Archives for 2014

A Cup of Tea

December 23, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

A Cup of Tea was written on 11 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. It then appeared in the collection The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories compiled by Katherine Mansfield’s husband John Middleton Murry and published in 1923.

A Cup of Tea – critical commentary

The ostensible point of the story is that a rich and self-regarding woman has her complacency disturbed. On a whim, she makes what she thinks of as a charitable gesture to a destitute lower-class girl, only to discover (via her husband) that the girl has qualities that she herself does not possess.

However, there is another reading of the story buried subtly in the narrative and its dialogue. Rosemary is a rich and spoiled woman with a self-indulgent lifestyle who feels that her sudden encounter with a girl off the streets could be ‘an adventure … like something out of a novel by Dostoevsky’ – which in a sense that Rosemary would not understand, it does turn out to be.

She takes the girl back home, ushers her into her private bedroom, and undresses her (in the sense of taking off her hat and coat). She has the intention of leading her into another room for tea but does not do so. When the girl begins to cry, she puts her arm around the girl’s ‘thin, bird-like shoulders’ and promises to look after her.

When Rosemary’s husband Philip interrupts, the young girl gives what is clearly a false name (‘Smith’) and is strangely unfazed by the situation in which she finds herself: she is ‘strangely still and unafraid’. Rosemary describes their encounter in terms of procurement: ‘I picked her up in Curzon Street. She’s a real pick-up’.

Philip, the husband, is shocked by two things – first, by how attractive the girl is, and second by the inappropriate relationship that exists between the two women. He asks satirically if ‘Miss Smith’ will be dining with them, in which case he might be forced to look up The Milliner’s Gazette.

The surface implication of this remark is that the girl might be an unemployed shop girl who is sponging off his wealthy wife, but at a deeper level there is a suggestion that she might be a prostitute of some kind. At that time in the early twentieth century, the employment of single females in occupations such as milliner (hat maker) shop assistant, and other forms of casual jobs was regarded as loosely equivalent to prostitution. This suggestion in the story is reinforced by what happens next. Rosemary pays off the girl with three pound notes and sends her on her way.

The sting in the tale for Rosemary is that she wonders if she, for all the wealth and luxury in her life, lacks the animal magnetism possessed by the lower-class young girl which has left her husband Philip ‘bowled over’ after a single glance.

Narrative voice

The literary quality in the story comes largely from the skillful manner in which Mansfield creates a fluid narrative voice which combines an engagement with her subject, her readers, and even (to some extent) with herself as an identifiable narrator.

Technically, the story starts in third person narrative mode: ‘Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful’ – but that ‘not exactly’ establishes a conversational style and an attitude to the character. She raises questions, cancels thoughts (‘No, not Peter—Michael’) employs slang (‘a duck of a boy’) and speaks to an imaginary interlocutor (‘she would go to Paris as you and I would go to Bond Street’).

It is also interesting to note that her use of fashionable exaggeration is remarkably similar to that being used today – almost a hundred years later: (‘her husband absolutely adored her … the man who kept it was ridiculously fond of serving her’). This captures perfectly the speech mannerisms and the attitudes of the nouveau riche milieu in which the story is set.

A Cup of Tea – study resources

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon US

The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon US

A Cup of Tea – plot summary

Rosemary Fell is a socially poised young woman who has been married for two years to a rich and devoted husband. She shops in the fashionable and expensive part of the West-End in London. An ingratiating antiques dealer shows her a small enamelled box which she covets but asks to be put by for her.

Coming out of the shop into the rain, she is accosted by a poor young woman who asks for the price of a cup of tea. Rosemary sees the incident as a potential adventure and invites the girl back home.

When they reach the house Rosemary takes the girl into her bedroom and relieves her of her hat and coat. The girl breaks down in tears and says she cannot go on any longer.

Rosemary gives the girl tea and sandwiches, whilst she herself smokes cigarettes. This relieves the girl, and they are about to start a conversation when they are interrupted by the arrival of Rosemary’s husband Philip.

Philip takes Rosemary into an adjoining room and asks her what is going on. She explains that she is merely trying to be kind to a poor girl. But Philip points out that the girl is remarkably pretty, but the relationship not desirable.

Rosemary gives the girl some money, and she leaves, after which Rosemary asks her husband if she can have the enamel box she has seen – but what she really wants to know from him is if she is pretty or not.

