OSCAR WILDE

(1854 – 1900)
Oscar Wilde was born on October 16th , 1854 in Dublin, Ireland, the second of
three children born to a well-known medical specialist and a prominent
poetess, prose and nationalist under the pseudonym Speranza. After his initial
years of schooling at home, in 1871 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, then he
went on to study the classics at Magdalen College, Oxford, England from
1874-1878, where he helped found the Aesthetic Movement, “Art for Art’s
sake”. In 1881 he made a long tour of America to deliver lectures on
aesthetics. When the Aesthetic Movement became popular Oscar Wilde earned
a reputation of being leader of the movement and as apostle of beauty.

In 1884 Wilde married a pretty self-affected young woman, who duly born him
two sons. The Wildes settled in Chelsea, London where Oscar continued to
write and work for such magazines as Pall Mall Gazette and became editor of
Woman’s World in 1887. Their London house, which Wilde preceeded to
equip with nicely chosen modern furnishings became a citadel of advanced
contemporaries.

Wilde’s first popular success was the fairy tales “The Happy prince and Other
Tales” (1888). “A House of Pomegranates”was another collection of his fairy
tales. His major works included stories: “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” (1891),
the novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1891) and several sparkling
comedies. “Lady Windermere’s Fan” (1892) packed with cream of society was
enormously popular. It was followed by “A Woman of No Importance” (1893),
“An Ideal Husband” (1895), and a memorable comedy “The Importance of
Being Earnest”. These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established
Oscar as a playwright.

Oscar Wilde also wrote poems, essays, reviews and political tracts, letters and
occasional pieces of every subject such as history, drama, painting, etc. His
writings were serious, baffling, clever and often epigrammatic.

At the height of his popularity and success, disaster took over the dramatist. In
1895, Wilde was convicted of homosexual misconduct and sentenced to 2
years in prison at hard labor. After his release in 1898 he wrote and published
his powerful poem named “Ballard of Reading Gaol”, and lived in France. He
attempted to write a play in his pretrial style, but this effort failed. He died in
Paris on Nov. 30, 1900.

Oscar Wilde’s works reflected the emotional protest of an artist against social
conditions in England at the end of the nineteenth century. Wilde understood
that art can not flourish under capitalism and he came to a false conclusion that
art is isolated from life, that art is the only thing that really exists and is worth
living for. Life only mirrors art and beauty is the measure of all things, hence
his desire is to escape from all the horrors of reality into the realm of beauty.

Though Wilde claimed the theory of extreme individualism, he often

contradicted himself. In his works, in his tales in particular, he glorified beauty,
and not only the beauty of nature and artificial beauty but also the beauty of
devoted love. He admired unselfishness, kindness and generosity. He showed
deep sympathy for the poor. He despised egoism and greed.
 THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE

"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the
young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."

From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and she looked
out through the leaves, and wondered.

"No red rose in all my garden!" he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with
tears. "Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the
wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want
of a red rose is my life made wretched."

"Here at last is a true lover," said the Nightingale. "Night after night have I
sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story to
the stars, and now I see him. His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his
lips are red as the rose of his desire; but passion has made his face like pale
ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow."

"The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night," murmured the young Student, "and
my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with
me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will
lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But
there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by.
She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break."

"Here indeed is the true lover," said the Nightingale. "What I sing of, he suffers
- what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more
precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates
cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of
the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold."

"The musicians will sit in their gallery," said the young Student, "and play
upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance to the sound of the
harp and the violin. She will dance so lightly that her feet will not touch the
floor, and the courtiers in their gay dresses will throng round her. But with me
she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her"; and he flung himself
down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.
"Why is he weeping?" asked a little Green Lizard, as he ran past him with his
tail in the air.

"Why, indeed?" said a Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam.

"Why, indeed?" whispered a Daisy to his neighbour, in a soft, low voice.

"He is weeping for a red rose," said the Nightingale.

"For a red rose?" they cried; "how very ridiculous!" and the little Lizard, who
was something of a cynic, laughed outright.

But the Nightingale understood the secret of the Student's sorrow, and she sat
silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.

Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She
passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across the
garden.

In the centre of the grass-plot was standing a beautiful Rose-tree, and when she
saw it she flew over to it, and lit upon a spray.

"Give me a red rose," she cried, "and I will sing you my sweetest song."

But the Tree shook its head.

"My roses are white," it answered; "as white as the foam of the sea, and whiter
than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows round the
old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want."

So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing round the old
sun-dial.

"Give me a red rose," she cried, "and I will sing you my sweetest song."

But the Tree shook its head.

"My roses are yellow," it answered; "as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden
who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil that blooms in
the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. But go to my brother
who grows beneath the Student's window, and perhaps he will give you what
you want."
So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing beneath the
Student's window.

"Give me a red rose," she cried, "and I will sing you my sweetest song."

But the Tree shook its head.

"My roses are red," it answered, "as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than
the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter
has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has
broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year."

"One red rose is all I want," cried the Nightingale, "only one red rose! Is there
no way by which I can get it?"

"There is away," answered the Tree; "but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to
you."

"Tell it to me," said the Nightingale, "I am not afraid."

"If you want a red rose," said the Tree, "you must build it out of music by
moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing to me with
your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn
must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and
become mine."

"Death is a great price to pay for a red rose," cried the Nightingale, "and Life is
very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in
his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of
the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the
heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the
heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?"

So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She swept
over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove.

The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him, and the
tears were not yet dry in his beautiful eyes.

"Be happy," cried the Nightingale, "be happy; you shall have your red rose. I
will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood.
All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser
than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is
mighty. Flame- coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body. His
lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense."

The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not
understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the
things that are written down in books.

But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little
Nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.

"Sing me one last song," he whispered; "I shall feel very lonely when you are
gone."

So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree, and her voice was like water bubbling
from a silver jar.

When she had finished her song the Student got up, and pulled a note-book and
a lead-pencil out of his pocket.

"She has form," he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - "that
cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is
like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice
herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that the
arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in
her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical
good." And he went into his room, and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and
began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep.

And when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the Rose-
tree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with her breast
against the thorn, and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All
night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and
her life-blood ebbed away from her.

She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the
top-most spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal
following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that
hangs over the river - pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of
the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose
in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the
Tree.

But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. "Press
closer, little Nightingale," cried the Tree, "or the Day will come before the rose
is finished."

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew
her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid.

And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in
the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn
had not yet reached her heart, so the rose's heart remained white, for only a
Nightingale's heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.

And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. "Press
closer, little Nightingale," cried the Tree, "or the Day will come before the rose
is finished."

So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her
heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and
wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by
Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.

And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky.
Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.

But the Nightingale's voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and
a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt
something choking her in her throat.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot
the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all
over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to
her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their
dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to
the sea.
"Look, look!" cried the Tree, "the rose is finished now"; but the Nightingale
made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her
heart.

And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.

"Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!" he cried; "here is a red rose! I have
never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a
long Latin name"; and he leaned down and plucked it.

Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor's house with the rose in his
hand.

The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a
reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.

"You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose," cried the
Student. "Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night
next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you."

But the girl frowned.

"I am afraid it will not go with my dress," she answered; "and, besides, the
Chamberlain's nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows
that jewels cost far more than flowers."

"Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful," said the Student angrily; and
he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel
went over it.

"Ungrateful!" said the girl. "I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all,
who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don't believe you have even got silver
buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain's nephew has"; and she got up from
her chair and went into the house.

"What I a silly thing Love is," said the Student as he walked away. "It is not
half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling
one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that
are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is
everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics."
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to
read.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. What troubles the young student at the beginning of the story?

2. How does the nightingale help him?
3. Is the sacrifice of the nightingale worthwhile? Why or why not?
4. What does the nightingale symbolize in life?
5. What do you think of the young student in the story?
 THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

This is Wilde’s most important work: in it he conveys his main views on life,
his aesthetical principle of “Art for Art’s sake”.

The Picture of Dorian Gray describes the life of a young man, Dorian Gray, or
to be more exact, his spiritual life. The author touches upon many problems of
contemporary life: morality, art and beauty in particular.

At the beginning of the novel, we see an inexperienced young man, kind and
innocent. “He was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely curved
scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his
face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as
well as all youth’s passionate purity.”

Then Dorian is influenced by two men with sharply contrasting characters:

Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotten. Basil Hallward, a painter, meets
Dorian Gray and finds him a perfect sitter for his picture. A beautiful portrait of
the young man is painted and Hallward does not want to exhibit it in fear that
his own soul will be shown. He is a kind, generous and humane man. Basil
does not idealize Lord Henry. He does not conceal the fact that he is afraid of
Henry’s influence on the young man:

“Dorian Gray is my dearest friend. He has a simple and beautiful nature. Don’t
spoil him. Your influence would be bad.”

Lord Henry Wotten is handsome, pleasant to listen to. His speech is eloquent
and witty, full of paradoxes. But at the same time, he is heartless, cynical ans
immoral. He loves no one, he believes in neither friendship nor in love. His life
is shallow. Lord Henry’s eloquent and cynical speeches work like poison in
Dorian’s blood:

“Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give, they
quickly take away. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then
you will suddenly discover that there is no triumph left for you. Live! Live the
wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching
new sensation! Be afraid of nothing…”
The thought that he can deprive Basil of Dorian’s company pleases Lord
Henry. He knows that he has ruined Dorian’s life, but he does not care. The
fact that Dorian is fascinated by his personality gives him pleasure and that is
the only thing his selfish nature wants.

The author shows the gradual degradation of Dorian Gray under the influence
of Lord Henry. He falls deeper and deeper into corruption. He brings
misfortune to everyone he comes in touch with: Sybil Vane, an innocent girl
and an actress, is Dorian’s lover but she loses her love and attraction when she
fails to live her part as a Shakespearean character. Soon after Sybil Vane’s
death, Dorian becomes even more cynical and immoral than Lord Henry
himself and finally becomes a real murderer: he kills Basil Hallward, the only
man who knows the secret of his soul.

