FOUR SHORT LOVE STORIES

1.A PAINFUL CASE-JAMES JOYCE,IRELAND(1882-1941)

SUMMARY:This story is psychological.James Joyce presents a tragic and painful event in the life of Mrs.Sinico.Mrs.Sinico is a married young woman who has a daughter and her husband works as a captain on the sea.She has been living lonely life since she got married before many years.Her husband is out of the house and lives on the sea most of the time.The daughter is also busy practicing music.Mrs.Sinico loves and plays music.She has nobody to express her love,emotion,feelings and to  share her private life.On the other hand,Mr.Duffy is a moral person who is a scholar.He is a cashier of a bank.His principle is that any type of bond is a problem.One day,he sees a charming lady in Rotunda.He likes her very much.He again sees her in a concert.When he meets her the third time,he talks to her and they agree to meet again and again.Mr.Duffy goes to her home,they sit,talk,dine together and they share different ideas.One day, when they are sitting together,Mrs.Sinico becomes emotional,catches hand of Mr.Duffy and presses his hand against her face.Mr.Duffy becomes angry and he breaks his friendship with Mrs.Sinico.The next day he gets his presents back.After four years he hears the death of Mrs.Sinico in the rail road accident.Mrs.Sinico actually wants to die because her feelings,emotions and passions are not understood and fulfilled.Her life becomes dull and she is killed when she tries to cross the railway line.In the end,Mr.Duffy regrets and he hates his moral principle.

2.THE LADY WITH A DOG-ANTON CHEKHOV

Summary:Dmitritch Gurov had been at Yalta,a sea-side town,for two weeks.So he took interest in a new-comer,Anna Sergeyevna known as a lady with a dog.

Gurov was under forty.He had a daughter and two sons.His wife seemed half as old as he.She was well-read.He was unfaithful to her.So he said that women were bad.He called them “the inferior race.”He felt uneasy in the society of men and was free in the company of women.

One evening Gurov talked to Anna while he was dining in the gardens.They talked about the weather and about each other.He was from Moscow and she from S-.Her husband might come to fetch her there.He found something heart-breaking about her.

After a week of their introduction,they went to the pier in the evening.The steamer arrived a bit late.Anna looked for someone whom she knew.When she saw none,she looked happy.Then he went to her hotel with her.

After a while she said that it was wrong and that she was very much sorry for the thing she had done.She felt like a sinner.After some time she came back to normal.Early in the morning they drove to Oreanda and sat on a bench watching the sea.It was a very pleasant scene.They came back to their hotels.After this they would meet at twelve o’clock and lunched and dined together.She complained that he did not love her in the least,and that he thought of her just as a common woman.

They were expecting her husband to come,but a letter came from him and she was in a hurry to go.Gurov went to the station with her by coach.At the station she said that they were separating forever and wished his happiness.The train moved off and suddenly he felt that everything was over.

Gurov went home in Moscow in winter.The snow began to fall and everything looked white and fresh.Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow life.Reading newspapers,going to the club,arranging parties and playing cards were part of his life there.He imagined that he would forget Anna in a month or two.But everything concerning her was very clear in his mind as if he had parted with her only the day before.He remembered how they had passed a brief period at Yalta.She came into his memory so frequently.He felt as if she was looking at him.He did not take any interest in his Moscow life.He could not tell this thing to his wife or any fellow worker.He could not sleep all night.

In the holidays in December he went to S- to look for Anna.He told his wife that he was going to Petersburg to do something for his friend.He reached S- and stayed at a hotel.

From the hotel porter he got the necessary information about Anna’s husband.Von Diderits,her husband,was a rich man and everyone in the town knew him.His house was not far from hotel.Gurov  could not go there directly,nor could he send her any letter.So he was waiting for a chance to see her.He passed the time walking along the street in front of her house.

He saw a poster.”The Geisha”was to be performed for the first time.Thinking  that  Anna would not miss the first show,he went to the theatre.As expected,Anna came into the theatre with her husband.During the first interval when her husband went out to smoke,he went to her.She was frightened and went out of the hall.He followed her and when they were alone she asked him to go immediately.She added that she had been thinking of him all the time,and that she could not forget him.But she promised that she would meet him in Moscow.

Anna,started to come to Moscow to see him once in two or three months,telling her husband that she would consult a doctor there.In Moscow she stayed at Bazaar hotel and sent for Gurov.Nobody knew anything about their meeting.

When Gurov went into her room,she could not speak.She was crying.She was sorry for the kind of life they were passing.They were forced to meet secretly.They had to hide themselves from people.She loved him so deeply that she could not think of their separation.He too felt that he was in love with someone for the first time in his life.

They loved each other like husband and wife,like tender friends.They were like a pair of birds of passage,caught and forced to live in different cages.They forgave each other for their past and present mistakes,and felt that this life of theirs had changed them both.

Then they spent a long time taking each other’s advice.They talked of how to live in the same town meeting each other frequently and openly.It seemed as if they would find the solution soon to begin a new and splendid life.It was also clear to them that they had still a long way to go.The most complicated and difficult part of their journey was just beginning.