Katherine Mansfield – web links

Katherine Mansfield at Mantex
Life and works, biography, a close reading, and critical essays

Katherine Mansfield at Wikipedia
Biography, legacy, works, biographies, films and adaptations

Katherine Mansfield at Online Books
Collections of her short stories available at a variety of online sources

Not Under Forty
A charming collection of literary essays by Willa Cather, which includes a discussion of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield at Gutenberg
Free downloadable versions of her stories in a variety of digital formats

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, including Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’

Katherine Mansfield’s Modernist Aesthetic
An academic essay by Annie Pfeifer at Yale University’s Modernism Lab

The Katherine Mansfield Society
Newsletter, events, essay prize, resources, yearbook

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace
Biography, birthplace, links to essays, exhibitions

Katherine Mansfield Website
New biography, relationships, photographs, uncollected stories

More on Katherine Mansfield
Twentieth century literature
More on the Bloomsbury Group
More on short stories

A Summing Up

March 11, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

A Summing Up is one of a number of short stories by Virginia Woolf set at a party in the Westminster home of Richard and Clarissa Dalloway, the hosts of the central social event in her novel Mrs Dalloway (1925). The story was first published in A Haunted House (1944) and then later reprinted with the collection of stories and sketches Mrs Dalloway’s Party published by the Hogarth Press in London in 1973.

houses in Westminster

A Summing Up – critical commentary

Like all the other stories in the Mrs Dalloway’s Party sequence, this is principally a study in social alienation, egoism, and the life of the imagination. It is yet another example of people interacting politely in what appears on the surface to be a civilized manner, whilst the narrative reveals the emotional and intellectual chasms that separate them.

Bertram Pritchard is an almost comic study of the crashing bore, even though he is ‘an esteemed civil servant and a Companion of the Bath.’

Written down what he said would be incredible — not only was each thing he said in itself insignificant, but there was no connection between the different remarks.

Sasha Latham on the other hand is ‘tall [and] handsome’ but inwardly feels lacking in confidence. Disattending to her fellow guest, she retreats into a series of imaginative speculations concerning the nature and the history of society.

There is no overt criticism of Pritchard, only deeply ironic counterpoint. Sasha Latham even manages to feel sympathetic towards him as she searches through a jumble of memories and sense impressions for some sort of meaningful insight.

And she finds it – very briefly – in the vision of a tree she sees in the garden. She also realises that the revelation might come by accident, and it does as she feels that the human soul ‘is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloft on that tree’ – before the revelation is shattered both by Pritchard guiding her back to what he sees as their social duty in the house, and by the inarticulate shriek she hears from the city that surrounds them.

A Summing Up – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

A Summing Up – story synopsis

Bertram Pritchard and Sasha Latham are guests at an evening party given by Clarissa Dalloway in central London. They stroll together in the small garden in the shadow of Westminster. He is a civil servant and a complete bore: she is uncertain about herself, but the story is articulated largely from her point of view.

Because Bertram Pritchard is a non-stop talker about trivialities, she stops listening to him and thinks instead of how there is now a civilized society where once there were swamps. She admires the courage and the sophistication of other people to succeed in society – even Bertram Pritchard.

They look over the garden wall, and she becomes conscious of the fact that they are in the middle of a busy city. Then they sit and talk to people she doesn’t actually know, and her thoughts drift back to fragments of what she learned at school. She wonders which of her impressions of the world are the most accurate. She has a visionary experience that the human soul is single and unattached. But at that precise moment an inarticulate cry sounds from within the city, and her vision escapes into the night.

A Summing Up – characters

Bertram Pritchard	an ‘esteemed’ civil servant and bore
Mrs Sasha Latham	a guest at the party
Clarissa Dalloway	a society hostess

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a triptych of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

Afterward

January 31, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Afterward was first published in The Century Magazine for January 1910, and was then reprinted in the collection Tales of Men and Ghosts published later the same year. It was one of a number of ghost stories written by Edith Wharton. The genre was very popular at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.

Afterward – critical commentary

It is very difficult to analyse or pass critical comment on a ghost story – unless one takes the supernatural premise seriously – for which in this case there seems to be little incentive provided. Edward and Mary Boyne have profited handsomely from the Blue Star Mine venture, and they have a naively romantic notion to retire to a fashionably old English country estate, where the house is so traditional they hope it will be haunted. The opening of the story is pitched at a mildly satirical level, poking gentle fun at their enthusiasm for a home with no heating or electric lighting.

But they have made their money by enduring ‘for fourteen years the soul-deadening ugliness of the Middle West’. The windfall fortune has now made that sacrifice worthwhile. Edward Boyne has profited from America’s system of individual enterprise and free market capitalism, and he can now afford to turn his back on it.

But he has profited at the expense of his colleague Robert Elwell, who introduced Boyne to the Blue Star venture in the first place. Elwell has borrowed money to put into the scheme, but then lost it when Boyne ‘got ahead’ of him in business. Elwell has tried to commit suicide, then has died shortly afterwards, leaving his wife destitute.