After he escapes the vengeance of Sybil Vane’s brother he begins to see his life
in a new light. He is young and handsome but not all happy. Life suddenly is
too hard for him to bear. Wishing to do away with his former life and being
disgusted with the ugliness of his portrait, the only evidence left against him,
Dorian decides to get rid of it and stabs the picture with a knife.

The end of the book is a contradiction to Wilde’s decadent theory. The fact that
the portrait acquires its former beauty and Dorian Gray “withered, wrinkled
and loathsome of visage” lay on the floor with a knife in his heart shows the
triumph of real beauty – a piece of art created by an artist, a unity of form and
content.

CHAPTER X

The present selection shows Dorian two days after Sybil Vane, a beautiful
young actress committed suicide because he left her. Dorian was perfectly
aware that it was he who actually murdered her. As he put it: “I murdered her
as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife.” It was, however, not
difficult for his cynical and sophisticated friend Lord Henry Wotten to do away
with all traces of remorse in Dorian’s heart.

He sighed, and having poured himself out some tea, opened Lord Henry’s note.
It was simply to say that he sent him round the evening paper, and a book that
might interest him, and that he would be at the club at eight-fifteen. He opened
The St. James’s languidly, and looked through it. A red pencil-mark on the
fifth page caught his eye. It drew attention to the following paragraph:

INQUEST ON AN ACTRESS.—An inquest was held this morning at the Bell

Tavern, Hoxton Road, by Mr. Danby, the District Coroner, on the body of
Sibyl Vane, a young actress recently engaged at the Royal Theatre, Holborn. A
verdict of death by misadventure was returned. Considerable sympathy was
expressed for the mother of the deceased, who was greatly affected during the
giving of her own evidence, and that of Dr. Birrell, who had made the post-
mortem examination of the deceased.

He frowned, and tearing the paper in two, went across the room and flung the
pieces away. How ugly it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things!
He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having sent him the report. And it
was certainly stupid of him to have marked it with red pencil. Victor might
have read it. The man knew more than enough English for that.

Perhaps he had read it and had begun to suspect something. And, yet, what did
it matter? What had Dorian Gray to do with Sibyl Vane’s death? There was
nothing to fear. Dorian Gray had not killed her.

His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he
wondered. He went towards the little, pearl-coloured octagonal stand that had
always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought
in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an arm-chair and began
to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the
strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment,
and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb
show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made
real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.

It was a novel without a plot and with only one character, being, indeed, simply
a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to
realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that
belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself
the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for
their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called
virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style
in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at
once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate
paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the
French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as
orchids and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the
terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was
reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid
confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of
incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere
cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was
of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind
of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of
dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.

Cloudless, and pierced by one solitary star, a copper-green sky gleamed

through the windows. He read on by its wan light till he could read no more.
Then, after his valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour,
he got up, and going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine
table that always stood at his bedside and began to dress for dinner.

It was almost nine o’clock before he reached the club, where he found Lord
Henry sitting alone, in the morning-room, looking very much bored.

“I am so sorry, Harry,” he cried, “but really it is entirely your fault. That book
you sent me so fascinated me that I forgot how the time was going.”

“Yes, I thought you would like it,” replied his host, rising from his chair.

“I didn’t say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great
difference.”

“Ah, you have discovered that?” murmured Lord Henry. And they passed into
the dining-room.
 QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. What is Dorian’s attitude towards the news about Sybil Vane’s death?
2. What is typical about the piece of news on the paper? (terms, style and
feeling created by the inquest). How is Sybil Vane’s tragedy expressed?
3. Why does the writer contrast the newspaper and the novel Dorian Gray
reads? What do the words “frown” and “absorbed” suggest to you?
4. Analyze the sentence “I didn’t say I like it. I said it fascinated me.”

Here is the end of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the
author describes the death of his main character.

There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself— that
was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had
given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no
such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night. When he had been away, he had
been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought
melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments
of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He
would destroy it.

He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had
cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and
glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter’s work, and
all that that meant. It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be
free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he
would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.

There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the
frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who
were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house.
They walked on till they met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang
the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the
top windows, the house was all dark. After a time, he went away and stood in
an adjoining portico and watched.

“Whose house is that, Constable?” asked the elder of the two gentlemen.

“Mr. Dorian Gray’s, sir,” answered the policeman.

They looked at each other, as they walked away, and sneered. One of them was
Sir Henry Ashton’s uncle.

Inside, in the servants’ part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking
in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her
hands. Francis was as pale as death.

After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen
and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out.
Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on
the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded easily—
their bolts were old.

When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of
their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth
and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife
in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till
they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
 WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM

