Something childish but very natural
hurriedly ran to ride the train. He forgot his hat,
About the Author
 Born as Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp in
Wellington, New Zealand to a family of English
Descent in 1888.
 Married to George Bowden
 “Central Figure in the development of the
Modern Short Story” Noted 20th century
Literary Criticism
 Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. "An early
practitioner of stream-of-consciousness
narration, she applied this technique to create
stories based on the illumination of character
rather than the contrivances of plot."
 Died at age 34
 Later explored the theme of the hierarchy of
class distinctions that restricted upbringings
such as hers.
 Famous Works: the Garden Party, the
daughters of the Late Colonel, The Fly
 Other form of works: Short stories, poems,
letters, journals
Story:
- A short story about love and fantasy between
its two main characters, Henry and Edna. This
short story written by Mansfield mainly reflects
different perspectives of love and its transitions.
- Henry: an 18-yr old boy, works in an architect’s
office, book lover, fell in love with Edna
- Edna: a 16 yr. old girl, studies in a training
college to become a secretary, fell in love with
Henry, mother is Hungarian
- Exposition (part of the story that introduces
the character, setting, and conflict) : This is
where the first scenario happened. 10 minutes
before the train’s take off, Henry visited a
bookstore along the Charing Cross Road of
London where he read some stanzas from
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ “Something Childish
But Very Natural”
- Rising Action (part of the story where the
character attempts solve problem but fails):
Because Henry almost forgot the time, he
gloves and portfolio at the bookstore and sat on
the wrong section of the train. There he met
the shy girl Edna. They talked about things and
as this go on, Henry’s heart was thumping fast.
On this very first meeting of the two, Henry did
not even knew the girl’s name. this made him
anxious for days. Fortunately, they met again in
the train.
- Climax (turning point of the story): After their
2nd meeting, love sprouted between Henry and
Edna and began their relationship. They wrote
love letter to each other. But all these times,
their views of love are different. They went to
the concert hall as a date. There was an
instance that Henry whispered to Edna
pertaining to something affectionate, but she
turned it down right away. Edna’s emotion
exploded after leaving the concert hall. She was
sad and guilty for not letting Henry have the
physical contact with her and decided to leave
him.
- Falling Action/denouement (Events after the
climax and the end of the story): the incident
at the concert hall was solved and they
continued their relationship. One day the
couple decided to explore a village. They
checked on a cottage and labelled it as their
future house. They walked and walked around
until they were tired. Until one day Henry was
waiting for Edna to come back home when he
saw a little girl in pinafore and gave him a
telegram that came from Edna. It left Henry
immobilized and defeated
Impressionism:
- Short story with impressionistic style.
Impressionism is a style used by writers that
applies imagery and symbolism. In the literary
sense, borrowed from French painting,
Impressionism is a rather vague term applied to
worked or passages that concentrate on the
description of transitory mental impressions as
felt by an observer, rather than on the
explanation of their external causes.
 - Characteristics: subjective, centered on the
mental life of the characters (more on
impressions and sensations), allows reader to
form ideas to what the writer is trying to
convey.
Imagery in the story:
1. Kinetic: I must see you again; I come down to
London every evening; let’s rest here a little;
Look, stars Henry
2. Gustatory: I cant go on being hungry like this;
teas provided
3. Visual: how beautiful she is! How simply
beautiful she is!;
4. Organic: God’s thunder!; My God!
5. Auditory: Yes, Here comes the orchestra; I can
hear your laugh running up and down to my
veins
Why Impressionistic story?
 Displays the author’s early attempts to explore
the possibility of an unworked community of
lovers based on psuedoplatonic love
 Early attempt to break with the romantic
tradition, she presents as immature and unreal
 Protagonists are extremely young, intense and
idealistic
 Coleridge’s poem, which gives the title of the
story, marks the gap between romantic dreams
and harsh reality, the basis of Mansfield’s
fiction.
