, stodgy, put a spell on (somebody), jingle, soiled, reeled

AUDIOBOOK

ANALYSIS

ANOTHER ANALYSIS

Millie, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK

SUMMARY, by Begoña Devis

A really hot day, Millie was looking from her verandah at several men riding horses. She looked at them until they were out of sight. She knew that them were trying to catch the young boy who they believed had murdered Mr Williamson, a man liked by everyone, cheerful and friendly. He had appeared in a pool of blood, shot in his head. At the same time, young Harrison, who had arrived to learning farming, had disappeared. That is why they were looking for him, certain that the murderer could not be other than him. Among the group of men was Willy Cox, a young fellow, and Sid, her husband.

Millie went back into the kitchen; it was half past two and Sid wouldn’t be home until half past ten. She prepared her food, cleaned up, and then was looking around, and thinking about nothing and everything, when she heard a noise. She discovered that there was an apparently dead man in the back yard. She went to get her gun, threatened the man and, when she turned him towards her, she discovered a scared young man, almost a child. Millie felt great pity for him and, when he was finally able to stand up and walk, she asked him to follow her to give him something to eat. But he was too scared even to eat. «When will they return?», the boy stammered. Then Millie realized that he had to be Mr Williamson’s young killer. She didn’t care and decided that the men wouldn’t be able to catch him if she helped him: he was just a child, and nobody knew what he had done, or he hadn’t done. You couldn’t trust the justice of men, she thought, for many times they are nothing more than beasts. «Not before half past ten», she told him.

At night, Millie was lying with Sid in bed. Below, there were Willy Cox with the other chap and his dog, Gumboil. Suddenly, the dog began to bark and run in all directions. Sid jumped out the bed and went down, while, in the yard, young Harrison climbed onto Sid’s horse and fled. Sid asked Millie for the lantern, but she pretended not to hear him. Suddenly, the men saw Harrison, and Millie realized that he no longer had a choice. When Millie became aware of this, she felt as if a strange mad joy smothered everything else: she rushed into the road with the lantern, while dancing and singing «Catch him, hunt him, shoot him!»

 PERSONAL OPINION 

I’m not sure about that, but I think that Millie was a kind of philosophical woman, who asked herself about the things of life, and she was not sure of nothing, especially about the human condition. When he saw the young Harrison, she felt pity for him and tried to help him, although maybe he was a murderer, but when she realized that he no longer had a choice, she joined the group of men who want to catch him, because, after all, who knows?

QUESTIONS

What were Millie’s tastes about men?

How do you think Mr Williamson’s death affected her?

Why do you think the young man killed Mr Williamson?

What was the matter with Millie? Why didn’t she want kids?

Why did she go on helping the boy when he knew he was a murderer?

Explain what happened during the ellipsis.

Why did she change her mind at the end? Or did she?

What do you think it’s better for the mankind, justice or pity?

 

VOCABULARY

quivered, dotty, simpered, packing case dressing table, wunner, bulge, ducked, yer, shamming, corned beef, fox, want, ketch, ole, spouting, lantin

Wikipedia

A graphic presentation

Analysis

Pictures, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY, by Alícia Usart

Miss Ada Moss was a successful contralto singer in her old days, but currently she has no work, and she is hoping for someone to hire her. Her living arrangement is in a room. Being in debt, her landlady is enraged to her, and today she has let her know that she will not stand it. So Miss Moss decides to go out and try her luck.
The first step for her was to attend ABC, but the local wasn’t open yet, so she changed her mind and went to Kig and Kadgit’s, but it wasn’t open either: she had forgotten that it was Saturday. So finally she thought about going to Beit and Bithems, a lively place where there were plenty of people she knew, waiting for someone who may give them news about jobs. In the end, a man appeared and told them to come again on Monday, because today wasn’t a good day for jobs.
At the North-East Film Company there was a crowd all the way up the stairs; they had been there waiting for hours. It has been a call for attractive girls, but when the typist appears, she tells everybody that the call is over.
She set off for the Bitter Orange Company, where they gave her a form with plenty of requests she could not answer. All is over, she thought while sitting in one of the benches of the Square Gardens, from where she saw the “Café de Madrid” and made the decision to go there that night.
There was little light in the café; a stout gentleman approached her, and five minutes later they were leaving the café together.