Edward Boyne moves to the old house in Dorset and almost immediately begins to behave strangely. When Elwell makes his two ‘visits’ to the house, Boyne recognises his figure on both occasions. The first occurs on the day he attempts suicide, and the second is on the day he dies (in America). Elwell therefore acts as the embodiment of Boyne’s guilty conscience over his dubious business dealings regarding the Blue Star Mine.

This does not explain how or why he disappears, but at least it provides a psychological underpinning to the story, which as a matter of fact might well have a second ‘disappearance’ – that of Mary Boyne herself.

The story begins with Mary in the library at the house in Lyng, recalling to herself the events that have led up to the disappearance of her husband. This gives the impression that hers is the controlling perspective and point of view in the narrative – and that (logically) she is still alive in order to recount the entire story, which is unfolding retrospectively. But the tale also ends with her in the library, receiving the gruesome news from Parvis about the attempted suicide and subsequent death of Elwell. She realises that she has directed the supernatural Elwell to her husband in the same room, and the shock appears to kill her.

She felt the walls of the room rush towards her, like inward falling ruins, and she heard Parvis, a long way off, as if through the ruins, crying to her, and struggling to get at her. But she was numb to his touch, she did not know what he was saying. Through the tumult she heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne.

“You won’t know till afterward” it said. “You won’t know till long, long afterward.”

If this is the case, it is a neat technical achievement on Edith Wharton’s part – because she has created a narrative which ends with the death of the person from whose point of view the story is being told.

Afterward – study resources

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Afterward – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

Afterward – AudioBook format at librivox

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Afterward – story synopsis

Part I. Americans Edward and Mary Boyne make a lot of money in the Blue Star Mine venture and decide to live in England. They choose an old country house in Dorset which they hope will have its own authentic residential ghost. Their English cousin Alida Stair reassures them that there is a ghost, but they won’t know about it. Ned Boyne hopes to write a book on economics and culture, but he seems out of sorts to his wife. She thinks it might be the influence of the haunted house, but since no ghost has ever been seen, this notion cannot be verified.

She locates a concealed panel which provides access to the roof, from where she and Ned see a figure approaching the house. Ned goes down to meet him, but when Mary follows them the man is no longer there. Ned gives her an explanation, but appears to be disturbed.

Part II. Two months later she thinks she sees the same figure again – but it turns out to be her husband, whose moods appear to change in a disconcerting manner. A letter then arrives announcing legal threats brought against Ned and his dealings with the Blue Star Mine by his former partner Robert Elwell. But Edward reassures Mary that the matters in the letter have now been settled.

Part III. Next day Mary feels completely reassured and she enjoys a proprietary stroll in the grounds, where she meets a young man who has come to see Ned. Since Ned is busy, he says he will come back again later. But when Mary goes in to lunch Ned is missing. The servants report that he has gone out with the young man. Mary interrogates the staff, but they know nothing about the stranger, except that he was wearing a strange hat.

Part IV. Two weeks later Ned has still not reappeared and has left behind a fragment of a letter to a Mr Parvis relating to the legal dispute over the Mine. Mary makes extensive enquiries, but there is no trace of Ned. She gradually adjusts to the fact that he may not be coming back.

Part V. Mr Parvis arrives from the USA to explain that Ned’s partner Robert Elwell lost money in the Mine venture and has died following an attempt to commit suicide. His widow has fallen on hard times. Parvis shows Mary a newspaper clipping which reveals a photograph of the young man who twice called at the house. Mary calculates that the first visit took place at the same time as his attempted suicide and the second later visit was at the time he actually died. The last words she recalls are those of her cousin warning her that “You won’t know [about the ghost] till long, long afterward.”

Principal characters

Edward (Ned) Boyne	an American mining engineer
Mary Boyne	his wife
Mrs Alida Stair	their cousin and friend in England
Trimmle	a parlour-maid
Robert (Bob) Elwell	Boyne’s business partner in the mine
Parvis	a lawyer from Waukesha (WI)

Video documentary

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

An International Episode

January 6, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

An International Episode was first published in The Cornhill Magazine for December 1878—January 1879. It later appeared in book form later the same year published by Harper in New York.

An International Episode – critical commentary

This is one of many tales exploring the ‘international theme’ made famous by Henry James. As an American who had lived in Europe (and in England in particular) for many years, he very frequently put European characters in an American setting, and vice versa – exploring the manners, morals, and behaviour of one group on another.

And with feet in both camps (as it were) he was able to create satirical sketches which offered accounts of each group showing their characteristics as seen by the other. In An International Episode for instance it is obvious that he contrasts the voluble, good-natured hospitality of the Americans with the cold and unfriendly way in which the Americans are treated by the English upper class on their stay in London.