 Poem is full of the imagery that Mansfield used
to suggest the ideal communion of the lovers’
bodies as a way to overcome human isolation
and individual immanence
 Authors seems to suggest the extremely
romantic condition epitomized by the poem
may lead to an alternative version where it is
possible to match ream and reality
 There is, for instance a tendency to present the
use of hats as symbolizing the artificiality of
society upon the individual
 Obsession with the hat
 Symbol of oppression of social rules on both
characters
 Beginning of the story which pinpoints the
unsuccessful bond between lovers who do not
actually understand unworked community
Fantasy vs. reality
- Fantasy: Henry’s plan of living in the cottage
with Edna. They were still young to support
each other’s lives. Everything was out of
impulsive decisions and imagination. If such
plans will happen in reality, we all know they
might possibly break up in the future.
Bliss v. Something Childish But Very Natural
- Series of events concerning a dinner party
- Presented through the perception of Bertha
Young, who has a loving husband and
everything a woman could possibly want.
- Considers herself to be happy because she must
be happy since she has everything one could
wish for.
- She does not desire her husband, until she
starts to feel attracted to another woman –
Pearl Fulton who’s also invited to the dinner
party.
- Questions the sexuality of the protag.
- She finds out that her husband has an affair
with Pearl
Open Couple
 Some of Fo's other plays, it is a romantic play
which was written with his wife Franca Rame. It
was written in 1983.
 The Italian censors restricted it to audiences
over the age of 18 when Rame included as a
prologue her monologue The Rape (inspired by
her own rape)
 Written by the acclaimed Italian satirist with his
wife Franca Rame, it’s of little surprise after
seeing this that they are no longer together –
but a great shame. Fantastically scripted with
sparks that fly and words that semi-maim, Fo
actively encourages his work to be played
around with by theatre companies to keep
them up to date and relevant to the locale,
which Something Witty (the production
 company behind last year’s Importance Of
Being Ernest) has done with delight and
subtlety.
 Performed in the round, the set is minimal but
utilised to the full; the staging simple but
delightful. The acting was engaging and
believable from the off as the volatile couple
grapple with each other verbally and physically,
sparring with darts of love, passion and hatred
taking turns to lead the dance.
Plot Summary
 This is the mauling of a relationship from the
inside as he (with an air of power and the
ridiculous akin to a young Malcolm MacDowell)
bullies and prompts their relationship into an
open status, only to find it less appealing once
she embarks upon a new beau. Samuel Dutton
is fantastic as the preening, arrogant, jealous
husband, and Heather Rayment superb as the
hysterical, tempestuous wife. Well done Nicola
Haydn for directing a vibrant dramatic comedy
that kept its audience rapt from start to finish. I
loved it.
Plot Summary
 In this farce about sexual politics in marriage, a
man persuades hissuicidal wife that an
open marriage is politically correct and embarks
on dalliances with younger women, to her
dismay and fury. After deciding to be on her
own, the tables are turned when she confesses
to a new man, Nobel prize nominated professor
and inspired singer-songwriter; it is the husband
who becomes suicidal.
IN A GROVE
 short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, first
appearing in the January 1922 edition of the
Japanese literature monthly Shinchō. Akira
Kurosawa used this story as the basis for the
plot of his award-winning movie Rashōmon.
 "In a Grove" is an early modernist short story,
as well as a blending of the modernist search
for identity with themes from historic Japanese
literature, and as such is perhaps the iconic
work of Akutagawa's career. It presents three
varying accounts of the murder of a samurai,
Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been
found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each
section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates
what the reader knows about the murder,
eventually creating a complex and contradictory
vision of events that brings into question
humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and
transmit objective truth.
- The story opens with the account of a
woodcutter who has found a man's body in the
woods. The woodcutter reports that man died
of a single sword stroke to the chest, and that
the trampled leaves around the body showed
there had been a violent struggle, but otherwise
lacked any significant evidence as to what
actually happened. There were no weapons
nearby, and no horses—only a single piece of
rope, a comb and a lot of blood.
- The next account is delivered by a traveling
Buddhist priest. He says that he met the man,
who was accompanied by a woman on
horseback, on the road, around noon the day
before the murder. The man was carrying a
sword, a bow and a black quiver. All of these,
along with the woman's horse, a tall, short-
maned palomino, were missing when the
woodcutter discovered the body.