QUESTIONS

-Give us some information about the Bloomsbury Group.

-Have you ever known a bankrupt person? How can they recover from their situation?

-Why didn't Ada Moss go to the police when the landlady took her letter? (Secrecy of correspondence is a fundamental legal principle.)

-What are the most difficult jobs where to find a vacancy?

-What jobs would you do as a last resource, and what jobs you will never do?

-According to your opinion, why isn’t there a pause between offices in the narration?

-Why do you think the narrator says "typist" and not "secretary", or "clerk", for example?

-What happened at the end of the story?

-Don't you think it isn't the first time she did it?

-Debate: Sex workers. Has prostitution to be illegal? Is it a good idea to penalize the costumers? What do you think of legal prostitution, like in Amsterdam? What do you know about sexual services for invalid people?

 

VOCABULARY

pageant, Stout, popped, eddication, Yours to hand, pounced, slit, safety-pin, crabs, sinking, charwoman, char, preened, part, sand-dancing, mite 

Sand-dance (video)

Waiting for the Robert E. Lee (Judy Garland)

Bloomsbury map

Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK 

SUMMARY, by Paquita Gómez

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTIONS

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

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

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

What do you think their “special seat” was?

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

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

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

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

 

VOCABULARY

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

Wikipedia

The Canary, by Katherine Mansfield

AUDIOBOOK

ANOTHER AUDIOBOOK (with text)

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are birds in a cage singing for their freedom?

QUESTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

VOCABULARY

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

How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped, by Katherine Mansfield

SUMMARY

Pearl Button is a little girl living in a big and rich house, a kind of house that she calls House of Boxes. At the moment of the story, she is playing in the garden, when two big and fat women (perhaps native New Zealander people or gipsies) get there. They liked the child very much and offer her to go with them. At first, the girl has some doubts, but, as the two women seem very nice and wear coloured robes, she decides to go. So they go away from the girl’s house on foot, but, after a while, the girl feels tired, and one of the women carry her. They arrive to their camp; there everybody is very nice, and they give her some fruit. She likes it very much, and, although she stains her dress, nobody worries about it. Then they leave their camp and drive on carts until they reach the beach; Pearl has never seen the sea and she’s amazed and happy. She sees the small houses where these happy people live; the women take off her clothes, and all of them go to the shore. A small wave wets Pearl’s feet and, after the first surprise, she enjoys it very much. But, at this moment, policemen arrive to rescue the girl.

But, was the girl really kidnapped? Or is it better to say that she ran away from her boring life? Were the two women kidnapping her? Or were they only inviting her?

To be happy, do you have to break the rules, do you have to escape from the routine?

There is a narrator in this story, but sometimes this narrator uses the characters’ words and thoughts to tell the story, e.g., “House of Boxes”. What is the effect of this? Don’t you feel nearer the characters? The distance between narrator and character is broken and you are aware you know better their feelings, their points of view.

AUDIOBOOK

 

QUESTIONS

What does the name’s girl suggest to you?

What resources does the author use to make the two women nice for us?

What does a “House of Boxes” look like?

Do you think the girl cried because she was afraid? How do you know?

“The woman was warm as a cat”. What animal do you think is the best pet for a child? Why?

Are fat people nicer or kinder, according to the cliché? Are they more “comfortable”?

Why dies the writer says “[the water] stopped being blue in her hands”?

Who were the “little men in blue coats”? How do you know?

What do you know about the Stockholm syndrome?

 

VOCABULARY

swung, rugs, whip, briar, nestled, purring, paddock, coaxed

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.