FOUR LEVELS:

1.LITERAL COMPREHENSION:A forty year old lady-killer named Gurov met a young lady with a dog named Anna at Yalta.They passed some time happily.She went home when she got her husband’s letter.At the railway station she said that they would never see each other and wished his happiness.Gurov,after spending normal life in Moscow,felt that he could not forget Anna.Her memory haunted him all the time.During the winter holidays,he went to S- to see Anna.When they met at the theatre,she said that she could not forget him although she wanted to.She promised to come to Moscow to see him.Then she started to visit him once in every two or three months.Now they were in real love.They felt that fate itself had meant them for one another.But they were forced to live separately and meet secretly.They discussed how they could live in the same town and see each other frequently without being afraid of others.To live such a new life,they had to go a long way.The most difficult part of their journey was just beginning.

2.INTERPRETATION:This story may be trying to tell us that a person realizes the value of real unselfish love when he grows older.When people are young,many of them think that love is equivalent to passion.They feel that they should enjoy life when they are still young.But,when they realize that love is not passion,but more than that,their passionate love is transformed into eternal love.Gurov and Anna,who were pleased with their passionate love in the beginning,later were trying to make their love long lasting and free from social blames.

3.CRITICAL THINKING:The concept of love as adopted by Gurov and Anna might be acceptable to the modern Western readers.But we people in the East have different opinion of love.Although some people here may follow such practices,yet our society does not tolerate these.Are both Gurov and Anna faithful to their spouses?Is such unlawful passionate relation acceptable in our society?If such characters exist,shouldn’t we punish them?Why do they go unpunished?Is the storyteller right in doing so?

4.ASSIMILATION:Keeping aside my moral conscience for a moment,I read the story and enjoyed it a lot.I knew what is love.I identified myself with them and learned how difficult it is to pass time without the one we love.I learned that we are all born for love;it is the principle of existence and its only end.True unselfish love is the real beginning of life.

3.LOOK AT A TEACUP-PATRICIA HAMPL

Summary:Patricia Hampl is alone in her home.She is drinking tea.The tea cup is on the table.She looks at the tea cup.She closely looks at the structure,design and the decorations of the tea cup.Then she remembers her mother because the tea cup was given to her by her mother.Her mother had bought the tea cup in 1939 when the second world war began.1939 was important to her mother because it was the year when she got married.But 1939 was important to Hampl because it was the year the second world war began.The mother’s and the daughter’s interests were different.Her mother only liked to talk about family life.But Hampl liked to explore human history.Her mother was simple,ordinary housewife,but Hampl is an intellectual who always wants to question human history.Hampl is also interested in passion and she looks at things critically and thoughtfully.She wants to devote all her time in work,in studying history.She does not want to marry and bear children.Her mother lived during the world war,but she does not want to talk about the war,she only remembers her wedding that year.Hampl always wants to hear about the war,about the time her mother lived because that is all history.But her mother is too old and her memory is very poor.Moreover,she does not want to talk about the war.But her mother often likes to talk about the family.She never tells anythings completely.She starts talking and all of a sudden she changes the topic.So,it is difficult to understand what she really means.Her mother has nothing to tell about things she likes to listen to.But Hampl always requests her mother to tell her anything she could remember.She wants to collect all the details of her talks and fragmented memoirs and join them together to understand history.But her mother does not like to talk about history of the world,she is interested in her present day life.

                   Hampl does not want to forget history,she tries to fight history,confront it.She also refuges traditions like marrying and bearing children.But her mother wants to forget history and live in the present time,according to modern way of life.Hampl cannot forget history because it is full of injustices and cruelties.The second world war killed many people belonging to her gender.She is not happy with the war because many innocent lives were lost.But her mother,who lived during the war,does not care about this.She only remembers her marriage.

                    And now,sitting alone in her house and looking at the tea cup Hampl suddenly feels as if her mother gave her the tea cup in answer to her questions about history.She looked at the tea cup very closely and discovered that it had many things to tell about history,particularly the second world war.She compares the objects or structures in the cup with things and events of the time around the second world war.How does she do this?