William Somerset Maugham was born on 25 December 1874 at the British

Embassy in Paris, France, where his father worked as a solicitor. He was the
fourth son of seven children total, but only four that survived infancy. His
childhood was awful for him. His mother died from tuberculosis when he was
eight and two years later he was an orphan after the death of his father of
cancer. He was then sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle in England.
At sixteen, he went to Germany to study literature, philosophy and German at
Heidelberg University. On his return to England, his uncle found him a
position in an accountant’s office, but he gave up after a month. Then he
worked at St. Thomas’s Hospital and became a qualified doctor but he devoted
his life to literature.
Maugham was interested in travelling. He had been to many countries as Spain,
Russia, America, Africa and Asia, which brought him materials for his books.
His rich experience of life and his acute insight human nature provide ground
for the analytical and critical quality of his works. In his work we see people of
various strata and occupations but he is not critical about the contemporary
social order. He is concerned with the bitter truth in modern society and shows
sympathy with the common people.
His output included plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. There
are many biographical details in his stories and characters; he avoids verbose
sentimentality, favouring spare yet vivid, often cynical prose.
His important writings include: ‘Lisa of Lambeth’ (1897), ‘Of Human
Bondage’ (1915), ‘The Moon and Sixpence’ (1919), The Painted Veil (1925),
‘Cakes and Ale’ (1930), ‘Razor’s Edge’ (1944).
‘The Moon and Sixpence’ was written to reveal the unhappy life and the revolt
against the set social order. It is a short story of the conflict between the artist
and the conventional society based on the life of a French painter, Paul
Gauguin.
The principle character is Charles Strickland, a prosperous stokebroker who is
probably a worthy member of society with a good job, a pleasant hospitable
wife and two nice looking and healthy children, a boy and a girl.
Suddenly, Strickland disappeared leaving his wife and children behind and
goes to Paris, living a hard life there as an artist at the age of forty without any
innate talent for it. A friend of him is sent to Paris to find out the woman who is
thought to induce him to walk out on his family, and if possible to persuade hin
to come back. After a long talk with Strickland, his friend understands that the
real reason inspiring him to run away is art, not a woman. He wants to paint.
He doesn’t care for his wife and children any longer, they should try to support
themselves and his wife can get married again. Strickland doesn’t care for the
hardship of life in Paris, nor does he care for people and their opinion about
him. He also doesn’t care for fame or wealth. He never ‘sold a single picture
and he was never satisfied with what he had done’. It seems that he just wants
to satisfy his love for art.
Living in Paris, Strickland comes into contact with a commercially successful
but hackneyed Dutch painter, Dirk Stroeve, who is a kind hearted man. He is
the first who discover the real talent of Strickland. After helping Strickland
recover from a life-threatening condition as he falls seriously ill, Stroeve is
repaid by having his wife, Blanche, abandon him for Strickland. - Stroeve
persuades his wife to let him bring Strickland home to look after him. To his
surprise, his wife falls in love with Strickland. Strickland later discards the wife
for what he wants from Blanche is not sexual relations but the nude picture of
her beautiful figure. She then commits suicide by drinking acid.
Leaving Paris for Tahiti, Strickland is in search of a world of his own. In
Tahiti, he gets married to a native girl who born him two children and has three
years of happiness. Strickland contracts leprosy and later becomes blind. He
has achieved what he longs for on this land. He has painted his masterpiece.
Knowing that he is going to die, he makes his wife promise to burn down his
masterpiece after his death in fear that it will be contaminated by the
commercial world of money.
 THE MOON AND SIXPENCE
CHAPTER XII
Brief content of the chapter:
Strickland, an honest stockbroker, a good husband and a good father of two
wonderful children disappeared unexpectedly. A friend of the family was sent
to Paris where he had been thought to run away with some woman, to find him
and if possible, persuade him to come back. To his surprise, the friend found
out the real purpose of the escape: Strickland had run away to learn to paint.
Through the conversation of the two men, the character of Strickland was
clearly described, and the bourgeois concepts of happiness, responsibility, art
and talent were all well revealed by the author.
The Avenue de Clichy was crowded at that hour, and a lively fancy might
see in the passers-by the personages of many a sordid romance. There were
clerks and shopgirls; old fellows who might have stepped out of the pages of
Honore de Balzac; members, male and female, of the professions which make
their profit of the frailties of mankind. There is in the streets of the poorer
quarters of Paris a thronging vitality which excites the blood and prepares the
soul for the unexpected.
"Do you know Paris well?" I asked.
"No. We came on our honeymoon. I haven't been since."
"How on earth did you find out your hotel?"
"It was recommended to me. I wanted something cheap."
The absinthe came, and with due solemnity we dropped water over the
melting sugar.
"I thought I'd better tell you at once why I had come to see you," I said, not
without embarrassment.
His eyes twinkled. "I thought somebody would come along sooner or later.
I've had a lot of letters from Amy."
"Then you know pretty well what I've got to say."
"I've not read them."
I lit a cigarette to give myself a moment's time. I did not quite know now
how to set about my mission. The eloquent phrases I had arranged, pathetic or
indignant, seemed out of place on the Avenue de Clichy. Suddenly he gave a
chuckle.
"Beastly job for you this, isn't it?"
"Oh, I don't know," I answered.
"Well, look here, you get it over, and then we'll have a jolly evening."
I hesitated.
"Has it occurred to you that your wife is frightfully unhappy?"
"She'll get over it."
I cannot describe the extraordinary callousness with which he made this
reply. It disconcerted me, but I did my best not to show it. I adopted the tone
used by my Uncle Henry, a clergyman, when he was asking one of his relatives
for a subscription to the Additional Curates Society.
"You don't mind my talking to you frankly?"
He shook his head, smiling.
"Has she deserved that you should treat her like this?"
"No."
"Have you any complaint to make against her?"
"None."
"Then, isn't it monstrous to leave her in this fashion, after seventeen years
of married life, without a fault to find with her?"
"Monstrous."
I glanced at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said cut the
ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not to say
ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and hortatory, admonitory
and expostulating, if need be vituperative even, indignant and sarcastic; but
what the devil does a mentor do when the sinner makes no bones about
confessing his sin? I had no experience, since my own practice has always been
to deny everything.
"What, then?" asked Strickland.
I tried to curl my lip.
"Well, if you acknowledge that, there doesn't seem much more to be said."
 "I don't think there is."
I felt that I was not carrying out my embassy with any great skill. I was
distinctly nettled.
"Hang it all, one can't leave a woman without a bob."
"Why not?"
"How is she going to live?"
"I've supported her for seventeen years. Why shouldn't she support herself
for a change?"
"She can't."
"Let her try."
Of course there were many things I might have answered to this. I might
have spoken of the economic position of woman, of the contract, tacit and
overt, which a man accepts by his marriage, and of much else; but I felt that
there was only one point which really signified.
"Don't you care for her any more?"
"Not a bit," he replied.
The matter was immensely serious for all the parties concerned, but there
was in the manner of his answer such a cheerful effrontery that I had to bite my
lips in order not to laugh. I reminded myself that his behaviour was
abominable. I worked myself up into a state of moral indignation.
"Damn it all, there are your children to think of. They've never done you
any harm. They didn't ask to be brought into the world. If you chuck everything
like this, they'll be thrown on the streets.
"They've had a good many years of comfort. It's much more than the
majority of children have. Besides, somebody will look after them. When it
comes to the point, the MacAndrews will pay for their schooling."
"But aren't you fond of them? They're such awfully nice kids. Do you mean
to say you don't want to have anything more to do with them?"
"I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they're growing up I
haven't got any particular feeling for them."
"It's just inhuman."
"I dare say."
 "You don't seem in the least ashamed."
"I'm not."
I tried another tack.
"Everyone will think you a perfect swine."
"Let them."
"Won't it mean anything to you to know that people loathe and despise
you?"
"No."
His brief answer was so scornful that it made my question, natural though it
was, seem absurd. I reflected for a minute or two.
"I wonder if one can live quite comfortably when one's conscious of the
disapproval of one's fellows? Are you sure it won't begin to worry you?
Everyone has some sort of a conscience, and sooner or later it will find you out.
Supposing your wife died, wouldn't you be tortured by remorse?"
He did not answer, and I waited for some time for him to speak. At last I
had to break the silence myself.
"What have you to say to that?"
"Only that you're a damned fool."
"At all events, you can be forced to support your wife and children," I
retorted, somewhat piqued. "I suppose the law has some protection to offer
them."
"Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money. I've got about a
hundred pounds."
I began to be more puzzled than before. It was true that his hotel pointed to
the most straitened circumstances.
"What are you going to do when you've spent that?"
"Earn some."
He was perfectly cool, and his eyes kept that mocking smile which made all
I said seem rather foolish. I paused for a little while to consider what I had
better say next. But it was he who spoke first.
 "Why doesn't Amy marry again? She's comparatively young, and she's not
unattractive. I can recommend her as an excellent wife. If she wants to divorce
me I don't mind giving her the necessary grounds."
Now it was my turn to smile. He was very cunning, but it was evidently this
that he was aiming at. He had some reason to conceal the fact that he had run
away with a woman, and he was using every precaution to hide her
whereabouts. I answered with decision.
"Your wife says that nothing you can do will ever induce her to divorce
you. She's quite made up her mind. You can put any possibility of that
definitely out of your head."
He looked at me with an astonishment that was certainly not feigned. The
smile abandoned his lips, and he spoke quite seriously.
"But, my dear fellow, I don't care. It doesn't matter a twopenny damn to me
one way or the other."
I laughed.
"Oh, come now; you mustn't think us such fools as all that. We happen to
know that you came away with a woman."
He gave a little start, and then suddenly burst into a shout of laughter. He
laughed so uproariously that people sitting near us looked round, and some of
them began to laugh too.
"I don't see anything very amusing in that."
"Poor Amy," he grinned.
Then his face grew bitterly scornful.
"What poor minds women have got! Love. It's always love. They think a
man leaves only because he wants others. Do you think I should be such a fool
as to do what I've done for a woman?"
"Do you mean to say you didn't leave your wife for another woman?"
"Of course not."
"On your word of honour?"
I don't know why I asked for that. It was very ingenuous of me.
"On my word of honour."
"Then, what in God's name have you left her for?"
 "I want to paint."
I looked at him for quite a long time. I did not understand. I thought he was
mad. It must be remembered that I was very young, and I looked upon him as a
middle-aged man. I forgot everything but my own amazement.
"But you're forty."
"That's what made me think it was high time to begin."
"Have you ever painted?"
"I rather wanted to be a painter when I was a boy, but my father made me
go into business because he said there was no money in art. I began to paint a
bit a year ago. For the last year I've been going to some classes at night."
"Was that where you went when Mrs. Strickland thought you were playing
bridge at your club?"
"That's it."
"Why didn't you tell her?"
"I preferred to keep it to myself."
"Can you paint?"
"Not yet. But I shall. That's why I've come over here. I couldn't get what I
wanted in London. Perhaps I can here."
"Do you think it's likely that a man will do any good when he starts at your
age? Most men begin painting at eighteen."
"I can learn quicker than I could when I was eighteen."
"What makes you think you have any talent?"
He did not answer for a minute. His gaze rested on the passing throng, but I
do not think he saw it. His answer was no answer.
"I've got to paint."
"Aren't you taking an awful chance?"
He looked at me. His eyes had something strange in them, so that I felt
rather uncomfortable.
"How old are you? Twenty-three?"
It seemed to me that the question was beside the point. It was natural that I
should take chances; but he was a man whose youth was past, a stockbroker
with a position of respectability, a wife and two children. A course that would
have been natural for me was absurd for him. I wished to be quite fair.
"Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you
must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if
at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."
"I've got to paint," he repeated.
"Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will
have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in
life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite
comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist."
"You blasted fool," he said.
"I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious."
"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the
water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else
he'll drown."
There was real passion in his voice, and in spite of myself I was impressed.
I seemed to feel in him some vehement power that was struggling within him;
it gave me the sensation of something very strong, overmastering, that held
him, as it were, against his will. I could not understand. He seemed really to be
possessed of a devil, and I felt that it might suddenly turn and rend him. Yet he
looked ordinary enough. My eyes, resting on him curiously, caused him no
embarrassment. I wondered what a stranger would have taken him to be, sitting
there in his old Norfolk jacket and his unbrushed bowler; his trousers were
baggy, his hands were not clean; and his face, with the red stubble of the
unshaved chin, the little eyes, and the large, aggressive nose, was uncouth and
coarse. His mouth was large, his lips were heavy and sensual. No; I could not
have placed him.
"You won't go back to your wife?" I said at last.
"Never."
"She's willing to forget everything that's happened and start afresh. She'll
never make you a single reproach."
"She can go to hell."
 "You don't care if people think you an utter blackguard? You don't care if
she and your children have to beg their bread?"
"Not a damn."
I was silent for a moment in order to give greater force to my next remark. I
spoke as deliberately as I could.
"You are a most unmitigated cad."
"Now that you've got that off your chest, let's go and have dinner."

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. How do you undestand the title? What do these two things embody?
What is the similarity between them?
2. How is the portrait of Strickland created? Find words and phrases to
prove your ideas.
3. What do you think of Strickland as:
a. An ordinary man?
b. An artist?
 JOHN GALSWORTHY

(1867 – 1933)

John Galsworthy was born on August 14, 1867 at Parkfield, Kingston Hill,
Surrey in a wealthy family of a rich solicitor. He attended Harrow, and New
College to study law to follow his father’s career, and was called to the bar in
1890. Yet he turned to letters as his profession only one year after his
graduation due to his interests in literature. He travelled widely and at the age
of twenty-eight he began to write. He became a novelist, dramatist, short story
writer and essayist taken together. His life-long dream was to expose all the
evils of society and to reveal the truth of life. His works give the most complete
and critical picture of the English bourgeois society at the beginning of the 20th
century. His fame shot up with the novel ‘The man of Property’ (1906), a harsh
criticism of the upper middle classes. He was the president of the association of
writers until he died in 1933. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 "for his
distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte
Saga".

‘The Island Pharisees’ (1904) attacks the stagnation of thought in the

previleged classes. ‘The Country House’ (1907), ‘Fraternity’ (1909), ‘The
Patrician’ (1911), ‘The Dark Flower’ (1913), and ‘The Freelands’ (1915) all
reveal a similar philosophy. The author criticizes country squires, the
aristocracy and artists, and shows his deep sympathy for strong passions,
sincerity and true love. ‘The Silver Box’ (1904), ‘Strife’ (1909), ‘Justices’
(1910) are all his notable plays.