However, it has to be said that overall, this tale is marked by a sense of uncertainty in both its characterisation and construction – as if James was not quite sure how to handle the international theme at this relatively early stage. For instance, Mrs Westgate is introduced as a lightweight chatterbox, full of contradictory and repetitive soliloquies on the differences between American and European society.

Yet when she visits London only a few months later she is a different character altogether, guarded and scheming in her ambition to outdo the English aristocrats. As she declares to her younger sister: ‘The policy I mean to follow is very deep’. And indeed, during the confrontation with the Duchess of Bayswater and her daughter Lady Pimlico, who arrive at their hotel determined to humiliate the two Yankees, she beats Lambeth’s mother into submission over the invitation to Branches castle.

The constructional uncertainties are epitomised by the inclusion of characters such as Mr Westgate, Willy Woodley, and even Captain Littledale, who are introduced into the narrative as significant players – only to disappear, having made very little contribution to the story. They are cyphers whose only function is to move the story from one point to the next. As a result, the story lacks the structural cohesion and sense of thematic density which characterises his tales at their best.

The new American woman

The strongest feature of the tale is the development of what was to become an original character type – the ‘new American woman’ – similar to Daisy Miller and Isabel Archer. Bessie Alden is a well read intellectual young woman from Boston (a renowned centre of culture and learning). She has absorbed her impressions of England almost entirely from novels, and at first her naive enthusiasm to learn more is a vehicle for some mild satire.

But as soon as she travels to England and begins to question Lord Lambert about the country’s history and its institutions, his complete lack of learning, culture, or historical consciousness reveals him to be an aristocratic blockhead. Moreover, she does not let him off the hook when he tries to counter her probes with flattery. She quizzes him about his role as a ‘hereditary legislator’, and he is forced to admit that he does not speak in the House of Lords because he has ‘nothing to say’.

Even that point is driven further home when she exposes the iniquity of the hierarchical and snobbish English class system, and she disapproves profoundly with the English system of precedence. The same spirit of democratic egalitarianism is expressed by her sister Kitty when she tells Percy Beaumont:

I must say that I don’t like to be patronised. I may be very eccentric and undisciplined and unreasonable; but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that’s a particular taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something else.

Finally, she asserts her Yankee independence and free spirit by rejecting the invitation to share a weekend with his uber-snobbish mother the Duchess of Bayswater at his country seat at Branches castle. Marriage to an English aristocrat is sacrificed to her sense of intellectual curiosity and democratic self-respect. Kitty Westgate is worried that people might think they have been scared off by the Duchess, but Bessie ‘seemed to regret nothing’.

An International Episode – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

Tales of Henry James – Norton Critical Editions

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

An International Episode – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

An International Episode – story synopsis

Part I Percy Beaumont and his cousin Lord Lambeth arrive in New York on business in the middle of summer. The city is very hot and they feel overwhelmed. When they present a letter of introduction to a lawyer Mr Westgate, he invites them to stay at his house in Newport where it will be cooler.

Part II The two men sail overnight to Newport where they have breakfast in their hotel. They then visit Mrs Westgate who receives them very hospitably but subjects them to a barrage of contradictory over-generalisations about the differences between European and American society.

Part III An excursion to the seaside is organised, during which Bessie Alden, Mrs Westgate’s sister, makes a considerable impression on Lord Lambert. She is a Bostonian, is well read on English culture, and wishes to know a lot more. The two men move in to stay at the Westgate house, and Miss Alden makes further enquiries regarding Lord Lambert’s social position, family, and expectations. She is super-enthusiastic about his position as an aristocrat, whereas he is comically self-deprecating. Percy Beaumont meanwhile warns him against Miss Alden’s campaign to ensnare him, and even sends Lambert’s mother a letter of warning. As a result, Lady Lambeth (the Duchess of Bayswater) writes a letter recalling her son on the pretext that his father is ill.

Part IV The following year Mrs Westgate and Bessie are visiting London on their trip to Europe. They are joined by Willy Woodley, a young American acquaintance doing the same thing. Bessie wants to contact their two English friends, but Mrs Westgate warns her against expecting reciprocated hospitality, and she doesn’t want it thought that Bessie has followed Lambert across the Atlantic in pursuit of a rich husband. The two sisters venture with chaperone Willy Woodley into Hyde Park, where they meet Lord Lambeth again, who invites them to his country estate at Branches castle.