                The tea cup is a piece of history.She says,”The cup is a detail,a small unchanted finger from the mid-century bon-fire.”She means to say that the tea cup is an object of history which originated during the second world war.She compares the tea cup with the face of her mother.The cup is light,delicate but also definite.It is as refined as a face.It is then,palest watergreen imaginable and in certain lights,it is just something not white.The cup is shiny and there are thin band of gold around the edges of cup and saucer.A band of gold in the inner circle is worn away and it looks dulled and blurred.The outside of the cup has no other decoration.But the inside of the cup has very meaningful features.There are flowers falling in separate bloosoms,some fallen faster and each flower is different.The flowers do not seem to be pasted on the surface,they really appear to be caught in motion.The flowers do not create any pattern like her mother’s memoirs do not make any complete story.Each flower has different colour.But the flowers are so dim that none of them look real.They are like replica of memory itself.For Hampl history is also as dim and blurred as the decoration in the inner part of the cup.The cup,history and her mother’s memory are similar in many ways.The cup’s features are not clear.History is not clear to her.Her mother’s memoirs are not clear to her.The cup is dim.History is also dim.Her mother’s memory is dim.But Hampl tries to find meanings even in the dim and pale cup,like she tries to collect details of history by listening to her mother or by requesting her to tell about her past.By examining the cup closely she discovers that the cup has something to tell her about history.The falling flowers catch her attention.She associates the falling flowers with many things that fell during the time of second world war.In 1939 many things fell like the flowers in the cup.Brides,who married that year,fell on bed(slept) with men(husbands) for the first time.Bodies fell(died) in war.Bombs fell on people.Countries fell(defeated) in war.In this way falling flowers in the teacup help Hampl to connote other important ‘fallings’ in history together.In this way even an small object takes her to the past.She cannot stop thinking about the past.Everywhere,even in the most insignificant things she faces history.

4.THE DEMON LOVER-ELIZABETH BOWEN

                    The Demon Lover and Other stories by Elizabeth Bowen was first published in Britain in 1945.In 1946,collection was published in the United States under the title Ivy Gripped The Steps and Other Stories.Without exception,reviewers greeted it enthusiastically,praising it for what was described in the New Yorker as “a completely successful explanation of what war did to the mind and spirit of English people.”Today,”The Demon Lover” is probably the most anthologized of Bowen’s short stories,and critics claim that it reflects some of Bowen’s greatest strengths as a writer.

                   Bowen was inspired to write “The Demon lover”during World War II,after having experienced the Blitz,or aerial bombardment,of London by the Germans during 1940-41.Remembering the effects of World War I,people in London were overwhelmed by the events of World War II.Bowen’s story,then,attempted to sum up the “war on top of war” sentiment which prevailed in post-Blitz London.

                 In “The Demon Lover” the main character, Mrs.Drover, confuses World War II with world war I.Returning home to collect some personal belongings during the aftermath of a recent bombing,she thinks of her long-dead fiancé to the point where the reader does not know if this is a ghost story or simply a story of one character’s neurotic mental state.

PLOT:

Mrs.Kathleen Drover has returned to London from her house in the country in order to pick up some things from the house that she and her husband abandoned because of the bombing of London by the Germans during 1940-41.It is a humid day in late August when she goes back to her mostly deserted street.

When she enters the house,she sees all of the telltale stains and dust left when she and her family moved out.The house has some cracks in it because of the bombing,and she wants to check on it.As she is passing her hall table,she notices a letter addressed to her-a strange sight,considering that the caretaker did not know of her return and that her house is boarded up and all of her mail has been forwarded to the country address.But she picks up the letter and takes it upstairs to her bedroom to read it,just moments before rain begins to fall.

The letter’s author promises her that nothing has changed except for the time that has passed.He tells her that it is their anniversary and mentions a time for their meeting,of which she has no memory.Strangest of all,the letter is signed “K”,her own initial.When she checks the date on the letter and finds that it is for that day,she suddenly feels strangely apprehensive.She looks at herself in the mirror,noting how thin she has become from food rationing,and we are told that,despite a facial twitch and worried mood,she always looks calm.

As the clock strikes six,she thinks back to twenty-five years earlier,in 1916,when her young soldier-lover said goodbye for the last time.She remembers his promise to be with her and the way he cruelly pressed her hand against his uniform breast buttons.She remembers the relief she felt when she could run in and tell her mother and sister that he was gone,the isolation she felt because of his promise,and following his supposed death in World War I,the long years before anyone was again interested in her.She has the sense of being watched,a feeling that is reinforced when the letter-writer suggests that he saw her leaving London.

Mrs.Drover is becoming increasingly nervous.The house sounds hollow,and she wonders how the letter got in.The more she thinks about it,the more fearful she becomes.As she gets up and locks her bedroom door,she thinks about how she needs to get away from the house and this impending meeting.She decides to collect the things that she wants to take with her and to call a taxi,forgetting that the phone service has been disconnected.

She thinks about her soldier-lover again,remembering everything but his appearance,and realizes that she will not recognize him.She then unlocks her door and listens at the top of the stairs.She feels a draft,as if someone has left the basement through a door or window.

The rain has finally stopped.She decides to carefully leave her house and rush to the local taxi stand.She hurries because she does not want to hear the clock strike seven,in case that is the hour for the mysterious meeting.The story ends when she arrives at the taxi stand and she notices that the taxi seems to be waiting for her.After entering the taxi,Mrs.Drover knocks on the glass behind the driver to get his attention.When their eyes meet,she screams and the driver speeds off,”accelerating without mercy.”This conclusion has been the focus of much speculation-some critics argue that the driver of the taxi is Mrs.Drover’s long-lost lover,while others claim that the episode of anxiety she experiences is due to the stress of the war.