Galsworthy’s masterpiece is entitled ‘The Forsyte Saga’. It consists of three

novels and two intercludes:

- The Man of Property (1906)

- In Chancery (1920)
- To Let (1921)
- Awakening (Interclude)
- Indian Summer of a Forsyte (Interclude)

The second trilogy that follows is ‘A Modern Comedy’, which consists of three
novels and also two intercludes:
 - The White Monkey (1924)
- The Silver Spoon (1926)
- The Swan Song (1928)
- A Silent Wooing (Interclude)
- Passer-by (Interclude)

‘The End of the Chapter’ is the third trilogy that shows an apparent decline in
the author’s talent. It consists of:

- Maid in Waiting (1931)

- Flowering in Wilderness (1932)
- Over the River (1933)

Galsworthy was a great master of creating characters. In his point of view, each
character should possess features typical of a certain group of people in society.
His novels packed with characters, most of them are alive and full-blooded.
The author appeals both to the heart and reason of his readers, yet there is litlle
sentimentality in his works.
 THE MAN OF PROPERTY

In 1886 all the Forsytes gathered at Old Jolyon Forsyte’s house to celebrate the
engagement of his granddaughter, June, to Philip Bosinney, a young architect.
Young Jolyon Forsyte, June’s father, was estranged (no longer connected with)
from family because he had run away with a governess, whom he had married
after June’s mother died.

Old Jolyon complained that he saw little of June. Lonely, he called on Young
Jolyon, whom he had not seen in many years. He found his son working as an
underwriter (someone who makes insurance contracts) for Lloyd’s and painting
water colors. By his second wife he had two children, Holly and Joly.
The family knew that Soames (June’s cousin) had been having trouble with his
lovely wife, Irene. She had a profound aversion (strong dislike) for Soames,
and had recently reminded him of her premarital stipulation (part of agreement)
that she would have her freedom if the marriage were not a success. In his
efforts (attempt) to please her, Soames planned to build a large country place.
Deciding that June’s fiancé would be a good choice for an architect, he bought
an estate (area) at Robin Hill and hired Bosinney to build the house.
When Soames made suggestions about the plans, Bosinney appeared offended,
and in the end the plans were drawn as Bosinney wished. As the work
proceeded Soames and Bosinney argued over costs that extended to the original
estimate.
Once a day Swithin Forsyte, Soame’s uncle, took Irene to look the house.
Bosinney met them, and while Swithin dozed (slept lightly) the architect talked
to Irene alone. That day Irene and Bosinney fell hopelessly in love with one
another. Irene’s already unbearable life with Soames became impossible. She
asked for a separate room. There were new troubles over the house. Bosinney
had agreed to decorate it, but if he had a free hand. Soames finally agreed.
Irene and Bosinney began to meet secretly. As their affair progressed, June
became more unhappy and self-centred. Finally Old Jolyon took June for a
holiday. He wrote to Young Jolyon, asking him to see Bosinney and learn his
intentions toward June. Young Jolyon talked to Bosinney, but the report he
made to his father was vague (unclear).
When the house was completed, Soames sued Bosinney for exceeding his
highest estimate and Irene refused to move to Robin Hill. When the lawsuit
over the house came to trial (court), Soames won his case without difficulty.
That same night Bosinney, after spending the afternoon with Irene and learning
that Soames had forced himself on her, was accidentally run over. Irene left her
husband on the day of the trial, but that night she returned to his house because
there was no place else for her to go. June persuaded her grandfather t buy
Robin Hill for Jolyon’s family.
A short time after Bosinney’s death Irene left Soames permanently, settled in a
small flat, and gave music lessons to support herself. Several years later she
visited Robin Hill secretly and there met Old Jolyon. She won him by her
gentleness and charm, and during that summer she made his days happy for
him. Late in summer he died quietly while waiting for her.
After this separation from Irene, Soames devoted himself to making money.
Then, still hoping to have an heir (the property or title got after other person
death), he began to court a French girl, Annette Lamotte. At the same time his
sister Winifred was in difficulties. Her husband, Monty Dartie, stole her pearls
and ran away to South America with a Spanish dancer. When he decided to
marry Annette, Soames went to Irene to see if she would provide grounds for
his suit. He foundthat she lived a model life. While visiting her, Soames
realized that he still loved her and he tried to persuade her to come back to him.
When she refused, he hired a detective to get the evidence he needed.
Old Jolyon had willed a legacy (property) to Irene, with Young Jolyon, now a
widower, as trustee. When Soames annoyed Irene, she appealed to Young
Jolyon for protection. Irene went to Paris to avoid Soames and shortly
afterward Young Jolyon joined her. His visit was cut short by Jolly, who
announced that he had joined the yeomanry to fight in the Boer War. Holly in
the meantime had fallen in love with Val Dartie, her cousin. When Val
proposed to Holly, he was overhead by Jolly, who dared Val t join the
yeomanry with him. Val accepted. June then decided to become a Red Cross
nurse, and Holly went with her. Monty Dartie reappeared unexpectedly. To
avoid further scandal, Winfried decided to take him back.
Soames went to Paris in a last effort to persuade Irene. Frightened, Irene
returned to Young Jolyon. Before they became lovers in deed, they were
presented with papers by Soame’s lawyer. They decided to go abroad together.
Before the departure of Young Jolyon received word that Jolly had died of an
enteric fever during the African campaign. Later Soames secured his divorce
and married Annette. Val married Holly, to the discomfiture of both branches
of the family.
Irene presented Jolyon with a son. When Annette was about to give birth to a
child, Soames had to choose between saving the mother or the child. Wishing
an heir, Soames chose to save the child. Fortunately, both Annette and the baby
lived.
Little jon grew up under the adoring eyes of his parents. Fleur grew spoiled, by
her doting (loving) father.
Years passed. Monty Dartie was dead. Val and Holly were training race horces.
One day in the picture gallery Soames impulsively invited a young man,
Michael Mont, to see his collection of pictures. That same afternoon he saw
Irene and her son John for the first time in twenty years. By chance Fleur and
Jon met. Having decided that he wanted to try farming Jon went to stay with
Val Dartie. Fleur also appeared to spend the week with Holly. Jon and Fleur
fell deeply in love.
They had only vague ideas regarding the cause of the feud (anger) between
their respective branches of the family. Later Fleur learned all the details from
Prosper Profond, with whom Annette was having an affair, and from Winifre
Dartie. She was still determined to marry Jon. Meanwhile Michael Mont had
Soames’ permission to court (date) Fleur. When Soames heard of the affair
between Annette and Prosper, she did not deny it, but she promised there
would be no scandal.
Fleur tried to persuade Jon into a hasty (done in a hurry) marriage. She failed
because Young Jolyon reluctantly gave his son a letter revealing the story of
Soames and Irene. Reading it, John realized that he could never marry Fleur.
His decision became irrevocable (cannot be changed) when his father died. He
left England at once and went to America, where Irene joined him. Fleur,
disappointed, married Michael Mont.
When Timothy, the last of the old Forsytes, died, Soames realized that the
Forsyte age passed. Its way of life was like an empty house - to let. He felt
lonely and old.
 CHAPTER 5

A FORSYTE MENAGE

Like the enlightened thousands of his class and generation in this great city of
London, who no longer believe in red velvet chairs, and know that groups of
modern Italian marble are ‘vieux jeu,’ Soames Forsyte inhabited a house which
did what it could. It owned a copper door knocker of individual design,
windows which had been altered to open outwards, hanging flower boxes filled
with fuchsias, and at the back (a great feature) a little court tiled with jade-
green tiles, and surrounded by pink hydrangeas in peacock-blue tubs. Here,
under a parchment-coloured Japanese sunshade covering the whole end,
inhabitants or visitors could be screened from the eyes of the curious while
they drank tea and examined at their leisure the latest of Soames’s little silver
boxes.

The inner decoration favoured the First Empire and William Morris. For its
size, the house was commodious; there were countless nooks resembling birds’
nests, and little things made of silver were deposited like eggs.

In this general perfection two kinds of fastidiousness were at war. There lived
here a mistress who would have dwelt daintily on a desert island; a master
whose daintiness was, as it were, an investment, cultivated by the owner for his
advancement, in accordance with the laws of competition. This competitive
daintiness had caused Soames in his Marlborough days to be the first boy into
white waistcoats in summer, and corduroy waistcoats in winter, had prevented
him from ever appearing in public with his tie climbing up his collar, and
induced him to dust his patent leather boots before a great multitude assembled
on Speech Day to hear him recite Moliere.

Skin-like immaculateness had grown over Soames, as over many Londoners;

impossible to conceive of him with a hair out of place, a tie deviating one-
eighth of an inch from the perpendicular, a collar unglossed! He would not
have gone without a bath for worlds—it was the fashion to take baths; and how
bitter was his scorn of people who omitted them!

But Irene could be imagined, like some nymph, bathing in wayside streams, for
the joy of the freshness and of seeing her own fair body.
In this conflict throughout the house the woman had gone to the wall. As in the
struggle between Saxon and Celt still going on within the nation, the more
impressionable and receptive temperament had had forced on it a conventional
superstructure.

Thus the house had acquired a close resemblance to hundreds of other houses
with the same high aspirations, having become: ‘That very charming little
house of the Soames Forsytes, quite individual, my dear—really elegant.’

For Soames Forsyte—read James Peabody, Thomas Atkins, or Emmanuel

Spagnoletti, the name in fact of any upper-middle class Englishman in London
with any pretensions to taste; and though the decoration be different, the phrase
is just.

On the evening of August 8, a week after the expedition to Robin Hill, in the
dining-room of this house—‘quite individual, my dear—really elegant’—
Soames and Irene were seated at dinner. A hot dinner on Sundays was a little
distinguishing elegance common to this house and many others. Early in
married life Soames had laid down the rule: ‘The servants must give us hot
dinner on Sundays—they’ve nothing to do but play the concertina.’

The custom had produced no revolution. For—to Soames a rather deplorable

sign—servants were devoted to Irene, who, in defiance of all safe tradition,
appeared to recognise their right to a share in the weaknesses of human nature.