Part V Social contact is re-established, in which there is a lot of sparring and banter regarding the differences between English and American values. The two Englishmen are snobbish and protective of their class, whereas the two American women are proud of their democratic traditions. Mrs Westgate plans to shock the English aristocrats. When they go on excursions to historical locations such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court, Lord Lambeth is completely ignorant of his own country’s history, which invokes criticism from Bessie. However, he continues his attentions towards her, and she begins to fall in love with him. Nevertheless, she challenges the snobbish and aristocratic traditions which he embodies.

Part VI Meanwhile Percy Beaumont warns Lambeth that his mother disapproves of the American fortune hunter (as Bessie is seen) and that he should desist with the relationship. Lambert fixes a date for the visit to Branches castle to meet his family. This precipitates a visit from his mother, the Duchess of Bayswater. She arrives at Bessie and Kitty’s hotel with the intention of intimidating them into staying away, and there is a frosty standoff in their exchanges. However, Bessie and her sister stand their ground, and it seems that the weekend party will go ahead. However, shortly afterwards it is implied that Bessie rejects the invitation, and by implication an offer of marriage from Lambeth, so the visit is called off. The two sisters move on to Paris instead.

An International Episode – characters

I	the occasional outer narrator
Percy Beaumont	an English barrister
Lord Lambert	his rich young cousin
Mr Westgate	a busy American lawyer
Mrs Kitty Westgate	his pretty wife (30)
Captain Littledale	his friend, an English diplomat
Miss Bessie Alden	Mrs Westgate’s young sister from Boston (20)
Willy Woodley	a young American
Duchess of Bayswater	Lord Lambeth’s mother
Lady Pimlico	Lord Lambeth’s sister

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Analysing characters

February 25, 2014 by Roy Johnson

how to study and understand fictional characters

Analysing characters

When studying literature, you will be asked to write about the characters in stories, plays, and novels. Most people find it easy to describe characters – that is, what they look like and what they do in the story. But it is much more difficult to analyse them. That’s because analysing characters in fiction requires not only insight into human behaviour but also the ability to make moral assessments about their psychology, motivations, and the consequences of their behaviour. This skill distinguishes an academic study of literature from casual leisure reading.

You need to know how fictional characters have been constructed by the author. After all, the very nature of a literary character is that it is a fictional construct. It’s an account of somebody who doesn’t exist in real life, but has been created by words written on paper. The character is imaginary, but if the author has been successful, we think of these characters as if they were real people. This attitude is described as a ‘suspension of disbelief’: that is, we are temporarily willing to believe that the character and the story are like real people.

Eugene Onegin

Character analysis also requires the ability to understand the complex relationship between fiction and real life – a skill which requires a fairly mature reading experience. Fortunately, most people have been exposed to fictional narratives from an early age, and will already be experienced readers by the time they are asked to make such analyses.

What is a fictional character?

A fictional character is somebody in an imaginative literary work created by an author. The character could be Peter Rabbit, David Copperfield, Macbeth, or Madame Bovary. In other media, it could be Luke Skywalker (feature film), Donald Duck (cartoon), Dan Dare (comic), Super Mario (computer game), or someone from The Archers (radio).

What we can know about a character in fiction depends almost entirely on what the author decides to tell us. Authors normally create characters using any number of devices. They might reveal to us –

their name
their physical appearance
how they dress
how they behave
what they think and feel
what they say

The composition of a character

Authors are at liberty to combine these elements in whatever way they choose. They may give different levels of emphasis to any of these options. There are no fixed rules they must follow, but the outcome must be a coherent piece of characterisation.

Charles Dickens for instance went to a lot of trouble to give his characters unusual and memorable names – Uriah Heep, Lady Honoria Deadlock, Josia Tulkinghorn, and Inspector Bucket for instance. At the other extreme, the Czech writer Franz Kafka reduced his most famous protagonist to the single letter K, with no first name or surname at all.

Some characters are memorable because of the way they are depicted visually. For instance, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations has shut herself away in an old house for years and years wearing the wedding dress she wore on the day she was jilted at the altar. She is described as a cross between a waxwork and a skeleton.

The fictional character might have a peculiar way of speaking, or a physical habit that becomes easily recognisable. Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s play The Rivals is memorable because she often uses the wrong word in her statements. She says “promise to forget this fellow – to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory” when of course she means obliterate. This characteristic is so easily recognisable that her name has been attached to that particular mis-use of language ever since – malapropism.

The good thing about this fictional technique is that it helps to fix the character in the audience’s mind. Its weakness as a technique is that it can reduce the character to no more than a verbal tic.

Some fictional characters are not given any name at all, and we know nothing about their appearance. Fyodor Dostoyevski’s Notes from Underground features a character whose name we don’t know, and whose appearance is never described. All we are told is what the character thinks – which is a torrent of existential rage against the world.