- The next person to testify is a hōmen (放免, a
released prisoner working under contract to the
police, similar to a bounty hunter). He has
captured an infamous criminal named
Tajōmaru. Tajōmaru was injured when thrown
from a horse (a tall, short-maned palomino),
and he was carrying a bow and a black quiver,
which did not belong in his usual arsenal. This
proves, he says, that Tajōmaru was the
perpetrator. Tajōmaru was not carrying the
dead man's sword, however.
- The next testimony is from an old woman, who
identifies herself as the mother of the missing
girl. Her daughter is a beautiful, strong-willed
19-year-old named Masago, married to
Kanazawa no Takehiro—a 26-year-old samurai
from Wakasa. Her daughter, she says, has never
been with a man other than Takehiro. She begs
the police to find her daughter.
- Next, Tajōmaru confesses. He says that he met
them on the road in the forest, and upon first
seeing Masago, decided that he was going to
rape her. In order to rape Masago unhindered,
he separated the couple, luring Takehiro into
the woods with the promise of buried treasure.
He then stuffed his mouth full of leaves, tied
him to a tree and fetched Masago. When
Masago saw her husband tied to the tree, she
pulled a dagger from her bosom and tried to
stab Tajōmaru, but he knocked the knife out of
her hand, and he had his way with her.
Originally, he had no intention of killing the
man, he claims, but after the rape, she begged
him to either kill her husband or kill himself—
she could not live if two men knew her shame.
She would leave with the last man standing.
Tajōmaru did not wish to kill Takehiro in a
cowardly manner, so he untied him and they
had a swordfight. During the duel, Masago fled.
Tajōmaru dispatched the man and took the
man's sword, bow, and quiver, as well as the
woman's horse. He says that he sold the sword
before he was captured by the bounty hunter.
- The second-to-last account is that of Masago.
According to her, after the rape, Tajōmaru fled,
and her husband, still tied to the tree, looked at
her with great disdain. She was ashamed that
she had been raped, and no longer wished to
live, but she wanted him to die with her. He
agreed, or so she believed—he couldn't actually
say anything because his mouth was still stuffed
full of leaves—and she plunged her dagger into
his chest. She then cut the rope that bound
Takehiro, and ran into the forest, whereupon
she attempted to commit suicide numerous
times, she said, but her spirit was too strong to
die. At the end of her confession, she weeps.
- The final account comes from Takehiro's ghost,
as delivered through aspirit medium. The ghost
says that after the rape, Tajōmaru persuaded
Masago to leave her husband and become his
own wife, which she agreed to do under one
condition: He would have to kill Takehiro.
Tajōmaru became enraged at the suggestion,
kicked her to the ground, and asked Takehiro if
he should kill the dishonorable woman. Hearing
this, Masago fled into the forest. Tajōmaru then
cut Takehiro's bonds and ran away. Takehiro
grabbed Masago's fallen dagger and plunged it
into his chest. Shortly before he died, he sensed
someone creep up to him and steal the dagger
from his chest. Throughout, it is obvious that he
is furious at his wife.
Analysis
All analyses proceed from these premises:
 Takehiro is dead.
 Tajōmaru raped Masago.
 Tajōmaru stole Takehiro's bow and quiver, as
well as the woman's horse.
 In each of the accounts, Masago wishes
Takehiro dead, although the details vary.
 Masago and Tajōmaru did not leave together.
The differences between the characters' stories
range from the trivial to the fundamental. What
follows is a list of discrepancies between the
characters' testimonies.
 The comb mentioned by the woodcutter is not
mentioned by any of the other characters.
 The "violent struggle" that trampled the leaves,
mentioned by the woodcutter, seems to occur
only in Tajōmaru's version of the story—the
swordfight.
 The woodcutter also claims that the man was
killed by a single sword slash across the chest,
but in both Masago's and Takehiro's versions of
the story, he was killed by a dagger thrust to the
chest.