The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the
handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth—a distinguishing
elegance—and so far had not spoken a word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying,
and so long as he talked Irene’s silence did not distress him. This evening he
had found it impossible to talk. The decision to build had been weighing on his
mind all the week, and he had made up his mind to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no
business to make him feel like that—a wife and a husband being one person.
She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on
earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked
as he did, making money for her—yes, and with an ache in his heart—that she
should sit there, looking—looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing
in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms—Soames liked
her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to
the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best
high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at home. Under that rosy light
her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange contrast with her dark
brown eyes.

Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep tints, the
starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby-coloured glass, and quaint silver furnishing;
could a man own anything prettier than the woman who sat at it? Gratitude was
no virtue among Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had no
occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of exasperation
amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was his right to own her, that
he could not, as by stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the
very secrets of her heart.

Out of his other property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his
pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate feeling; out of
her he got none.

In this house of his there was writing on every wall. His business-like
temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made for
him. He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it
seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of
possession, that he could do no more than own her body—if indeed he could do
that, which he was beginning to doubt. If any one had asked him if he wanted
to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both ridiculous and
sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he never would.

She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terrified lest by word,
motion, or sign she might lead him to believe that she was fond of him; and he
asked himself: Must I always go on like this?

Like most novel readers of his generation (and Soames was a great novel
reader), literature coloured his view of life; and he had imbibed the belief that it
was only a question of time.
In the end the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in those
cases—a class of book he was not very fond of—which ended in tragedy, the
wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if it were the husband
who died—unpleasant thought—threw herself on his body in an agony of
remorse.

He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively choosing the modern Society
Plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately different from
any conjugal problem in real life. He found that they too always ended in the
same way, even when there was a lover in the case. While he was watching the
play Soames often sympathized with the lover; but before he reached home
again, driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that this would not do, and he
was glad the play had ended as it had. There was one class of husband that had
just then come into fashion, the strong, rather rough, but extremely sound man,
who was peculiarly successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames
was really not in sympathy, and had it not been for his own position, would
have expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of how
vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a ‘strong,’
husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the perverse
processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in himself.

But Irene’s silence this evening was exceptional. He had never before seen
such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual which
alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his savoury, and hurried the maid as she
swept off the crumbs with the silver sweeper. When she had left the room, he
filled his glass with wine and said:

“Anybody been here this afternoon?”

“June.”

“What did she want?” It was an axiom with the Forsytes that people did not go
anywhere unless they wanted something. “Came to talk about her lover, I
suppose?”

Irene made no reply.

“It looks to me,” continued Soames, “as if she were sweeter on him than he is
on her. She’s always following him about.”
Irene’s eyes made him feel uncomfortable.

“You’ve no business to say such a thing!” she exclaimed.

“Why not? Anybody can see it.”

“They cannot. And if they could, it’s disgraceful to say so.”

Soames’s composure gave way.

“You’re a pretty wife!” he said. But secretly he wondered at the heat of her
reply; it was unlike her. “You’re cracked about June! I can tell you one thing:
now that she has the Buccaneer in tow, she doesn’t care twopence about you,
and, you’ll find it out. But you won’t see so much of her in future; we’re going
to live in the country.”

He had been glad to get his news out under cover of this burst of irritation. He
had expected a cry of dismay; the silence with which his pronouncement was
received alarmed him.

“You don’t seem interested,” he was obliged to add.

“I knew it already.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Who told you?”

“June.”

“How did she know?”

Irene did not answer. Baffled and uncomfortable, he said:

“It’s a fine thing for Bosinney, it’ll be the making of him. I suppose she’s told
you all about it?”

“Yes.”

There was another pause, and then Soames said:

“I suppose you don’t want to, go?”

Irene made no reply.

“Well, I can’t tell what you want. You never seem contented here.”

“Have my wishes anything to do with it?”

She took the vase of roses and left the room. Soames remained seated. Was it
for this that he had signed that contract? Was it for this that he was going to
spend some ten thousand pounds? Bosinney’s phrase came back to him:
“Women are the devil!”

But presently he grew calmer. It might have, been worse. She might have
flared up. He had expected something more than this. It was lucky, after all,
that June had broken the ice for him. She must have wormed it out of
Bosinney; he might have known she would.

He lighted his cigarette. After all, Irene had not made a scene! She would come
round—that was the best of her; she was cold, but not sulky. And, puffing the
cigarette smoke at a lady-bird on the shining table, he plunged into a reverie
about the house. It was no good worrying; he would go and make it up
presently. She would be sitting out there in the dark, under the Japanese
sunshade, knitting. A beautiful, warm night....

In truth, June had come in that afternoon with shining eyes, and the words:
“Soames is a brick! It’s splendid for Phil—the very thing for him!”

Irene’s face remaining dark and puzzled, she went on:

“Your new house at Robin Hill, of course. What? Don’t you know?”

Irene did not know.

“Oh! then, I suppose I oughtn’t to have told you!” Looking impatiently at her
friend, she cried: “You look as if you didn’t care. Don’t you see, it’s what I’ve’
been praying for—the very chance he’s been wanting all this time. Now you’ll
see what he can do;” and thereupon she poured out the whole story.

Since her own engagement she had not seemed much interested in her friend’s
position; the hours she spent with Irene were given to confidences of her own;
and at times, for all her affectionate pity, it was impossible to keep out of her
smile a trace of compassionate contempt for the woman who had made such a
mistake in her life—such a vast, ridiculous mistake.

“He’s to have all the decorations as well—a free hand. It’s perfect—” June
broke into laughter, her little figure quivered gleefully; she raised her hand, and
struck a blow at a muslin curtain. “Do you, know I even asked Uncle James....”
But, with a sudden dislike to mentioning that incident, she stopped; and
presently, finding her friend so unresponsive, went away. She looked back
from the pavement, and Irene was still standing in the doorway. In response to
her farewell wave, Irene put her hand to her brow, and, turning slowly, shut the
door....

Soames went to the drawing-room presently, and peered at her through the
window.

Out in the shadow of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very still, the lace
on her white shoulders stirring with the soft rise and fall of her bosom.

But about this silent creature sitting there so motionless, in the dark, there
seemed a warmth, a hidden fervour of feeling, as if the whole of her being had
been stirred, and some change were taking place in its very depths.

He stole back to the dining-room unnoticed.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. Comment on the description of the house of Soames Forsyte, its inner
decoration and furniture. What aspects of Soames’ character are
revealed by it?
2. How does Galsworthy disclose the feelings of Soames?
3. Prove that Soames’ feeling for his wife is that of a man of property.
4. How can we judge Soames through the attitude he adopts towards his
wife? Also through her attitude to him?
5. Why does Galsworthy repeatedly stress the silence of the husband and
wife?
6. Analyze the short dialogue between the husband and wife. What are
their clearest features?
 JACK LONDON
(1876 – 1916)

Jack London (1876-1916) was born in San Francisco. He was deserted by his
father, "Professor" William Henry Chaney, an itinerant astrologer, and raised in
Oakland by his mother Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist. He
took the surname London of his stepfather John London. After leaving school
at the age of 14, London worked as a seaman, rode in freight trains as a hobo
and adopted socialistic views as a member of the protest armies of the
unemployed. He also worked at various jobs: selling newspapers on the
Oakland waterfront, setting pins in a bowling alley, scrubbing saloon floors,
and drudging twelve hours a day in a cannery. As he reflected in later years, he
was always meat-hungry as a boy and saw himself becoming nothing better
than a ‘work-beast’. At the age of 17, he shipped before the mast as a sailor in
the Sophia Southland, a sealing schooner found for Japan and the Bering Sea.
From this voyage came his initial publication, the prize winning sketch
‘Typhoon Off The Coast Of Japan’, and the material for his best selling novel
‘The Sea Wolf’.

Without having much formal education, London spent much time in public
libraries reading fiction, philosophy, poetry, political science. The real life
convinced him that to rise in the world, a young man needed education, and at
the age of 19 he gained admittance to the University of California in Berkeley.
His college career cut short after one semester by lack of finance. In 1897,
London along with his sister’s husband joined the Klondike Gold Rush. This
was the setting for some of his first successful stories. The sea may be said to
have provided London with his real undergraduate education, his graduate
degree was won in the Northland.

According to an American critic, J. London’s literary achievement was closely

related to his life. Three biographical factors account mainly for his success as
a writer:
1. The poverty that instilled a driving ambition to rise in the world.
2. The wanderlust that provided the rich materials of human experience
from which his fiction is drawn.
3. The omnivorous appetite for reading that gave him philosophical
substance and a sense of artistic form. The peculiarity of London’s case
 is that, by working eighteen hours a day, he achieved in one year the
sense of craft that takes an ordinary writer ten years to master.

J. London’s works can be grouped as: Stories of Dogs, Northland Tales,

Novels. The major theme of Dog Stories can be seen as: primitivism, atavism,
ameliorative evolutionism, brotherhood, and the eternal conflict of man vs.
Cosmos. With the publication of ‘The Call Of The Wild’ in 1903, London
became world famous. He subsequently became the first writer to earn a
million dollars from his pen. It is the story of the great dog – Buck’s
transformation from a ranch pet into ‘The Ghost Dog of the Wilderness’ in the
Far North. Another work written in this line is ‘White Fang’, a completely
different kind of book from ‘The Call Of The Wild’. Applying the theory of
environmental determinism, London demonstrates that, given a proper care and
climate, the most savage beast may be transformed into a gentle house dog, that
conveys his optimistic humanism: what has been achieved with ‘White Fang’
can be achieved with man. ‘The Son of The Wolf’ (1900), ‘The God of His
Fathers’ (1901), ‘Children of The Frost’ (1902) and others are all a romantic
interpretation of the North in short-story form.
 MARTIN EDEN

Martin Eden (1909) is London’s second significant sociological novel that

follows The Iron Heel (1906). It deals with most important problem of the
world literature: the tragic destiny of art and talent in the bourgeois society.
The novel is about a young poorly educated seaman, Martin Eden. Coming
from an underclass family, Martin is determined to get into the world of the
rich, the well-educated people, where he finds everything perfect. By working
hard, ‘robbing sleep and exhausting life’, Martin manages to become
somebody among them. But the success brings just disillusionment to him. The
discovery of the nature of that society is too much to him. He can’t stand life
any longer and commits suicide.