So – there are no fixed rules for the creation of fictional characters. Authors are free to tell us anything they wish about the characters they create. As readers we can merely hope that they are at least convincing or at best memorable. However, you need to be able to explain the mechanisms used to achieve this effect.

How to analyse a character

You can think of character analysis as a three part process. If you are a beginner, it will be safest to write about these parts separately. If you are more experienced, the parts may be combined – though you will still need to give your writing some structure.

First – identify the character
Second – describe the character
Third – explain the character

Identify

In the first part of the process you are merely choosing the character you wish to write about. In many literary studies courses the character will be chosen for you by a question set for an essay or term paper. It is important to choose a character who is genuinely significant and who plays a dramatic part in the story.

Part of identifying a character is knowing their importance in the story. You will probably have no difficulty in distinguishing important characters (the protagonist or most significant character for instance) from lesser or secondary characters.

Describe

In the second part of the process you are ‘locating’ the character within the story and giving an overview of what part they play in its events. The term ‘describe’ implies that you can consider the character in isolation, and give a surface account of their presence in the story. You do not have to look under the surface to discuss any of their psychological motivation at this stage.

Explain

In the third part you will give an account of the character in relation to other people in the story or the play. You should explain what motivates the character, what the significance of their actions might be, and how they relate to other characters in the story or the theme of the work in general. At this stage you might also say something about their role in the story from an artistic point of view. That is, the role of the character in relationship to the events of the narrative.

Studying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and technical terms you need when making a study of stories and novels. It shows you how to understand literary analysis by explaining its elements one at a time, then showing them at work in short stories which are reproduced as part of the book. Topics covered include – setting, characters, story, point of view, symbolism, narrators, theme, construction, metaphors, irony, prose style, tone, and interpretation. The book also contains self-assessment exercises, so you can check your understanding of each topic. Best-selling title, written by the author of these web pages.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Character analysis – example

Identify

Joe Gargery in Great Expectations is very significant as a character. He acts as a formative influence on Pip; he is unwavering in his support for him throughout the novel; and he is instrumental in rescuing Pip from moral shoddiness in the final parts of the novel.

Describe

Joe is married to Pip’s elder sister and is therefore technically his brother-in-law; but he acts very much as a protective father-figure during Pip’s early life. Joe is naive, sometimes unconsciously comic, hard working and loving.

Explain

Joe represents the simple good nature that Dickens contrasts with Pip’s self-seeking complexity. His role as a constant in Pip’s life throws into sharp relief Pip’s plunge into increasing bad faith. The character of Joe is used as a fixed point by which we can trace Pip’s downfall and finally his moral redemption and recovery. Joe is also a comic foil against Mrs Joe’s violent behaviour as his termagant wife.

There is also a complex element in Joe’s child-like characterisation in relation to his wife Mrs Joe. He tolerates and never challenges his wife’s abusive behaviour towards both himself and her young brother Pip.

Narrative perspective

Thus far we have basic information about a fictional character – which we might call characteristics. But in addition, the author might provide any of the following information as well.

what the author thinks about them
what other characters think about them
what happens to them

This does not obtain so much in plays, where the author normally prescribes the appearance of characters and what they say – but nothing else. The point of view or perspective in this case is provided by the director of the play, in deciding how the play will be presented and how the characters will behave on stage.

In narrative fiction (novels and stories) you are likely to be presented with information about characters from a number of different sources – from the author, from other characters, possibly from a narrator, and of course from the characters themselves. Not all these items of information carry equal weight, and you will need to make careful discriminations in making your judgements.

Stock characters

What is a stock character? It’s a fictional creation that is a recognisable type who occurs in lots of other stories. This is what’s called a stereotype. Here are some examples you will recognise:

the miser
the mysterious stranger
the wicked stepmother
the absent-minded professor
the whore with a heart of gold
the damsel in distress
the hard boiled detective
the femme fatale
the gentleman thief

New stereotypes are being created all the time – and may be generated by new genres of fiction from film, television, and other media, as well as from the traditional literary genres of story, novel, and play.

Two and three-dimensional characters

The term two-dimensional character is used as an expression of negative criticism to label a character who always behaves in the same way, and does not change or grow as a result of the events in the story. They are sometimes referred to as cardboard or flat characters – as being flimsy, undeveloped, and not particularly credible.

It is a term used in contradistinction to a three-dimensional character which is used to describe fictional characters who have the depth and complexities of real human beings, and are therefore deemed more successful creations.

This ‘third’ dimension might be the capacity to change as a result of events in the story; it might be the successful depiction of contradictory beliefs and behaviour; or it might be acting on an irrational impulse – something which human beings are doing all the time.