 The woodcutter claims that Takehiro was
wearing a Kyōto-style hat called a "sabi-eboshi",
however Masago's mother says that he was not
from Kyōto. We know that the author wanted
to draw significance to this fact, because he
specifically had the police investigator ask her if
Takehiro was from Kyōto.
 The traveling priest says that he "clearly
remember[s] that there were more than 20
arrows" in the man's quiver. The bounty hunter
says that there were only 17.
 The woodcutter says that Takehiro was wearing
a blue kimono and the Buddhist priest says
Masago was wearing a lilac kimono. In Masago's
account, Takehiro is wearing a lilac kimono.
 Tajōmaru does not mention how Masago's
dagger disappeared from the crime scene.
 In Tajōmaru's and Takehiro's accounts, Masago
and Tajōmaru have a long conversation after
the rape, after which, she is willing to leave with
Tajōmaru, so long as her husband is dead.
Masago's account omits this completely.
 Masago does not mention how Takehiro's
sword disappeared from the crime scene.
 It seems unlikely that Masago would fail at
suicide so many times, particularly considering
the first method she supposedly tried: driving
her dagger into her neck.
 Masago says that Takehiro was repulsed by her
after the rape. This is not true according to the
other accounts. From Takehiro's story, it is clear
that he is furious at her, but he claims that this
is because she asked Tajōmaru to kill him. In
Tajōmaru's version, he still loves her so much
that he is willing to fight to the death for her.
 Takehiro introduces a new and unlikely
character: the person who stole the dagger
from his chest, conveniently, mere seconds
before his death. (The film Rashomon explains
this by having the Woodcutter later admit to
stealing the dagger, but this confession is not
present in the original story. This actually isn't
what the woodcutter's testimony shows,
because he mentioned that all the blood had
dried up and Takehiro claims that as the small
sword was retrieved from his chest, "more
blood flowed into my mouth".)
 Masago and Takehiro claim that Tajōmaru
violently kicked her after the rape. Tajōmaru
says that his desire to make Masago his wife
forced him to battle Takehiro instead of kicking
the woman off and running away.
In short, every character says at least one thing that
is refuted by another.
In a Grove v.2
The story is divided into seven sections, each
presenting a first-person point of view of one of the
seven characters. The first four narrators are not
directly involved in the crime, and the seven
narrators are arranged in order of increasing
involvement. The woodcutter, for example, is
merely a witness and reports factual details and
makes no judgments or inferences. The priest, who
has seen the couple, does not know them
personally but comments on the brevity of life and
expresses pity for the victim. The arresting officer
seems intent on proving that he has arrested the
right man and jumps fallaciously to the conclusion
that the thief’s possession of the victim’s bow and
arrows is proof of his guilt. He has a vested interest
in claiming the capture of this nefarious villain to
boost his own professional reputation. The mother,
the last of the indirectly involved characters, is
concerned about the safety and whereabouts of her
daughter and feels the need to defend her
daughter’s reputation.
The last three narrators, the principal characters
involved, are presented similarly in order of
increasing subjectivity. The thief is involved in the
crime, yet he feels no remorse for the acts he has
confessed to or for his other past criminal deeds;
nor does he betray any fear or regret at having been
arrested, although he will surely be hanged. The
wife, emotionally as well as physically involved in
the event, nevertheless is alive. She has not only the
murder to answer for, but also the accusations
regarding her relationship with Tajomaru to deny.
The concluding narrative, that of the victim himself,
presents the point of view of the character most
dramatically affected by the events described.
Akutagawa uses overlapping details in the seven
accounts to give some credibility to each of the
three confessions. For example, Takehiro’s claim of
suicide raises questions about the absence of the
weapon, yet he recalls someone pulling the sword
from his chest as he is dying. The priest’s
description of the horse implicates Tajomaru.

Critics have noted that this story reveals the

influence of Victorian poet Robert Browning’s
dramatic monologues, particularly The Ring and the
Book (1868-1869), which similarly presents twelve
different accounts of a murder. “In a Grove,” along
with Akutagawa’s story “Rashmon,” was the basis
for the film Rashomon (1950) by Japanese director
Akira Kurosawa