CHAPTER 44

Martin was introduced to the representatives of the new world, the existence of
which he had never known. Everything in that world seemed wonderful to him.
Martin fell in love with Ruth and his love for her stimulated him to improve
himself. By working like a work-beast Martin was able to get higher in society.
But success, fame and wealth brought just disappointment and disillusionment
to him. Those were not what he had expected.

Mr. Morse met Martin in the office of the Hotel Metropole. Whether he had
happened there just casually, intent on other affairs, or whether he had come
there for the direct purpose of inviting him to dinner, Martin never could quite
make up his mind, though he inclined toward the second hypothesis. At any
rate, invited to dinner he was by Mr. Morse - Ruth's father, who had forbidden
him the house and broken off the engagement.
Martin was not angry. He was not even on his dignity. He tolerated Mr. Morse,
wondering the while how it felt to eat such humble pie. He did not decline the
invitation. Instead, he put it off with vagueness and indefiniteness and inquired
after the family, particularly after Mrs. Morse and Ruth. He spoke her name
without hesitancy, naturally, though secretly surprised that he had had no
inward quiver, no old, familiar increase of pulse and warm surge of blood.
He had many invitations to dinner, some of which he accepted. Persons got
themselves introduced to him in order to invite him to dinner. And he went on
puzzling over the little thing that was becoming a great thing. Bernard
Higginbotham invited him to dinner. He puzzled the harder. He remembered
the days of his desperate starvation when no one invited him to dinner. That
was the time he needed dinners, and went weak and faint for lack of them and
lost weight from sheer famine. That was the paradox of it. When he wanted
dinners, no one gave them to him, and now that he could buy a hundred
thousand dinners and was losing his appetite, dinners were thrust upon him
right and left. But why? There was no justice in it, no merit on his part. He was
no different. All the work he had done was even at that time work performed.
Mr. and Mrs. Morse had condemned him for an idler and a shirk and through
Ruth had urged that he take a clerk's position in an office. Furthermore, they
had been aware of his work performed. Manuscript after manuscript of his had
been turned over to them by Ruth. They had read them. It was the very same
work that had put his name in all the papers, and, it was his name being in all
the papers that led them to invite him.
One thing was certain: the Morses had not cared to have him for himself or for
his work. Therefore they could not want him now for himself or for his work,
but for the fame that was his, because he was somebody amongst men, and -
why not? - because he had a hundred thousand dollars or so. That was the way
bourgeois society valued a man, and who was he to expect it otherwise? But he
was proud. He disdained such valuation. He desired to be valued for himself, or
for his work, which, after all, was an expression of himself. That was the way
Lizzie valued him. The work, with her, did not even count. She valued him,
himself. That was the way Jimmy, the plumber, and all the old gang valued
him. That had been proved often enough in the days when he ran with them; it
had been proved that Sunday at Shell Mound Park. His work could go hang.
What they liked, and were willing to scrap for, was just Mart Eden, one of the
bunch and a pretty good guy.
Then there was Ruth. She had liked him for himself, that was indisputable. And
yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the bourgeois standard of
valuation more. She had opposed his writing, and principally, it seemed to him,
because it did not earn money. That had been her criticism of his "Love-cycle."
She, too, had urged him to get a job. It was true, she refined it to "position," but
it meant the same thing, and in his own mind the old nomenclature stuck. He
had read her all that he wrote - poems, stories, essays - "Wiki-Wiki," "The
Shame of the Sun," everything. And she had always and consistently urged him
to get a job, to go to work - good God! - as if he hadn't been working, robbing
sleep, exhausting life, in order to be worthy of her.
So the little thing grew bigger. He was healthy and normal, ate regularly, slept
long hours, and yet the growing little thing was becoming an obsession.
WORK PERFORMED. The phrase haunted his brain. He sat opposite Bernard
Higginbotham at a heavy Sunday dinner over Higginbotham's Cash Store, and
it was all he could do to restrain himself from shouting out:- "It was work
performed! And now you feed me, when then you let me starve, forbade me
your house, and damned me because I wouldn't get a job. And the work was
already done, all done. And now, when I speak, you check the thought
unuttered on your lips and hang on my lips and pay respectful attention to
whatever I choose to say. I tell you your party is rotten and filled with grafters,
and instead of flying into a rage you hum and haw and admit there is a great
deal in what I say. And why? Because I'm famous; because I've a lot of money.
Not because I'm Martin Eden, a pretty good fellow and not particularly a fool. I
could tell you the moon is made of green cheese and you would subscribe to
the notion, at least you would not repudiate it, because I've got dollars,
mountains of them. And it was all done long ago; it was work performed, I tell
you, when you spat upon me as the dirt under your feet."
But Martin did not shout out. The thought gnawed in his brain, an unceasing
torment, while he smiled and succeeded in being tolerant. As he grew silent,
Bernard Higginbotham got the reins and did the talking. He was a success
himself, and proud of it. He was self- made. No one had helped him. He owed
no man. He was fulfilling his duty as a citizen and bringing up a large family.
And there was Higginbotham's Cash Store, that monument of his own industry
and ability. He loved Higginbotham's Cash Store as some men loved their
wives. He opened up his heart to Martin, showed with what keenness and with
what enormous planning he had made the store. And he had plans for it,
ambitious plans. The neighborhood was growing up fast. The store was really
too small. If he had more room, he would be able to put in a score of labor-
saving and money- saving improvements. And he would do it yet. He was
straining every effort for the day when he could buy the adjoining lot and put
up another two-story frame building. The upstairs he could rent, and the whole
ground-floor of both buildings would be Higginbotham's Cash Store. His eyes
glistened when he spoke of the new sign that would stretch clear across both
buildings.
Martin forgot to listen. The refrain of "Work performed," in his own brain, was
drowning the other's clatter. The refrain maddened him, and he tried to escape
from it.
"How much did you say it would cost?" he asked suddenly.
His brother-in-law paused in the middle of an expatiation on the business
opportunities of the neighborhood. He hadn't said how much it would cost. But
he knew. He had figured it out a score of times.
"At the way lumber is now," he said, "four thousand could do it."
"Including the sign?"
"I didn't count on that. It'd just have to come, onc't the buildin' was there."
"And the ground?"
"Three thousand more."
He leaned forward, licking his lips, nervously spreading and closing his
fingers, while he watched Martin write a check. When it was passed over to
him, he glanced at the amount-seven thousand dollars.
"I - I can't afford to pay more than six per cent," he said huskily.
Martin wanted to laugh, but, instead, demanded:-
"How much would that be?"
"Lemme see. Six per cent - six times seven - four hundred an' twenty."
"That would be thirty-five dollars a month, wouldn't it?"
Higginbotham nodded.
"Then, if you've no objection, well arrange it this way." Martin glanced at
Gertrude. "You can have the principal to keep for yourself, if you'll use the
thirty-five dollars a month for cooking and washing and scrubbing. The seven
thousand is yours if you'll guarantee that Gertrude does no more drudgery. Is it
a go?"
Mr. Higginbotham swallowed hard. That his wife should do no more
housework was an affront to his thrifty soul. The magnificent present was the
coating of a pill, a bitter pill. That his wife should not work! It gagged him.
"All right, then," Martin said. "I'll pay the thirty-five a month, and - "
He reached across the table for the check. But Bernard Higginbotham got his
hand on it first, crying:
"I accept! I accept!"
When Martin got on the electric car, he was very sick and tired. He looked up
at the assertive sign.
"The swine," he groaned. "The swine, the swine."
When MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE published "The Palmist," featuring it
with decorations by Berthier and with two pictures by Wenn, Hermann von
Schmidt forgot that he had called the verses obscene. He announced that his
wife had inspired the poem, saw to it that the news reached the ears of a
reporter, and submitted to an interview by a staff writer who was accompanied
by a staff photographer and a staff artist. The result was a full page in a Sunday
supplement, filled with photographs and idealized drawings of Marian, with
many intimate details of Martin Eden and his family, and with the full text of
"The Palmist" in large type, and republished by special permission of
MACKINTOSH'S MAGAZINE. It caused quite a stir in the neighborhood, and
good housewives were proud to have the acquaintances of the great writer's
sister, while those who had not made haste to cultivate it. Hermann von
Schmidt chuckled in his little repair shop and decided to order a new lathe.
"Better than advertising," he told Marian, "and it costs nothing."
"We'd better have him to dinner," she suggested.
And to dinner Martin came, making himself agreeable with the fat wholesale
butcher and his fatter wife - important folk, they, likely to be of use to a rising
young man like Hermann Yon Schmidt. No less a bait, however, had been
required to draw them to his house than his great brother-in-law. Another man
at table who had swallowed the same bait was the superintendent of the Pacific
Coast agencies for the Asa Bicycle Company. Him Von Schmidt desired to
please and propitiate because from him could be obtained the Oakland agency
for the bicycle. So Hermann von Schmidt found it a goodly asset to have
Martin for a brother-in-law, but in his heart of hearts he couldn't understand
where it all came in. In the silent watches of the night, while his wife slept, he
had floundered through Martin's books and poems, and decided that the world
was a fool to buy them.
And in his heart of hearts Martin understood the situation only too well, as he
leaned back and gloated at Von Schmidt's head, in fancy punching it well-nigh
off of him, sending blow after blow home just right - the chuckle-headed
Dutchman! One thing he did like about him, however. Poor as he was, and
determined to rise as he was, he nevertheless hired one servant to take the
heavy work off of Marian's hands. Martin talked with the superintendent of the
Asa agencies, and after dinner he drew him aside with Hermann, whom he
backed financially for the best bicycle store with fittings in Oakland. He went
further, and in a private talk with Hermann told him to keep his eyes open for
an automobile agency and garage, for there was no reason that he should not be
able to run both establishments successfully.
With tears in her eyes and her arms around his neck, Marian, at parting, told
Martin how much she loved him and always had loved him. It was true, there
was a perceptible halt midway in her assertion, which she glossed over with
more tears and kisses and incoherent stammering, and which Martin inferred to
be her appeal for forgiveness for the time she had lacked faith in him and
insisted on his getting a job.
"He can't never keep his money, that's sure," Hermann von Schmidt confided to
his wife. "He got mad when I spoke of interest, an' he said damn the principal
and if I mentioned it again, he'd punch my Dutch head off. That's what he said -
my Dutch head. But he's all right, even if he ain't no business man. He's given
me my chance, an' he's all right."
Invitations to dinner poured in on Martin; and the more they poured, the more
he puzzled. He sat, the guest of honor, at an Arden Club banquet, with men of
note whom he had heard about and read about all his life; and they told him
how, when they had read "The Ring of Bells" in the TRANSCONTINENTAL,
and "The Peri and the Pearl" in THE HORNET, they had immediately picked
him for a winner. My God! and I was hungry and in rags, he thought to
himself. Why didn't you give me a dinner then? Then was the time. It was work
performed. If you are feeding me now for work performed, why did you not
feed me then when I needed it? Not one word in "The Ring of Bells," nor in
"The Peri and the Pearl" has been changed. No; you're not feeding me now for
work performed. You are feeding me because everybody else is feeding me and
because it is an honor to feed me. You are feeding me now because you are
herd animals; because you are part of the mob; because the one blind,
automatic thought in the mob-mind just now is to feed me. And where does
Martin Eden and the work Martin Eden performed come in in all this? he asked
himself plaintively, then arose to respond cleverly and wittily to a clever and
witty toast.
So it went. Wherever he happened to be - at the Press Club, at the Redwood
Club, at pink teas and literary gatherings - always were remembered "The Ring
of Bells" and "The Peri and the Pearl" when they were first published. And
always was Martin's maddening and unuttered demand: Why didn't you feed
me then? It was work performed. "The Ring of Bells" and "The Peri and the
Pearl" are not changed one iota. They were just as artistic, just as worth while,
then as now. But you are not feeding me for their sake, nor for the sake of
anything else I have written. You're feeding me because it is the style of
feeding just now, because the whole mob is crazy with the idea of feeding
Martin Eden.
And often, at such times, he would abruptly see slouch in among the company
a young hoodlum in square-cut coat and under a stiff-rim Stetson hat. It
happened to him at the Gallina Society in Oakland one afternoon. As he rose
from his chair and stepped forward across the platform, he saw stalk through
the wide door at the rear of the great room the young hoodlum with the square-
cut coat and stiff-rim hat. Five hundred fashionably gowned women turned
their heads, so intent and steadfast was Martin's gaze, to see what he was
seeing. But they saw only the empty centre aisle. He saw the young tough
lurching down that aisle and wondered if he would remove the stiff-rim which
never yet had he seen him without. Straight down the aisle he came, and up the
platform. Martin could have wept over that youthful shade of himself, when he
thought of all that lay before him. Across the platform he swaggered, right up
to Martin, and into the foreground of Martin's consciousness disappeared. The
five hundred women applauded softly with gloved hands, seeking to encourage
the bashful great man who was their guest. And Martin shook the vision from
his brain, smiled, and began to speak.
The Superintendent of Schools, good old man, stopped Martin on the street and
remembered him, recalling seances in his office when Martin was expelled
from school for fighting.
"I read your 'Ring of Bells' in one of the magazines quite a time ago," he said.
"It was as good as Poe. Splendid, I said at the time, splendid!"
Yes, and twice in the months that followed you passed me on the street and did
not know me, Martin almost said aloud. Each time I was hungry and heading
for the pawnbroker. Yet it was work performed. You did not know me then.
Why do you know me now?
"I was remarking to my wife only the other day," the other was saying,
"wouldn't it be a good idea to have you out to dinner some time? And she quite
agreed with me. Yes, she quite agreed with me."
"Dinner?" Martin said so sharply that it was almost a snarl.
"Why, yes, yes, dinner, you know - just pot luck with us, with your old
superintendent, you rascal," he uttered nervously, poking Martin in an attempt
at jocular fellowship.
Martin went down the street in a daze. He stopped at the corner and looked
about him vacantly.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he murmured at last. "The old fellow was afraid of me."