For instance, in A Tale of Two Cities Sydney Carton is a cynical and alcoholic barrister who acts in a self-indulgent and disreputable manner throughout the majority of the novel. But at the end of story he takes another man’s place at the guillotine – an act of self-sacrifice which atones for all his past wrongdoings. Dickens makes the change of character credible, and Carton’s last words (his thoughts) have become famous: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Dubious characters

Successfully realised characters are not necessarily likeable or even decent. Authors are at liberty to create characters who are flawed, and they might still be attractive or memorable..

Fagin in Oliver Twist is a grizzly old rogue who runs a children’s criminal gang. He mistreats the members of the gang, tells lies, and is partly responsible for the death of an innocent woman (Nancy). Despite all these negative characteristics, he is so vividly portrayed by Dickens that he remains a standout and very memorable figure in the novel.

Some characters might be likeable even though they commit reprehensible acts. Vladimir Nabokov’s protagonist Humbert Humbert in Lolita is attractively clever and very amusing, even though he abducts and sexually abuses a teenage girl and murders his rival, Claire Quilty. But the first-person account of events Humbert delivers is so full of jokes and witty observations of American life, that we tend to overlook his flaws.

Providing evidence

A detailed character analysis depends on a close reading of the text, coupled with an understanding of the character. It also requires evidence drawn from the text to support any argument about the character.

It is not enough to say that you don’t like a character, or disapprove of something they do in the story. What you are doing is closer to showing that you understand what the author is trying to demonstrate to the reader. This is the reason that it is necessary to understand the literary techniques by which characters are created.

More on How-To
More on literary studies
More on writing skills

Bunner Sisters

February 4, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Bunner Sisters was written in 1891, but wasn’t published until 1916 in Edith Wharton’s collection of short fiction Xingu and Other Stories. Technically, it has very strong claims to be classified as a novella, rather than a short story, but it is usually listed with her shorter works to keep it separate from the novels.

Old New York

Bunner Sisters – critical commentary

Literary naturalism

There was a literary vogue towards the end of the nineteenth century for naturalism – which is characterised by a concentration on everyday, unheroic subjects, often seeking to expose the poverty and misery of existence in contrast to the romantic and heroic treatment of life in traditional fiction. Naturalism as a literary mode was underpinned by a belief in determinism – that social conditions and heredity were the primary forces shaping human character. It was also strongly influenced by two other important philosophic features of late nineteenth century society – the decline of religious belief and the powerful influence of Darwinism and its popular manifestation in the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’.

Both of these ideas led the adherents of naturalism to emphasise a pessimistic view of life, and they also took the opportunity to expose the harsher and degenerate sides of society, including poverty, crime, prostitution, and corruption in general. There was also a marked tendency amongst naturalistic works to focus on the life of big cities. Writers who epitomised this literary trend included Emile Zola (France), Theodore Dreiser (USA), Stephen Crane (USA) and George Gissing (UK) – all of whom were at the height of their fame when Edith Wharton started writing.

Bunner Sisters certainly includes many of these ideas. Although it seems to begin in a mildly satirical manner, its trajectory is grimly pessimistic as things go from bad to worse in the two sisters’ lives. Their business slowly dries up; they are preyed upon by a man who turns out to be an opium addict; and he eventually ruins Evelina’s life, which in turn leaves Ann Eliza destitute.

These naturalistic tendencies are worth noting, because they were still present in Edith Wharton’s work when she came to write her first major novel, The House of Mirth in 1905. Lily Bart falls from a much greater social height than Ann Eliza and Evelina Bunner, but she ends in a similar fashion – destitute, ill, and exhausted with self-sacrifice.

Bunner Sisters – study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Bunner Sisters – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

Bunner Sisters – AudioBook format at librivox

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Bunner Sisters – plot summary

Part I. Ageing sisters Ann Eliza and Evelina Bunner maintain a millinery shop in a seedy and run down area of New York. They live in straightened circumstances, and on the occasion of Evelina’s birthday, her sister buys her a cheap clock.

Part II. She has bought the clock from an equally run down shop in the neighbourhood run by bachelor Herman Ramay, who she decides to pursue when the clock stops working. She goes to the local market, hoping to meet him there, but doesn’t. A lifetime of co-operative self-sacrifice and renunciation begins to crumble as the two women secretly become competetive regarding Mr Ramay.

Part III. Mr Ramay calls to check the clock they have bought, but nothing transpires from the visit.

Part IV. They then entertain Miss Mellins, a dressmaker from upstairs, whereupon Mr Ramay visits again. Ann Eliza is jealously concerned that he is visiting to see her younger sister.

Part V. Mr Ramay visits more frequently, but divides his time there between long silences and lengthy autobiographical anecdotes. He takes Evelina to a stereopticon; spring arrives; and he invites them both to Central Park, along with Miss Mellins. Ann Eliza is forbearing on her sister’s behalf.