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. What is the subject matter of the chapter?

2. What makes Martin so puzzled?
3. Why does it haunt him everywhere?
4. How do you understand the phrase “work performed”?
5. How does Martin Eden come to understand the society of “men of
note”?
6. What is the paradox in the invitations to dinners that maddens him
wildly?
7. How is the bourgeois society depicted in the chapter?
 EARNEST HEMINGWAY
(1899 – 1961)

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American
author. He was born in Oak Park, Illinois. As a boy he was taken on frequent
hunting and fishing trip by his father to Michigan, the locale of many of his
stories, and where he soon got acquaintanced with the life of the Indians and
such virtues as courage and indurance, which were later revealed in his fiction.

After high school Hemingway worked as a newspaper reporter and then joined
a volunteer ambulance unit to take part in World War II to see the real nature
of wars. After the war he came home a hero. He lived several years in Paris
after that. He joined a group expatriated American writers who considered
themselves a lost generation. In Paris he published ‘Three stories and Ten
Poems’ (1923) and ‘In our Time’ (1924) in which his own experiences of life
are revealed, and which brought him fame immediately. In 1926, the year he
left Paris, he published ‘The Sun Also Rises’ that reflects the bitter feelings and
the disillusionment of the so-called lost generation and their escape in violent
diversions they could think of. The year 1928 was marked by the publishing of
his famous novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’ that stresses the necessity to attain
moral courage to live and face the social chaos. From 1928 to 1938 the writer
lived in Florida. He travelled a lot to France and Spain. His two volumes of
short stories were produced during this period: ‘Men without Woman’ (1927)
and ‘Winter Take Nothing’ (1933), ‘Death in the Afternoon’ (1932) and ‘Green
Hills of Africa’ (1935) that respectively describe bullfighting in Spain and big
game fighting in Africa. Belong also to the most prominent short stories of his
are ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ (1936) and ‘The Snow of
Kilimanjaro’ (1936).

Hemingway’s social novel ‘To Have and Have Not’ (1937) illustrates the
antagonism between the rich and the poor. ‘The Fifth Column’ (1937) was
written in the same line, which denounces the fascist regime in Spain. In 1940,
he completed the novel ‘For whom the Bell Tolls’. It tells the story of a young
American teacher who thinks it his duty to fight against the fascist regime in
Spain and become a friend of the Spainish partisans in the devotion of his own
life to the cause of freedom. In the 40s and 50s, Hemingway published little. In
1950 came his novel ‘Across the River and into the trees’ related to World
War. His tale ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ was fiished in 1952. For this story he
won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. In 1954, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature.

Hemingway is a democrat and humanist. He devoted his whole life to the

struggle against facism and wars. He believed that all those who ‘stand to
profit by war and to help to provoke should be shot on the first day it starts…’
To him ‘there is only one form of government that can not produce good
writers, and that system is fascism. For fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer
who will not lie cannot live and work under fascism.’

Hemingway considered arts and literature as having an important role in the

world. He highly appreciated the role of writers. In comparing a writer to a
well, he stressed the knowledge, the experience, the talent, the conscience and
the discipline of the writer. He said that all these taken together were to
‘prevent faking’. As for the importance of truth in fiction, he wrote:’A writer’s
problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in
changes but his problems remain the same. It is always how to write truly and,
having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of
the experience of the person who reads it’, and ‘a writer’s job is to tell the
truth.’

Hemingway’s style of writing follows the ‘theory of an iceberg’ which means

that the writer may omit that he knows what he is writing about, and that if he
writes truly the reader will have a feeling of those things as strong as the writer
has tasted them. ‘The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one
eighth of it being above the water’, he wrote.
 A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1929)

“A Farewell to Arms” is an anti-war novel in which Hemingway wanted to

make the reader see war as a merciless massacre of men and women and the
senseless destruction of the value created. It is the story of an American
lieutenant, Frederic Henry, who serves in an Italian ambulance corps during
World War I. The novel falls into five parts, each describes a different phase in
Henry’s adventures. He falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a volunteer nurse
from Great Britain. When he is wounded she nurses him at the hospital. His
convalescence is over, he returns to the front and finds himself in an
disorganized retreat. He deserts during the mass retreat, rejoining the girl he
loves, and they escape to Switzerland in a small boat over the lake of
Maggiore. Their idyll comes to an end when she dies in child-birth.
The plot is revealed in the famous concise Hemingway style where many
detailed descriptions of characters are omitted leaving room for full description
of events. The reader is expected to follow the events carefully and imagine the
details for himself. Each personage is sketched with colorful strokes using the
least number of words possible. It is the dialogues that disclose the characters
in full so that they can be seen eventually in retrospect. “A farewell to Arms” is
often referred to by literary critics as a “masterpiece of imaginative omissions”.
The story is told in the first person, by Frederic Henry, the hero of the novel.
The narration is the mixture of feelings both sweet and bitter, the bitter feeling
caused by the war and the sweet feeling brought about by his love for the
woman who bears his child. Frederic Henry is a former student of architecture.
He has dropped his studies and volunteered as an ambulance driver. Frederic
Henry is depicted here as one of the many who were made to believe when the
war broke out that their participation in the war was patriotism “and that their
sacrifice was not in vain”. Soon, however, sufferings and misfortunes sobered
the young generation. They came to realize the aimlessness and the
senselessness of their fighting and questioned themselves what and whose
interest they were fighting for. Henry, too, becomes to be aware of the terrible
difference between words and deeds.
Catherine Barkley, the girl Henry loves, goes to the front with her fiancé. She
nurses the silly idea that one day the boy might come to the hospital where she
works with a sabre cut, or a bandage round his head, or a shot through the
shoulder. But he never does. He is killed. She says to Henry, “He didn’t have
the sabre cut. They blew him all to bits.” The couple is called by Hemingway
his Romeo and Juliet. They are happy but in the sea of trouble, they are alone
and their happiness cannot last long.
A certain mood felt in the novel which later to become Hemingway’s chief
lyric motif: that is a moral advantage in defeat. Man may be trampled by war,
man may die, but the proud spirit of man cannot be conquered. Hemingway’s
heroes do not panic in the face of disaster.
“A Farewell to Arms” is still read and admired by many generations to come.
The following chapter describes the first meeting of Frederic Henry with
Catherine Barkley, to whom he is introduced by an Italian, Rinaldi.