Part VI. The sisters wish to transfer their meagre earnings into another bank. Ann Eliza calls for advice on Mr Ramay, who seems to have been ill.

Part VII. Mr Ramay takes them on an excursion to his friend Mrs Hochmuller in Hoboken. Over dinner they discuss Mr Ramay’s illness – which he denies. Then Evelina and Mr Ramay go for a walk in the countryside. Shortly afterwards Mr Ramay calls to the shop and proposes marriage to Ann Eliza, but she tells him she cannot think of marrying. She is secretly ecstatic at this major event in her life, and disappointed that she cannot reveal it to her sister.

Part VIII. Mr Ramay then goes on an excursion with Evelina, who returns to announce that she is engaged to Mr Ramay. Ann Eliza prepares herself for being left alone when her sister moves to live at Mr Ramay’s shop. However, Mr Ramay gets the offer of a job in St Louis, though he does not have enough money to risk transferring there. Ann Eliza gives her sister her half of their joint savings.

Part IX. Left on her own, Ann Eliza feels very lonely, and Evelina writes from St Louis to say that she is lonely because Mr Ramay is out at work all day. Then the letters cease, and Ann Eliza learns that Mr Ramay has been dismissed by his employers. She cannot afford to visit St Louis and look for her sister, and meanwhile the business goes downhill.

Part X. Anna goes to seek help from Mrs Hochmuller in Hoboken, but when she gets there she discovers that Mrs Hochmuller left some time before. She contracts fever as a result of the journey and is in bed for over a week. When she recovers she visits Mr Ramay’s old employers, only to be told that he was dismissed for taking drugs.

Part XI. Months pass by, then one day Evelina suddenly appear at the shop. She is in a very bad way, and recounts her tale of Mr Ramay’s opium addiction, the birth and death of her child, and Ramay’s running away with young Linda Hochmuller. Evelina was reduced to begging in the streets.

Part XII. Evelina continues to be very ill, and Anna has to borrow money from Miss Mellins to pay the doctor’s bill. Anna loses her faith in Providence and feels that self-sacrifice does not automatically transfer good or benefit to its intended recipient. The doctor recommends hospital for Evelina, but Anna prefers to keep her at home. Evelina reveals that during her troubles she has converted to Catholicism.

Part XIII. Evelina gets steadily worse (with consumption) and believes her Catholic faith will permit her to be reunited with her baby in heaven. When Evelina dies, Anna gives up the shop, sells the last of her effects, and faces a bleak and unknown future.

Bunner Sisters – principal characters

Ann Eliza Bunner	elder sister in a millinery shop
Evelina Bunner	her younger sister
Miss Mellins	their upstairs neighbour, a dressmaker
Herman Ramay	a German immigrant clock-maker
Mrs Hochmuller	washerwoman friend of Ramay
Linda Hochmuller	her young daughter

Video documentary

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

Close reading tutorials

March 21, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorials in literary criticism and close critical analysis

What is close reading?

Close reading means not only reading and understanding the meanings of the individual printed words of a text: it also involves making yourself sensitive to all the nuances and connotations of a language as it is used by skilled writers.

This can mean anything from a work’s particular vocabulary, sentence construction, and imagery, to the themes that are being dealt with, the way in which the story is being told, and the view of the world that it offers. It involves almost everything from the smallest linguistic items to the largest issues of literary understanding and judgement.

language
meaning
structure
philosophy

Close reading can be seen as four separate levels of attention which we can bring to the text. Most normal people read without being aware of them, and employ all four simultaneously. The four levels or types of reading become progressively more complex. The most advanced forms of close reading combine all these features in an effort to reveal the full and even hidden meanings in a work.

The tutorials listed here offer a variety of approaches to close reading. Some focus attention on details of literary style; others concentrate on how the meaning(s) of a text are constructed. All of them pay close attention to the language being used.

Charles Dickens – Bleak House

This tutorial looks at the famous opening passage of Bleak House and examines Dickens’s use of language, simile, and metaphor. It argues that whilst Dickens is often celebrated for the vividness of his descriptions, the true genius of his literary power is in imaginative invention.

Close reading – Bleak House.

If you wish to read the complete novel in conjunction with these tutorial notes, it is available free at Project Gutenberg.

Bleak House (full text)

Joseph Conrad – An Outpost of Progress – I

This is the first of two close reading tutorials on Conrad’s early tale An Outpost of Progress. This one looks at the opening of the story and examines the semantic values transmitted in Conrad’s presentation of the narrative. That is, how the meaning(s) of the story are embedded in even the smallest details of of the prose.