CHAPTER 4

The battery in the next garden woke me in the morning and I saw the sun
coming through the window and got out of the bed. I went to the window and
looked out. The gravel paths were moist and the grass was wet with dew. The
battery fired twice and the air came each time like a blow and shook the
window and made the front of my pyjamas flap. I could not see the guns but
they were evidently firing directly over us. It was a nuisance to have them there
but it was a comfort that they were no bigger. As I looked out at the garden I
heard a motor- truck starting on the road. I dressed, went downstairs, had some
coffee in the kitchen and went out to the garage.
Ten cars were lined up side by side under the long shed. They were top-heavy,
blunt-nosed ambulances, painted grey and built like moving vans. The
mechanics were working on one out in the yard. Three others were up in the
mountains at dressing stations.
'Do they ever shell that battery?' I asked one of the mechanics.
'No, Signor Tenente. It is protected by the little hill.’
'How’s everything?’
'Not so bad. This machine is no good but the others march.’ He stopped
working and smiled. 'Were you on permission?’
'Yes.’
He wiped his hands on his jumper and grinned. 'You have a good time?’ The
others all grinned too.
'Fine,’ I said. 'What’s the matter with this machine?’
'It’s no good. One thing after another.’
'What’s the matter now?’
'New rings.’
I left them working, the car looking disgraced and empty with the engine open
and parts spread on the work-bench, and went in under the shed and looked at
each of the cars. They were moderately clean, a few freshly washed, the others
dusty. I looked at the tyres carefully, looking for cuts or stone bruises. Every-
thing seemed in good condition. It evidently made no difference whether I was
there to look after things or not. I had imagined that the condition of the cars,
whether or not things were obtainable, the smooth functioning of the business
of removing wounded and sick from the dressing-stations, hauling them back
from the mountains to the clearing-station and then distributing them to the
hospitals named on their papers, depended to a considerable extent on myself.
Evidently it did not matter whether I was there or not.
'Has there been any trouble getting parts?’ I asked the sergeant mechanic.
‘No, Signor Tenente.’
‘Where is the gasoline park now?’
‘At the same place.’
‘Good,’ I said and went back to the house and drank another bowl of coffee at
the mess table. The coffee was a pale grey and sweet with condensed milk.
Outside the window it was a lovely spring morning. There was that beginning
of a feeling of dryness in the nose that meant the day would be hot later on.
That day I visited the posts in the mountains and was back in town late in the
afternoon.
The whole thing seemed to run better while I was away. The offensive was
going to start again I heard. The division for which we worked were to attack at
a place up the river and the major told me that I would see about the posts for
during the attack. The attack would cross the river up above the narrow gorge
and spread up the hillside. The posts for the cars would have to be as near the
river as they could get and keep covered. They would, of course, be selected by
the infantry but we were supposed to work it out. It was one of those things that
gave you a false feeling of soldiering.
I was very dusty and dirty and went up to my room to wash, Rinaldi was sitting
on the bed with a copy of Hugo’s English grammar. He was dressed, wore his
black boots, and his hair shone.
‘Splendid,’ he said when he saw me. ‘You will come with me to see Miss
Barkley,’
‘No.’
‘Yes. You will please come and make me a good impression on her.’
‘All right. Wait till I get cleaned up.’
‘Wash up and come as you are.’
I washed, brushed my hair and we started.
‘Wait a minute’, Rinaldi said. ‘Perhaps we should have a drink.’ He opened his
trunk and took out a bottle.
'Not Strega’, I said.
'No. Grappa.’
'All right.’
He poured two glasses and we touched them, first fingers extended. The grappa
was very strong.
'Another.’
'All right’, I said. We drank the second grappa, Rinaldi put away the bottle and
we went down the stairs. It was hot walking through the town but the sun was
starting to go down and it was very pleasant. The British hospital was a big
villa built by Germans before the war. Miss Barkley was in the garden. Another
nurse was with her. We saw their white uniforms through the trees and walked
toward them. Rinaldi saluted. I saluted too but more moderately.
'How do you do?’ Miss Barkley said. 'You’re not an Italian, are you?’
‘Oh, no.’
Rinaldi was talking with the other nurse. They were laughing.
‘What an odd thing to be in the Italian army.’
'It’s not really the army. It’s only the ambulance.’
'It’s very odd though. Why did you do it?’
'I don’t know,’ I said. 'There isn’t always an explanation for everything.’
'Oh, isn’t there? I was brought up to think there was.’
'That’s awfully nice.’
'Do we have to go on and talk this way?’
‘No’, I said.
‘That’s a relief. Isn’t it?’
‘What is the stick?’ I asked. Miss Barkley was quite tall. She wore what
seemed to me to be a nurse’s uniform, was blonde and had a tawny skin and
grey eyes. I thought she was very beautiful. She was carrying a thin rattan stick
like a toy riding-crop, bound in leather.
‘It belonged to a boy who was killed last year.’
‘I’m awfully sorry.’
‘He was a very nice boy. He was going to marry me and he was killed on the
Somme.’
‘It was a ghastly show.’
‘Were you there?’
‘No.’
‘I’ve heard about it,’ she said. ‘There’s not really any war of that sort down
here. They sent me the little stick. His mother sent it to me. They returned it
with his things.’
‘Had you been engaged long?’
‘Eight years. We grew up together.’
‘And why didn’t you marry?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was a fool not to. 1 could have given him that
anyway. But I thought it would be bad for him.’
‘I see.’
‘Have you ever loved anyone?’
‘No,’ I said.
We sat down on a bench and I looked at her.
‘You have beautiful hair,’ I said.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Very much.’
‘I was going to cut it all off when he died.’
‘No.’
I wanted to do something for him. You see I didn’t care about the other thing
and he could have had it all. He could have had anything he wanted if I had
known. I would have married him or anything. I know all about it now. But
then he wanted to go to war and I didn’t know.’
I did not say anything.
I didn’t know about anything then. I thought it would be worse for him. I
thought perhaps he couldn’t stand it and then of course he was killed and that
was the end of it.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the end of it.’
We looked at Rinaldi talking with the other nurse.
‘What is her name?’
‘Ferguson. Helen Ferguson. Your friend is a doctor, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. He’s very good.’
‘That’s splendid. You rarely find any one any good this close to the front. This
is close to the front, isn’t it?’
‘Quite.’
‘It’s a silly front,’ she said. ‘But it’s very beautiful.
‘Are they going to have an offensive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we’ll have to work. There’s no work now.’
‘Have you done nursing long?’
‘Since the end of fifteen. I started when he did. I remember having a silly idea
he might come to the hospital where I was. With a sabre cut, I suppose, and a
bandage around his head. Or shot through the shoulder. Something
picturesque.’
‘This is the picturesque front,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘People can’t realize what France is like. If they did it couldn’t
all go on. He didn’t have a sabre cut. They blew him all to bits.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Do you suppose it will always go on?’
‘No.’
‘What’s to stop it?’
‘It will crack somewhere.’
‘We’ll crack. We’ll crack in France. They can’t go on doing things like the
Somme and not crack.’
‘They won’t crack here,’ I said.
‘You think not?’
‘No. They did very well last summer.’
‘They may crack,’ she said. ‘Anybody may crack.’
‘The Germans too.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think not.’
We went over toward Rinaldi and Miss Ferguson. ‘You love Italy?’ Rinaldi
asked Miss Ferguson in English. ‘Quite well.’
‘No understand,’ Rinaldi shook his head. ‘A bbastanz bene,’ I translated. He
shook his head.
‘That is not good. You love England?’
‘Not too well. I’m Scottish, you see.’
Rinaldi looked at me blankly.
‘She’ s Scottish, so she loves Scotland better than England,’ I said in Italian.
‘But Scotland is England.’ I translated this for Miss Ferguson.
‘Pas encore,’ said Miss Ferguson.
‘Not really?’
‘Never. We do not like the English.’
‘Not like the English? Not like Miss Barkley?’
‘Oh, that’s different. She’s partly Scottish too. You mustn’t take everything so
literally.’
After a while we said good night and left. Walking home Rinaldi said, ‘Miss
Barkley prefers you to me. That is very clear. But the little Scottish one is very
nice.’
‘Very’, I said. I had not noticed her. ‘You like her?’
‘No’, said Rinaldi.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

1. How did the World Wars and Civil War in Spain affect Hemingway as a
humanist and a writer?
2. Give a short account of the novel “A farewell to Arms”.
3. Characterize the hero and heroine of the novel.
4. What are the characters’ attitudes towards wars?
5. Prove that Henry has a great sense of duty.
6. What are the features of the language used by the characters in the
conversation at the end of the chapter?
7. What is the famous concise in Hemingway’s style?